Revisionist Thinking About the Vision
Party of One:Washington, we have a problem, Nature
“So the story one hears now from most members of Congress, and some in the media, is that the president made a speech about going to Mars in 2004, got nothing but grief for it, and the proposal went nowhere. This is, of course, almost entirely wrong. The bottom line of the president’s speech was to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020. That programme has been going forward steadily, albeit with less funding than originally proposed. The president’s silence has been, if anything, a strategic retreat that has actually hastened plans for a lunar mission – because few other than NASA’s most ardent supporters in Congress are paying much attention.”