The President's Space Initiative Speech

In article hPiNb.67808$na.39439@attbi_s04,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

I caught most of it -- and it was fantastic! To hear a president actually
promoting manned space travel, and laying out a plausible, doable plan to
get our space program back on track, was a breath of fresh air on a bleak
and dreary January day.

Hell, maybe we'll set foot on Mars before I die after all?

I often tell my children how the U.S. once led the world in space travel,
and of how my generation grew up with the excitement and national pride of
putting a man on the moon. Until today, I would also sadly explain to them
how we had squandered our future, and abandoned the dream...

Well, President Bush has today put us back on track. As pilots (I like to
call what we do "extremely low earth orbit... :-) let's get the phone calls
and emails rolling to our elected representatives, and tell 'em to get on
board this new initiative!



I think that we need to do SOMETHING to stem the evaporation of our
aerospace tachnical talent pool. I think that GWB and his staff realize
this and are proposing the program to stem that loss.

Other possibilities:

1. It will help to obtain the capability of intercepting and redirecting
Earth-intersecting asteroids. (The Wall Street Journal today has an
excellent editorial on this benefit.) Yes, it IS costly -- BUT the cost
of NOT doing it may be extinction of all life on Earth.

2. MAybe NASA has discovered some alien artifacts or signs of activity
on the Moon or Mars.

3. We may be Martians -- the progeny of long-ago refugees from Martian
asteroid collisions.