It is all about the Chinese. They have restarted the "space race". It's going to look bad if the Chinese starting putting people on the Moon in a few years time and the US can't even keep the Shuttle going.
That trillion dollar figure is going to be spent over a long period, and you know the US government spends that much on defense every two years or so. Of course, all that money spent on defense did squat back on 9/11 - and the same applies to the missile defense program Bush wants now. Hell, the war in Iraq costs several times the budget of NASA.
I'm pretty sure the spending money on space is a good thing, even if the motivation is wrong.
The problems in the world - hunger, AIDS etc - are only partly about money and mostly about a lack of interest in fixing the problems.
Hell, there's poor and homeless people in the USA, and that's the richest country in the world - so clearly money is not the problem.
Posted on Jan 23, 2004, 5:36 AM from IP address 203.41.111.183