Question: Why is establishing a moon colony or putting a man on Mars more important than finding a cure for cancer?

I’ve wondered about our increasingly eccentric national priorities ever since President Bush’s announcement last week that America will not only return to an era of manned space exploration but will go one better and send astronauts to the Red Planet.

Bush’s proposal seemed to fall from the sky; it landed with the thud of a smoking meteorite. Americans of every political stripe were left to wonder if their captain hasn’t flown a wee bit off course. Even conservative Republican staffers privately expressed deep misgivings about, as one put it, “what the hell this guy is doing.”

“Exploration … is an investment in our future,” lectures a White House press release on the moon-colony whim. It then seeks to reassure wide-eyed Americans, clutching their wallets for dear life, that, “The president’s vision for exploration will not require large budget increases in the near term.”

No, only an extra $1 billion for NASA to jump-start the program in the next five years. Then Bush’s space fantasies are estimated to eventually cost $1 trillion, assuming everything goes according to plan. That’s a lot of moon rocks.

With the country running $500 billion in the red each year, and bills coming due for rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, buying prescription drugs for the elderly, and fixing Social Security on top of tax cuts, a spending spree on space could be generously described as “peculiar.”

Which brings me back to cancer. If Bush is indeed committed to “improving our quality of life and helping save lives,” as the press release says, he should instead funnel some of this $1 trillion boondoggle toward cancer research.

This year, 1.4 million Americans will hear the worst news of their lives: They have cancer. Nearly 550,000 will die from it. That’s 1,500 Americans killed each day by a lethal, indiscriminate enemy.

Now consider the number of American lives altered by a single cancer diagnosis. If you include, say, five family members, that’s 8.4 million Americans each year whose daily existence centers on the hope that someone they love can find an effective treatment. A cure is almost too much to dream of.

But not an impossibility. At 62 percent, the five-year survival rate for cancer has never been higher. A serious shot of money into the arm of cancer research could literally make the difference between life and death for millions of Americans.

Bush has a real chance to influence voters’ lives at the most personal level, demonstrate his compassionate conservatism and create jobs in the medical research industry. Having lost two close family members to cancer last year, I know I’d be grateful for such presidential priorities. And what a legacy Bush would leave behind.

Sure, MRIs and CAT scans originated from space-program technology. But it’s hard to believe that leading scientific brains wouldn’t have eventually come up with similar inventions anyway. For the more than $60 billion cost to develop and operate the space shuttle program, the government could have purchased several major research labs or funded the National Science Foundation for more than 30 years.

Like a shopaholic, Bush seems bound and determined to use the national credit card to buy something, anything. Frankly, I think the best course for him may be to cut up the card and enter credit counseling. But if he’s decided to go head-over-heels into debt and spend the dollars anyway, the result better be something worth ruining our credit for. Manned flights of fancy to Mars are not the best use of our money right now.

The thought of voyaging to the Red Planet is thrilling and inspiring. It plays to the American sense of ingenuity, exploration and even Manifest Destiny. If the country was flush with cash, I’d be on Bush’s side.

But we’re not. And we can’t do it all. The president should get his head out of the clouds and focus on the real lives of real Americans back here on Earth.

Bronwyn Lance Chester is a columnist for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.

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