President Bush recently unveiled a plan that would have the United States back in space. The President’s plan outlines returning to the moon as a stepping stone for a future manned mission to Mars. The plan can be broken into three main steps. First, the United States will complete its work on the International Space Station which ends in 2010. This will allow the United States to keep its agreement with the fifteen partner countries which inhabit the space station and also allow for further research and development. During the next six years, NASA will use the space station to form a better understanding of the effects of space travel and thus increase overall astronaut safety. The second step in President Bush’s plan is the development of a new manned exploration vehicle. The hope is that the new vehicle will be developed and tested by 2008 and used in an actual mission no later than 2014. The final step to this process is the actual space exploration. America will return to the moon as early as 2015 and no later than 2020. These moon missions will serve as stepping stones for future mars missions. NASA will continue unmanned exploration of mars, while astronauts visiting the moon will attemp
Despite the obvious advantages to the new space travel plan, there are also downsides which critiques have been quick to point out. First, with the recent space shuttle disaster how can NASA be sure that similar catastrophic events will not occur again? Despite NASA’s plans to develop safer methods for astronauts at the International Space Center, no one can be one hundred percent confident until an actual manned mission is launched. Also, twelve billion dollars is a lot of money no matter what percent of the budget it takes up. Arguments can be made that while space travel is important, other things such as curing cancer and helping the homeless are way higher on many peoples list. For some space travel is not the issue, but Bush’s method to space travel is. Astronaut John Glenn echoes the sentiments of many others in his field when he points out that by the time NASA makes all of there trips to the moon and performs all of there exploration of mars, there will be no money left to actually get to mars.
So far there have been several proponents of Bush’s new plan. These proponents have several key argument points as to why space exploration would benefit America. One of the arguments is that the United States is a country based on explorat
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