The following online ad has also been aired on T.V. quite a bit:

http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=realimpact/afl-cio/AFL04-04Priorities.rm

In it, members of the African American voting block [about 12%] are depicted as criticizing Bush's Mars initiatives as lacking priorities that are sufficiently "close to home". Their political opposition to Mars & lunar missions is not insignificant...

To counteract such perennial opposition, NASA's Small Business
Utilization office claims it's into empowering African-American-owned, Hispanic-owned and East Asian-owned small businesses to profit from the space industry. However, here's an interesting case that's highly relevant. Puerto Rican-owned BST Systems provided the battery for NASA's 1997 Mars Pathfinder Mission, which impressively lasted 3 times as long as NASA had contracted for it to last. Surprisingly though, BST's batteries have NOT been included in any subsequent Mars endeavors. Here's a quote from Max Solis, the CEO: "If NASA finally offered Mars-related competitive PRIZES instead of contracts then at least we'd stand a far better chance of
getting to compete on a team that can outperform the likes of Lockheed Martin, which has puzzlingly had a stronghold for years regarding obtaining NASA's Mars-related dollars despite its less than reliable track record."

And yet how are such minority entrepreneurs supposed to even know about such alternatives to the good ole' boy procurement system if NASA's SADBU opportunistically won't even let them know about the prizes breakthroughs? This is a classic case of parasitism at everyone else's great expense.

For some reason, there isn't a lot published on the web about these scandal situations which are badly in need of reform if minorities are to keep from being excluded from the Martian dreams that we need for everyone to get to have if political support for Mars mission funding is to improve. There is the following site that one can find at Google though:

http://www.spaceprojects.com/minority-contracts.

Perhaps the most interesting quote from there is:

Some might claim that prize-offerings could somehow result in discrimination against those potential entrepreneurs who supposedly couldn't get investment despite the existence of an adequate prize. However, if the way that NASA treats minority-owned small businesses, let alone small businesses, is supposedly so appealing to them then why hasn't space succeeded at attracting the investment of capital and talent by the
aeronautically-inclined U.S. Airways board member and former owner of Black Entertainment Television, Robert Johnson? Is that pioneer not a billionaire, and also an aeronautics enthusiast who made a bid for the potential D.C. Airways venture? Nevertheless, has anybody noticed his deafening silence in terms of expressing any tangible entrepreneurial interest in space? Why would this be, if NASA is genuinely good for small
and minority-owned businesses? The same can be said regarding Donald Watkins, a billionaire Alabama-based attorney who owns two planes, part of a third, is buying a Boeing 737, and says "I actually care more about my airplanes than my cars." Can anyone blame Donald for choosing to become the first black baseball club owner instead of a pioneer in space who would have to try and co-exist with a potentially very jealous NASA? Indeed, Mr. Watkins views with disdain "government handouts" such as those which NASA uses to purchase potential critics' silence. Isn't it remarkable how NASA pretends to offer certain ethnic minorities a racial spoils system in exchange for their political support, while actually keeping them down & dependent on the "NASA bureaucrats' plantation"?