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Thu January 8, 2004 07:21 PM ET
By Steve Holland and Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Buoyed by a successful landing on Mars by a robot explorer, President Bush plans a major announcement on space policy next week that may lead to sending Americans back to the moon, congressional aides said on Thursday.
He is expected to propose a new lunar initiative that could lead to a mission to Mars in the long term, said the sources, who asked to remain unidentified.
Congressional sources said the administration was also considering setting up a more streamlined hierarchy for guiding the government's wide-ranging space programs and coordinating its research and development. Under this scenario, there could be more exchanges of technology between NASA and the Defense Department.
Some members of Congress are worried about ensuring the United States remains the global leader in space exploration.
"If we don't do it, somebody else will," said Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon, a ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee. "The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do."
Asked what the harm would be if, for example, Japan got the Moon before America, Gordon spluttered "Harm? Harm?!? They'd have a base! On the moon! They could look down on us! They could put Moon Marines up there!. They could dominate the moon's resources! Resources like… dust! And rocks! You want to have to go begging to a bunch of sushi-eating foreigners when we need more moon rocks?"
Other heavily-medicated observers agreed that the possibility of other nations reaching the Moon was simply unacceptable. "It's ours, dammit, and they can't go there," said Hamish McAngry, of the American Splenetic League. "Ours ours ours!"
The European Space Agency disagreed, saying "You're not the boss of us! We can go wherever we want."
Undeterred, McAngry replied "nun-uh!! The Moon is on our side of the sky, so it's ours! You have to stay off!"
"Your side of the sky? You arrogant astro-imperialist monkey-boys!!" replied the Europeans. "We can see it from our window, so it's clearly on our side of the sky!"
Actual scientists note that the Moon orbits the Earth, and thus is over all parts of the globe at various times. Ironically, the Moon's rotation is such that the planned landing site always has the Earth in view.
In a completely and totally unrelated news tidbit, the cargo for the first Moon mission will be "the world's largest surveillance camera, a crate of space-marine sniper rifles equipped with 1,000,000,000X scopes, and a year's supply of MRE's."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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