U.S. space program needs 'destination mars': "U.S. space program needs 'destination mars'

SHARON BEGLEY, The Wall Street Journal Friday, December 12, 2003

(12-12) 08:58 PST (AP) --
Peering into the heavens on a starry night, you can't help but be struck by the single most obvious trait of that 'depthless spatter' (as John Updike called it in a recent poem): It does not lack for destinations.

But you wouldn't know that from the rumblings out of Washington. It has been 10 months since the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia, and four months since the Accident Investigation Board called for a national debate on U.S. space goals. There hasn't been much of one; instead, officials have been meeting behind closed doors as part of an interagency review of space policy, asking how, or even whether, the U.S. should reach for missions more glorious than joy rides that go around in circles (via the space shuttle and International Space Station).

What's now emerging is more than dismaying. It looks like President Bush will propose little more than a riff on President Kennedy's vision of 42 years ago: Destination Moon.

Next week marks the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine, Orville Wright's 12-second flight over the dunes of the Outer Banks, with brother Wilbur running alongside. With that derring-do in mind, surely we can reach higher than lunar repeats. Measured by its value to science or to the soul, or by how it can inspire discovery or the imagination, the moon might as well be green cheese. "
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