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In 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and told them to lift their optics to the moon, because we were going to put men there within the decade. Kennedy's words galvanized the nation and dropped a coin flop on NASA, which realized his vision in 1969. But with all the hardware nosotros've got on other planets, the moon is starting to seem like it's been washed. According to President Obama in his new op-ed for CNN, the next frontier is Mars, and we should make a concerted national effort to put men on Mars "by the 2030s."

The President himself intends to stay firmly planted on Earth, though. "Anytime, I promise to hoist my own grandchildren onto my shoulders. We'll still look to the stars in wonder, as humans take since the commencement of time," Obama wrote. "But instead of eagerly awaiting the return of our intrepid explorers, we'll know that because of the choices we make now, they've gone to infinite not simply to visit, but to stay — and in doing so, to make our lives amend here on Earth."

It's a timely bulletin; Obama will host the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh this Thursday, October xiii. Its explicit purpose is to "dream upwards ways to build on our progress and observe the side by side frontiers."

The matter about finding and settling the frontier is that this particular i takes infrastructure and education. Dreams are swell and all, merely dealing with hab modules and particle physics and electrical engineering requires some training — these aren't the kind of things we tin can do relying on thought experiments or napkin math. We need facilities and materials, and workers who understand what they're building. To stand on the shoulders of giants, one usually needs a bit of a boost beginning. Today, that ultimately ways money.

Funding is an issue that will have to be addressed in the planning documents for this directive, in much less hand-waving terms. Rockets don't just grow on copse. NASA currently accounts for less than a penny out of each aggregate federal dollar spent: less than one percent of the national budget. Say what you will about how NASA uses the coin they're allotted; at four-6% of the national upkeep, which is what they had during the heyday of the space race, they established a space program that led the globe. Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it certain does buy heat shields.

Mars

But where is this Mars coin going to come up from, even if we practise manage to go legislators to give NASA a lilliputian more scratch? It'south possible that nosotros tin can look to projects like the buggy, expensive F-35; reallocating some funding between agencies need not compromise our aerospace superiority. At that place's besides the fledgling cooperation betwixt the government (via NASA) and commercial space ops similar SpaceX. President Obama remarks, "Getting to Mars will require connected cooperation between regime and individual innovators." While that does offload some of the financial outlay from public to private sector, we can't necessarily rely on commercial space ventures to choice up the federal slack without a reason to do so. A cash infusion via commercial involvement with NASA would spur innovation, research, and development of the tech we'll need to become to Mars.

Role of our national success in space — a large office — is that when we started out in the space race, nosotros had laid out articulate objectives, the funding program to go with them, and a time postage stamp on the whole matter. JFK put his lunar ambitions to the nation as an intellectual statement, framed to capture what he saw as the best of America and elevate information technology to a cause. And he gave united states homework. "Past the finish of this decade," Kennedy said. None of this mealy-mouthed "2030s," punting the project into someone else's presidential backyard. Which end of the 2030s is this supposed to happen in? How are we meant to avoid the endless pushing-dorsum of deadlines? Anyone who's ever procrastinated can surely identify with the reasons a physical deadline is of import. A range of acceptable deadlines becomes one deadline: the latest one.

Whatever Obama ends upwards doing with his annunciation and conference, it won't go off the ground if the side by side sitting president doesn't also sign on to the initiative. Obama only has a few months left in role. No affair who wins the election in Nov, either that person will support a Mars 2030 initiative with money or they won't. But if they don't, information technology'due south likely that "by the 2030s" will be dead in the h2o by the end of next January.

Nosotros cull to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and practice the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that claiming is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and 1 which we intend to win, and the others, too.

— President John F. Kennedy, Rice University speech communication, 12 September 1962