The enormity of this project brings back memories of President Kennedy's announcement that man could be on the moon by the end of the 60s. Mr. Kennedy threw down the challenge to the American scientist's and we did reach our goal.
Now, President Bush's plan is just as ambitious and could be attained if Americans would pool their resources with other countries. The President has outlined for us to do it alone as we did in Iraq. Unless we did develop cooperation with these other countries, it would be nearly impossible to make his goal of 2010. The sheer technology of this adventure and the funding is not in place at this time. We are looking at 1 or 2 trillion dollars to make this work. Our federal budget is about 2.4 trillion at this time and we can not get that to balance. It is imperative that we cooperate with other countries to accomplish this goal. This sounds like an easy task, but we would have to open up our technology to other countries to do this. The United States has been very hesitant to do this in the past. This would be a major shift in policy in our country.
The "Mars" project must become a world project for it to succeed. Also to succeed, this project must overcome the objection of many, who point to the massive poverty in the world and other very relevant problems that confront our world today. What we fail to remember is that many of our innovations of today were brought about by those space programs of the 60s. The technology of today has a lot to be thankful for because of those very creative minds back in those early days in the space program. The goal of a person stepping on the "Red" planet is in our future, but this must be done by the world as a whole, not by one country.
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