Free Republic

With most of Washington locked in a debate over just how big a bite should be taken out of a (relatively small) portion of overall government spending, one group of senators is pushing forward to face larger budget challenge. President Barack Obama has kept a cautious distance from the recommendations issued last year by his own commission on fiscal responsibility — particularly when it comes to entitlements like Social Security. But this bipartisan group of six senators, led by Sen. Mark Warner, D- Va., and Saxby Chambliss, R- Ga., is keeping the commission's proposals alive and drafting them into legislation....

NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday. This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted. In 2057, the centenary of the space era, "we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars," Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals. The international space station being built in orbit and targeted for completion by 2010 would provide...