Dennis Powell, occasional NRO contributor, who is at work on a space-tech book e-mails: “In today’s business section, the New York Times has a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/business/yourmoney/21mars.html?pagewanted=print&position=”>story
which questions whether NASA and the U.S. aerospace industry are in
good enough shape to undertake a trip to Mars. The story cites the
retirement of experienced engineers and the shortage of new blood to
replace them. As has been the case with just about every story dealing
with the president’s space initiative, the Times misses the
point or, in this case, multiple points: of course we’re not
ready to go to Mars. We won’t be for decades, and no one has ever
claimed otherwise. In my href=”http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/powell200312030858.asp”>first
n.r.o. piece on the subject I accented the plan to return us to the
moon, as did (and do) the people I talk to in government and industry.
And the coverage that followed that article did, too. But the president
mentioned Mars when he spoke January 14, and that mention has been used
to belittle the plan ever since. The plan is to return to the moon both
for itself and to learn the things that will enable us oneday to get to
Mars. It is also to produce the kind of program which will inspire a
new generation of aerospace engineers, so that they will replace the
retirees. The space shuttle, with not much new technology over the last
25 years, failed to excite young engineers in the way that Mercury,
Gemini, and Apollo did in the 1960s.”