An interplanetary trial balloon is floated as the AP reports President Bush “will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon”. “Bush won’t propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon;” the report says, “rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now.” So it’s not clear whether there will be an explicit JFKlike commitment with a deadline (“The goal, before this decade is out…”) or just increased funding with Mars as the longrange but indefinite target. The report notes that “Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.” I can think of more important things that Americans might rally around besides a manned mission to Mars, and better reasons for space exploration than a feel-good election-year promise.

Will the project be funded by a series of aggressive tax cuts? Will it alienate voters who think the Earth is 4,000 years old? Will the Free State Project Libertarians ditch New Hampshire and realize that this is the chance they’ve been waiting for to really start again from scratch? Questions, questions.