Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Moon, Mars and Money

Last January fourteenth -- eleven months after the Columbia was lost, President Bush spoke to NASA's staff and supporters gathered live in Washington and by video hook-up around the country.

[PRESIDENT BUSH: Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. ]

The president's proposal …. A base on the moon in ten years and the eventual exploration of Mars … Was bold and … Of course … expensive.

[ROHRABACHER: Well certainly there are a lot of other budget priorities right now.]

California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is a member of the House Space Committee.

[ROHRABACHER: There've been so many people talking "Let’s go to Mars! Let’s go to Mars! And spend trillions of dollars and drain all the money from every other program." Going back to the moon and establishing a moon base, I think that’s within the realm of what's "Do-able" with our current budget. We just have to set priorities.]

That's a reflection of today's budgetary environment in Washington, where the White House and Congress are in the hands of people who tend not to like government programs.

[ROHRABACHER: Why do we need to re-supply the space station? If a private company can do it and save money, the private company should do it. Yet NASA has sort of guarded space as if it’s its own turf.]

This kind of fiscal conservatism was a lot less evident the last time these questions were asked … back when another president proposed a bold move into space.

[PRESIDENT KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy. But because they are hard]

Three months before this speech at 1962 Rice University, President Kennedy, reeling from the Bay of Pigs and the Russians putting the first human in orbit, grasped onto space exploration to right his foundering presidency.

[PRESIDENT KENNEDY: We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained. And new rights to be won]

With rhetorical flourish and not too much attention to the costs involved. Howard McCurdy is an expert on the politics of space exploration at American University in Washington, DC.

[MCCURDY: In 1961, the Federal Budget was 94 billion dollars. And NASA and the space advocates came to Kennedy and said, "We'd like to go to the moon, it's going to cost over the period of the decade 20 to 40 billion dollars." Put that in today's context. This is as if, somebody came to the White House and said, "Hey, let's go to Mars. It's gonna cost 400 to 800 billion dollars," and the President says, "Sure" without having a price tag. If that happened today, the persons who advocated it would be laughed out of town.]

Or maybe not because that does look, somewhat, like what may be happening.

[PRESIDENT BUSH: NASA's current 5 year budget is 86 billion dollars. Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from reallocating 11 billion dollars within that budget. We need some new resources, however.]

In addition to that 11 billion, the president called on Congress to pay out roughly a billion dollars over the next five years. But he knows – and Congressmen like Dana Rohrabacher certainly know …That for NASA to get that money … Really only a drop in the bucket on the way to Mars. Some other things would have to take a back seat.

[ROHRABACHER: People are losing their lives in Iraq and we have a war on terrorism. You also have the Federal government involved in those things that it has to do, whether it's the Interstate Highway System or public health. All of that is – has to be taken into consideration when you’re determining how much you’re going to spend on space.]

And it's going to be much more difficult today than it was in the 1960s to get Congress to make space a priority. When Kennedy made HIS push for space, he was able to invoke the Soviet threat to get us to the moon.

[PRESIDENT KENNEDY: Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets ... we nevertheless are required to make new efforts, on our own. I believe we posses all the resources and talents necessary but the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership.]

Today, it looks like all a president or any space supporter can do is appeal to the idea that it's human destiny to go to the moon.

[WELDON: I think most Americans would say "Let’s continue to be the land of the pioneers."]

Congressman Dave Weldon represents Florida’s Space Coast.

[WELDON: We can't afford to be explorers anymore? I mean what kind of a signal is that to say about the American spirit?]

In the president’s new budget, Moon and Mars exploration got their funding. But the budget's just a proposal. Will NASA get what it wants?

[WELDON: Having the president fighting for it is extremely helpful. And as well, having the Majority Leader in the House, Tom DeLay fighting for it is equally helpful. So I would say it will be tough, but I think we will prevail in the end.]

There are those who say President Bush has no intention of going to Mars. Or at least no intention of pushing through the funding required on his watch. And there are those who say the same thing about Kennedy. Howard McCurdy

[MCCURDY: I think if Kennedy had lived, that we would not have made the end-of-the-decade deadline for going to the moon.]

He and other historians say Kennedy was in the process of backing out of his commitment at the time he was assassinated. But that after the president's death

[MCCURDY: This became what, in the military is referred to as his "gold watch". It was his reward for being president -- it was something that a lot of people did not want to touch.]

That pressure, and the idea of "Beating the Russians" are the only thing that kept the Apollo program going as spending priorities shifted to the War on Poverty, the Great Society and the Vietnam War. That Cold War pressure is gone now. There's nothing of that magnitude to keep Congressional budget masters focused on space. As a result, at this point it's in-no-way clear that any of the planets will align to guarantee that America once again sets sail into space. In Washington, I'm Richard Paul.

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