BIG SPACE.(The Talk of the Town)(space policy)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 26-JAN-04

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Last week, when President Bush unveiled his plan to establish a moon base and send a manned expedition to Mars, his stated reasons were, for the most part, high-flown. The plan, he argued, would revolutionize our understanding of the universe, allow us to go to worlds far beyond our own, and "lift our national spirit." But, in deference to reality, the President spent a few moments discussing the economic benefits, citing the usual list of innovations that we owe to nasa and promising that his plan would lead to a new generation of "technological breakthroughs." Our investment in space, he said, would be "repaid many times over."

The economic case for space exploration has always been important, because of the vast costs and the indeterminate benefits. And so for forty years we've heard about the...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.