Some politicians promise you the moon. President Bush is promising us Mars too. The prospect is exciting but his timing is curious.
The president expounded eloquently last week about why it is part of America’s destiny to send humans back to the moon and future generations to Mars. His seemingly sudden brainstorm left many observers wondering if he had been eating green cheese. What does the president expect to find up there, late-night TV comedians asked. Osama bin Laden? Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? The late, lamented federal budget surplus?
The public was divided about evenly on Bush’s space plans. An Associated Press poll released last week found that 57 percent of the respondents thought that the moon and Mars should be explored by robots, while 38 percent preferred humans. Indeed, if pure, basic scientific research is what we’re after, robots sound better than humans. They’re lighter, cheaper, more efficient and they do almost everything humans do except organize themselves into labor unions. Sounds like a modern manager’s dream.
But closer examination reveals Bush’s moon and Mars aspirations could yield a decidedly early political bonanza for the Bush administration and a financial bonanza for some of the administration’s corporate friends, like Halliburton Co.
Yes, that’s the same Halliburton where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive officer before he joined Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign ticket and from which he still receives deferred compensation. That’s the same Halliburton that went on to reap multibillion-dollar no-bid military contracts in Iraq and whose subsidiary, KBR, is under a Pentagon investigation for a possible $61 million in overcharges on its imports of Kuwaiti oil to Iraq.
Like a lot of big firms, Halliburton has had its eyes on the moon and Mars for quite a while. Halliburton scientist Steve Streich helped author an article in Oil & Gas Journal two years ago titled “Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries.”
The article, unearthed last week by Progress Report, a daily publication of the liberal Center for American Progress, described the exploration of Mars as an “unprecedented opportunity” for the drilling industry and a “great potential for a happy synergy” between space researchers and “the oil and gas industry.”
Another revealing piece in the February 2001, issue of Petroleum News, unearthed last week by Joe Conason at Salon.com Web magazine, reported that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Los Alamos National Laboratory were working with Halliburton, Shell Oil Co. and Baker Hughes Inc. to identify drilling technologies that might work on Mars in the search for water and other signs of life–and possible mineral wealth.
The earliest Mars drilling could be in 2007 and deeper drilling in 2014, with astronauts along to assist, the article said.
Bush’s expectations were more cautious. He called for a lunar base by about 2020 and a manned landing on Mars sometime after 2030. Hey, it’ll be here before you know it.
No, I am not proposing that Bush only wants to go into space to enrich his pals at Halliburton. But in the world of politics, which is 90 percent perceptions, the appearance of a conflict of interest is no less troubling than the real thing.
One cannot help but wonder whether this administration’s sentimental attachments to oil rigs (Condoleezza Rice, for example, is our first national security adviser to have an oil tanker named after her, when she was a board director at ChevronTexaco Corp.) figured into Cheney’s reported promotion of the space exploration idea, ostensibly for its possible “military benefits.” Missiles on the moon and Mars? Hey, it could happen.
Every time I see one of this highly secretive administration’s “big ideas” lead back to the coffers of their old corporate cronies, I hear echoes of an Illinois politician I used to cover. He would say, “I can smell the meat a’cookin’,” whenever someone introduced a “fetcher,” a bill that could attract large campaign donations and other forms of bribery–legal and otherwise–from interested parties.
NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe seems to be well aware of the problem. In a briefing after Bush’s speech, he promised that space officials will keep an eagle’s eye on how much Bush’s exploration program is “industry-driven.”
That’s comforting, but I’d like to see Congress, which has yet to fund Bush’s space dreams, play an active role in that scrutiny too.
That’s where you come in, fellow citizen. With both houses dominated by the president’s party, voters are particularly obliged to keep an eye on their senators and congressmen.
Bush’s space dreams deserve a real debate, not just a picnic of pork.
More Top Picks Best Amazon Prime Big Deal Days External Ssd Deals 2026 Sale
———-
E-mail: [email protected]