Is Barney Frank right that we can afford to send men to Mars?
As a former engineering manager and specialist with NASA’s Level II Space Station Program Office in Reston, Virginia, what Barney Frank said was absolutely right on the money. We are in a serious financial bind today and that’s without considering the War in Iraq. What NASA gets today can barely afford to keep existing programs going. If history repeats itself, the US is likely to be caught up in a deep and long recession that some even say will very closely resemble the Depression. Economists put a positive spin on our situation but no one is even considering the cost of the War in Iraq that has yet to be paid. Those who favor continuing the war in Iraq don’t understand that we are a nation in financial turmoil. As for Mars, the problem is that we don’t have the power to drive such mission from the Earth. When Apollo astronauts went to the moon, about 65% of the fuel they consumed was just to escape earth’s gravitational field. Logically, the philosophy at NASA has been to establish a
