"If NASA does land an American on Mars by 2035 or 2040 the space agency will probably have spent something like $680 billion in 2006 dollars. Not all that money will have been spent directly on the Moon and Mars programs, but more than half of that sum will have gone into the program. That’s a large amount of money by any standards, but the fact is that without the Moon and Mars missions NASA would almost certainly have spent the same $680 billion and still be stuck in low Earth orbit."
This is clearly illogical. They assume budgets will be constant, and then claim that an expensive Mars program
wont cost more than not going. Er, circular logic, anyone?
Let's be clear - their same description can be rewritten to say that NASA will spend $680 in 4 decades and will spend half of that to go to Mars, $340 billion.
Why not cut the NASA budget by 50%, cut space shuttle type programs, and stick to non-human space exploration only?
That is definitely a small-Government option, or even more radical, cut it by 80%, and simply send robots. Forget manned space flight, which is a great PR boost but is low ROI scientifically.
$15 billion a year isn't chump change, and could pay for a lot of other things, like science research here on earth.
The one thing agreeable is that Bush is right to give NASA some bold goals rather than that dead-end ISS and shuttles. If we are going to go somewhere, let's go were no man has gone before.