Get Ready for the Moon-Mars Blitz

8 July 2004: SEA release: Space Exploration Alliance Grows as Moon-Mars Blitz Nears, NSS

Editor’s note: According to an email sent out by the Mars Society about this event “some 70 space activists visiting approximately 200 congressmen, senators, and congressional and Senatorial aides to convey to them a message of strong support for the new American space policy that refocuses the human spaceflight program on the goal of sending humans to the Moon, Mars and beyond.” These folks paid their own way to Washington, and took off time from work and their lives to push for something they truly believe in. However, these 70 people represent 0.007 percent of the “million Americans” the Space Exploration Alliance proclaimed to count among its numbers – and is a vastly smaller portion of America’s current population of 294,000,000. In some ways this was a great turn out. Viewed from other perspectives it could be seen as indicative of just how unimportant space is in terms of being a mobilizing force among the American electorate. Indeed, often times here in Washington, turnouts in the tens of thousands for political efforts are often referred to as “disappointing”. By that standard this event doesn’t even register.