The nerve of them.

That’s not to say that human space flight isn’t valuable, but just that the space technology we use isn’t the metric for its value. Politicians never get away with ridiculing space efforts in general. They’d have to be obscenely dumb (not to put it past ’em!) not to understand the communication capabilities and national defense capabilities that such efforts provide.

Ironically, this not only politically undermined NASA’s return to the Moon but it also undermined the notion of a landing humans on Mars.

Obama’s vision is for an orbit of Mars in the mid 2030s with a– dream– of landing on Mars sometime after that (5 years? 10 years? 20 years?). I’m pretty sure that’s what probably got Zubrin so upset.

The fact that President Obama (who I’ve already voted for) wanted to delay any development of a heavy lift vehicle until after his reelection campaign made some suspicious that he was even serious about– any– manned beyond LEO missions by NASA.

Romney’s outrageous distortion of Newt’s lunar outpost idea (prioritizing a NASA lunar outpost by the end of the decade) originated from the Obama administration and was already a talking point for left wing talk radio shows against Gingrich before Romney gleefully joined in against Newt during the debates.

Its amazing how easy it is for politicians to get away with ridiculing almost any space efforts as a waste of public funds when all of us utilize some sort of space technology practically everyday in our lives from cable TV to GPS units.

Marcel F. Williams