Backers: Privatize Moon - Mars Mission Funds

Found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nati...Moon-Mars.html


Backers: Privatize Moon - Mars Mission Funds

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 18, 2004


Filed at 6:45 p.m. ET

NASSAU BAY, Texas (AP) -- Supporters of President Bush's
goal of sending manned flights to the moon and Mars told a
U.S. Senate subcommittee Wednesday that private dollars
should be used to help pay for such missions.


[More accurately, that should be *some* supporters of
President Bush's space program. Others, such as myself,
think advocating privatizing the space program is "pie in
the sky" wishful thinking.]


``Every dollar that comes in commercially is a dollar the
taxpayer doesn't have to come up with,'' said Charles
Chafer, president of private aerospace company Team
Encounter. ``Fortunately, there is money that is
available.''



[The private money is available? From where? What's in
it for people who put up these large amounts of money?]




Bush last month announced his election-year initiative to
send astronauts to the moon, Mars and beyond. He wants
robotic missions to the moon no later than 2008 and the
first manned flight of a new spacecraft by 2014.


[A ridiculously long time.]



The missions are likely to cost hundreds of billions of
dollars.



[No, they're not.]




Robert Lorsch, a Los Angeles businessman and space
enthusiast who has lobbied for decades to commercialize the
space program,



[And why has he not been successful at privatizing space
exploration after all this time? Because there are no
sources of private funds willing to put up the required
money. Nothing has happened to change this.]



contends money-raising wouldn't be hard.


[Yeah, sure.]



He suggested methods as diverse as corporate sponsorships
of space missions to selling screen savers of the Mars
rovers for $1 a piece.



[Good luck. Meanwhile, the U.S. government should plan on
doing the funding until this fellow can talk someone into
coming up with the big bucks.]




``There is so much enthusiasm, support and good will,''
Lorsch told the subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Sam Brownback,
R-Kansas. ``There is just no way for people to express it.''



[There *is* a lot of enthusiasm, support and good will,
but it has been this way for a long time, yet noone has come
forward to fund space exploration out of their own pocket.
The closest thing we have are the groups of people who are
trying to build private spacecraft that can transport people
to and from low-Earth orbit. This is the proper place for
private funds to be going, and they *are* getting private
funds because they think they can make a profit if they are
successful. If we wanted to speed up this process, the
thing to do would be to put some government money into these
private projects and get one or more of these vehicles
qualified for flight as soon as possible. This would be the
quickest way to privatize space exploration. Once a trip to
low-Earth orbit becomes easy and cheap, the privatization of
space exploration will take care of itself.]




``We have got to get resources to this program to make it
work,'' Brownback told Lorsch in a public hearing near the
Johnson Space Center outside Houston.



[That is correct. Underfunding the project is a sure way
to kill it.]




NASA associate administrator William Readdy said the agency
is ``committed to fulfilling the new challenge.''



[Get committed to building a shuttle-derived, heavy-lift
vehicle. That's the only way this job is going to be done
in the shorterm.]



He said NASA can refocus some of its money toward the new
priorities. For example, plans call for shifting money from
the space shuttles, which will be retired at the end of the
decade.


[Get a replacement vehicle flying first, please.]


end


TA