With a bold vision for NASA and manned spaceflight, President Bush talked Wednesday of returning astronauts to the moon and then sending them on to Mars.

A lofty goal, indeed. Unfortunately, the actual proposal falls far short of the rhetoric.

The president has proposed adding $1 billion over five years to NASA’s budget, or about $250 million a year, and diverting another $11 billion from other NASA programs. Even without a definitive timeline for the mission, the funding seems woefully inadequate. One NASA estimate pegs the cost at $170 billion, and it could be much more – think in terms of the 10-year cost of the recently passed Medicare prescription plan ($400 billion). NASA’s current budget is $15.4 billion a year.

History offers us examples of the expensive nature of space exploration. Initial estimates had the International Space Station costing $8 billion in 1984. So far, the price tag has reached $32 billion and it’s not finished.

There are also examples back on Earth. The F/A-22 Raptor, the next generation of air supremacy fighter jet, has been in the works since the early 1990s. The contract just for engineering and tool development was $11 billion in 1991, and the planes could cost as much as $257 million each. And they don’t go to the moon.

The V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor airplane-helicopter hybrid, has cost more than $40 billion and has been on the drawing board since 1981. In test flights, at least 38 people have been killed.

If replacing helicopters and fighter jets with new aircraft can cost as much as $5.5 billion a year at the height of spending, how can we develop a new spacecraft for the measly budget allocated?

While we agree with the president’s plan to retire the space shuttle, we are concerned that other changes in NASA could detract from the great scientific achievements of such things as space telescopes and robot explorers. As the Mars rover, Spirit, and the Hubble space telescope have shown, we can learn a lot with the tools we already have.

The exploration of space is an important mission, and as the world’s lone superpower, the United States has an obligation to lead the way. But terrible budget deficits, debt and a staggering set of domestic obligations at home force us to ask if building a moon base and eventually sending a person to Mars is the best use of available resources.

A grand idea in an election year does not equal the sense of purpose generated by President Kennedy’s call to reach the moon. This vision looks more like political bluster.


Participation


We don’t blame Dixfield selectmen for seeking a little more order for their meetings. On Monday night, they OK’d a change in meeting protocol that will restrict the manner in which the public can comment

In the past, members of the audience could speak up at almost any time. At the behest of Chairman Hugh Daley, comments will be limited to a specific time – at the end of the agenda.

We do quibble, however, with the new schedule. Let residents speak at the beginning of the meeting. Don’t make them wait around until the end, especially when an executive session could have them cooling their jets for hours.

The desire for a more orderly meeting is perfectly reasonable, but so is letting the speakers go first. That would encourage participation and make it easier on those people who want to participate in government’s work.
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