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June 15, 2004

Shut NASA Down

...before Bush turns it into a corporate sty for the Halliburton's of the world.

Now, we can understand Bush's call for a manned effort to reach Mars. First, he shuts down an array of needed scientific endeavors, such as repairing the Hubble telescope, to divert most of NASA's efforts to a scientifically useless effort like sending people to Mars.

Having created this budgetary pile of money for this useless effort, he creates a commission-- the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond -- to recommend how to proceed.

Their recommendation:

Any technology or services useful to the space program that are available from private industry should be contracted out, it said.

The agency should encourage private industry "to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA," the report said - leaving it to industry to launch most payloads into low orbit around the Earth, for instance.

"In NASA decisions, the preferred choice for operational activities must be competitively awarded contracts with private and nonprofit organizations," it said. "NASA's role must be limited to only those areas where there is irrefutable demonstration that only government can perform the proposed activity."

Shut NASA down. If going to Mars can be done by private industry, let them pay for it.

As for NASA's actual scientific work, let's transfer it to an agency where the corporate pigs aren't ready to feed.

Posted by Nathan at June 15, 2004 07:03 AM