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Here is my Mars speech for Toastmasters.

Feel free to copy, spindle or mutilate it:

Mr. Toastmaster, as you know this speech is a on a topic that we feel passionately about.

As a country we seem to be like the wife of an abusive husband waiting for her next beating.

Life has a certain feeling in this country of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On top of it we have lost our technological edge. It was recently widely reported that the United States lost the title of the fastest computer to Japan.

We seem to teeter on our foreign policy goals.

Financially times are uncertain as well, everyone seems to be scared of losing their jobs. People realize that job security doesn’t exist today as it did for their parents, when 30 years of working for a company brought one a gold watch and a healthy retirement check.

Just as at home our rest seems less restful, our enemies seem less clearly defined than they did in the days of the cold war.

What is it that we are lacking?

I ask you, the audience, and this isn’t a rhetorical question.

Yes, all good answers.

What we are lacking is a clear-cut goal, and an initiative which harnesses our creative intelligence as a nation.

What should our national goal be?

Well, survival is a goal and that seems to be what our goal has become. However this and the goal of staying the number one global power, this is ineffective as a goal because it doesn’t give us any direction.

Motivation experts admonish us not to have a negative goal, For instance, the goal I will lose weight is not a good goal because it focuses on what you don’t want, weight.

I will eat 3 or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily is better because you focus on what you CAN do.

In looking for this national goal I am going to suggest a goal that in our past that propelled us forwards.

In the modified words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out of landing a man on Mars and returning him to Earth safely.

Before you pronounce this idea as absurd, let me explain how this goal would address of the problems I mentioned earlier.

First of all, it is apparent that a strong American space program is the same thing as a strong America.

The military spin offs of space exploration are almost limitless.

Don’t forget that military technology proliferates.

If we rest on our laurels, people who hate us will develop nuclear technology and missile delivery systems.

And the lesson of 9-11 is that our enemies are not resting on their laurels.

The driving force of the American economy is technological innovation. Many economists accurately said that the economy of the nineties was flat but the tech sector was so strong that it pulled the rest of the economy with it.

How did American become the world’s leading technical innovator?

I would argue that much of the impetus came as long term spin off from the Apollo space programs and Reagan’s Star Wars initiative.

In addition to technology, many breakthroughs in the fields of engineering, medicine, plastics, aviation, and electronics came from these programs.

The problem currently is that corporations owe it to their shareholders to return profits in the current quarter. This stifles long-term research and investment.

And since winning an election has become so expensive, politicians are more concerned about filling their campaign coffers than long-term strategy of anything outside political survival.

The investment in high tech research and manufacturing necessary to put a man on Mars would be a tremendous boast to the economy and have spin off effects for decades.

It would also help the increasing unemployment.

Not only would it have these advantages, but this new found space agility would benefit the entire world in other ways. How many of you remember the asteroids hitting Jupiter a couple of years ago.

And often times in the news it is noted that an asteroid narrowly missed us. As it currently is, we have absolutely no defense against this.

To develop the capacity to defend against this eventuality would also help us with missile defense. And both of these programs would benefit from a manned mission to Mars.

And although many would decry this as a budget boondoggle, I would say that it would force the government to redefine it’s priorities and make it more efficient. It would have to be more efficient and channel the nations resources more carefully.

In conclusion, fellow Toastmasters, I ask you to remember the exhilaration of watching Neil Armstrong taking one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

And join me in supporting the growing movement onward and upward into space.