Don't let Bush co-opt the issue of space exploration!

[angka]

Like many progressives I know (not to mention sci-fi fans), I am a strong backer of a long term, well-funded space exploration program. This state-managed program has yielded such enormous benefits in the last fifty years, from the simple growth of knowledge to real-world economics. Many tech-heads also foresee a long-term stall in technological development without the impetus of an ambitious space program.

The GOP is the party of the co-opting of space—using space where it benefits them militarily and politically, then dumping the program when it gets expensive or there's a failure. In this case, Bush is groping for anything he can get his picture taken in front of that makes people forget about the unprecedented horror of the last three years. That big phallic rocket looks good. He doesn't care a bit about space exploration, except for its diversionary bread-and-circus value.

When the freepers come at you with Bush's 'vision for space,' there are many easy comebacks, for example: how will he pay for his vision after he completes the looting of the treasury?

[pmbryant]

1. Given all of Bush's other lies..

how can anyone take him seriously on this?

My reading is that this is just a cover story to allow them to kill the Shuttle program, while everyone is distracted by visions of future Moon and Mars missions that, of course, will never come to pass.

--Peter

[terrisel]

2. Who is going to pay for the Colonist's Health Insurance...

....us underinsured and uninsured taxpayers??

[JHB]

3. I'm not too worried...

...His track record on this sort of thing is to cut funding once the cameras are pointed at something else. Guaranteed that the bang-for-the-buck ratio nosedives under any *-"led" proposal.

[kentuck]

4. Like we can afford it...

Bush had a "vision"..yeah, sure.

[angka]

5. Moonbase Dubya bump

prophetic as usual...like copernicus, i am unappreciated in my time.

[bigtree]

6. The problem

is that the executives, the CEO's, of corporations who build the rockets and develop the technology are driven by an insatiable greed, (Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, etc.)

These military industrial warriors have insinuated the highest offices of our government. Many are former presidents and vice presidents and chief operating officers, etc. of these same corporations that NASA relies on to run the space program.

-Sean O'Keefe, former navy secretary and comptroller at the defense dept., now NASA Administrator, was on a paid advisory board of Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.

-James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force is a former president of Northrop-Grumman, a subsidiary of Lockheed. "We have encouraged and exploited the rapid advancement and employment of innovative technologies and have taken significant action to implement the findings of the Space Commission in our new role as the executive agent for space," he said to a Senate committee in 2002.

-Peter B. Teets, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, is the former president and chief operating officer of Lockheed Martin who retired from the company in late 1999.

Teets now serves as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Undersecretary of the Air Force, and chief procurement officer for all of military space, controlling a budget in excess of $65 billion, a figure that includes $8 billion a year for missile defense and $7 billion annually for NRO spying.

To date it is believed that the NRO has provided more than $500 million each to Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. "A key player in supplying revolutionary breakthrough technology has been, and will continue to be, the National Reconnaissance Office," Teets said February in a Pentagon briefing.

-Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President is a Boeing shareholder.

-Retired general Jay Garner, who served briefly as the administrator for postwar Iraq, is the President of SYColeman Corp., which is owned by L-3, one of Lockheed-Martin's communications technology units.

--Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of DOD, and former assistant to Dick Cheney, was a Northrop-Grumman consultant.

It's difficult to find any aspect of our foreign affairs which isn't occupied by some cold-war military industry dinosaur and its pied mynas; who cling to the grazing administration herds, and feed off of the insects they disturb in their wake.

In their new positions, these military industrial warriors are well-positioned to make decisions on procurement and research programs that will directly or indirectly benefit their former employer (Lockheed, etc.),which has major portfolios in nuclear weapons, missile defense, and military space systems.

[angka]

7. i agree

that space exploration in the US is tied at the hip to the military industrial complex. there's got to be a way...