And yes they can get us to the Moon or Mars. See NASA's Mars Reference missions or Zubrin's Mars Direct plan. We could do it in far less than 30 years. This is less work than required for Apollo. The Bush plan is over 75% pork and a huge waste of taxpayer money. Support it as it is to completion and you prove all the naysayers about the space program being a waste of money correct.

Space advocates should publicly support the broad goals of the plan (return to the Moon and on to Mars) while working behind the scenes to morph it into a good use of taxpayer's money (forget lunar base as starting point for Mars, use Moon only as test base or for research Moon specific).

Regards,
Mark