(Here is an error filled rant on NASA. One of many out there. Let me point out a couple of things...if you plan to go anywhere beyond LEO you need infrastructure of some kind and the CEV and the HHLV offered by NASA is some. If you don't plan to let this become another SEI. For you in the USA I suggest you start writing your congresspersons and tell them they need to support this vision.--CV)

Column: Spacewaste
By Todd Swiss
Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Article Tools: Page 1 of 2

As Congress decides how they will reduce governmental spending to pay for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, NASA announced its $104 billion plan to go to the moon by 2020.

The moon. Were we not there just a few decades ago? As I recall, the astronauts discovered that the moon is basically a big rock with barely any potential to ever support human life. The same is basically true for Mars. We've got color pictures and rock samples to prove it. The terrain is rough, the atmosphere is non-existent and none of the essentials required to sustain human life are present. We do not learn anything extraordinary from these trips. We are just wasting money that could be used to help people in need.

$104 billion. NASA must have some awesome new technology that will dazzle us all, right? Actually, NASA plans to basically upgrade the Apollo designs that they used when we first made it to the moon. A NASA spokesperson even called it "Apollo on steroids."

In a budget cut recommended by House Republicans, our leaders have proposed reducing benefits for military health care, Medicaid and grants for graduate students. However, cuts for this frivolous NASA program are nowhere in sight.

NASA is a joke. They have not done anything productive in the last 20 years besides create and continue to use old and faulty space shuttles. Sure, NASA has a large role in building the International Space Station, but what good has come from random astronauts spending a few hundred days out in space? Yet, while we continue to pump billions of dollars into a useless program, we ignore the well being of the people in our own country. Millions of people are living without health insurance, but that is okay because we want to launch a couple of people into space and create a national spectacle