Mars Mission a Trojan Horse?

È quello che si chiede Suneel Ratan su Wired, rilevando che Bush ha stanziato per la base lunare e per il successivo sbarco su Marte solo un miliardo di dollari a quinquennio in più rispetto all'attuale budget della NASA:

President Bush's plan to go to the moon and to Mars without much additional funding will force NASA and Congress to make hard choices -- particularly regarding the space shuttle and the hugely expensive International Space Station, observers said.



The Bush plan increases NASA's budget by just $1 billion over the next five years. That means the space agency has to figure out how to carry out the mission -- first a return to the moon and later a trip to Mars -- without a lot of additional money in its budget.



The first places to look for resources are the station and shuttle, which consume about a third of NASA's $15 billion budget. One question that's sure to arise -- assuming Bush's vision for the moon and Mars sticks -- is whether to kill the station and shuttle now, instead of in six to 12 years as the plan currently envisions, said Howard McCurdy, a space historian at American University in Washington. That would free up at least $25 billion over the next five years to go to the moon and Mars.



"Logically, if we want to go to the moon and Mars, we should be shutting things down now," McCurdy said.

Insomma, per ora il Progetto Marte potrebbe essere un modo elegante di tirarsi fuori da iniziative internazionali particolarmente dispendiose, come appunto la Stazione Spaziale Internazionale e il telescopio Hubble, e per accelerare la messa in pensione e il rimpiazzo degli ormai obsoleti traghetti spaziali della serie STS (meglio conosciuti col nome commerciale di Space Shuttle).



Fonte: Wired Neds.