Sandwich's Science Friday

More from physicist Robert Park. If you aren't getting his newsletter, you should be (see below).

You don't have to be Alan Greenspan to know what happens when taxes are cut during a costly war. And it's happening. Science, with no champions in this administration, looks to be one of the big losers. NASA, alone among science agencies, would get an increase under the Bush request, but the entire 5%, and more, is destined for the Moon-Mars Initiative, which has no discernable science content. Meanwhile, Hubble will be dropped in the ocean.

So what's really behind [the Moon-Mars Initiative]? Why is the administration pushing so hard for a science initiative that scientists scorn, and which won't take place on Bush's watch? Ah, but that's the plan. It will be up to the next administration, stuck with a huge deficit, to decide whether to go ahead with a meaningless but staggeringly expensive program to see if humans can do what robots are already doing. As one well-informed NASA watcher put it, "Moon-Mars is a poison pill. It hangs responsibility for ending the humans-in-space program on the next administration."
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Exactly. It's just the sort of bread-and-circus idea that Bush loves to propose, but has no intention of pursuing. Nothing more than fraudulent sleight of hand employed to sound like a visionary as he continues to further enrich the wealthy and further impoverish the poor. To paraphrase the GOP, "why does he hate America?"

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