Free Republic

Bush rocks. Thanks Mr. President, for standing by NASA when it needs it most. "President George W. Bush's new space exploration plan has received a burst of hard-core support in Congress, aimed at blocking any attempt to cut its funding, and backed up by a rare veto threat from the president himself." "For a sitting President in an election year to threaten to veto a bill containing appropriations for veterans and housing because of its space spending provisions is a clear signal Bush has not backed away from his space plan. It also is another sign NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe's...

<p>President Bush's proposal to set up a research base on the moon as a first step to traveling to Mars and beyond is a perplexing mixture of necessary and hardheaded rethinking of government's role in space - and empty opportunism. Unfortunately, the proposal doesn't move beyond an attempt to give the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the real sense of purpose it has lacked for upwards of 30 years to serious thinking about what could make space exploration a sustainable activity.</p>

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites), in his big space policy announcement on Wednesday, will call for replacing aging U.S. space shuttles with a new generation spacecraft to get Americans back to the moon and on to Mars, officials said on Saturday.   Seeking to give NASA (news - web sites) a new mission a year after the shuttle Columbia tragedy and to provide a space vision for his re-election campaign, Bush will set a goal of returning to the moon by the middle of the next decade and establishing a human presence there as a...