Adds 2,500 new jobs at the space center by 2012, more than under the Constellation program. Increases NASA spending by $6 billion over the next five years.
Spends $2 billion over five years adapting the Kennedy Space Center as a launching pad for commercial as well as governmental space flight.
Invests $6 billion over five years in a new Commercial Crew Development Program at the space center to foster private launches into Earth orbit and to the International Space Station.
Spends $6 billion over five years on a Flagship Technology Demonstration project, headquartered in Florida and Texas, to stimulate research into deep space necessities like big and fast rockets, radiation protection systems, refueling in space and ways to grow food during multi-year journeys to asteroids and Mars. First-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space by 2025, starting by sending astronauts to an asteroid.
Have astronauts orbit Mars and return safely to Earth by mid-2030.
Resurrects a scaled-down version of the six-person Orion crew capsule from the defunct Constellation project as a U.S. escape vehicle from the space station and to be "part of the technological foundation'' for advanced spacecraft in the Mars project. Ramps up robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the sun's atmosphere, new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations, and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble.
Extends the life of the International Space Station likely by more than five years. Invests more than $3 billion to conduct research on an advanced "heavy lift rocket" and finalize a rocket design no later than 2015 and then begin to build it. Those critical of Obama's plan want the space shuttle extended beyond its planned demise this year. However, as Senator Nelson stated, that "would be too expensive...It would cost about $2.5 billion a year and "then NASA would not be able to do this other stuff." Is Obama's plan better than Bush's, who wanted to first go back to the moon before going to Mars and deeper space?
Evolution is one of the fundamental unifying concepts of biology and medicine. It is regrettable that today, 200 years after the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years after the publication of his The Origin of Species, there are still so many persons who would sacrifice the honest teaching of evolution on the altar of religion.
The notorious 2006 Utah] State Senate Bill 96, "Origins of Life," provides one well-known local example of such religiously motivated legislation. In the form initially passed by the Senate (before ultimately failing in the House), the bill mandated that multiple theories of human origins be taught.
But, as House sponsor James Ferrin later admitted when amending the bill, there are no alternative scientific theories regarding the origins of humans. The only legitimate scientific explanation is that we are descended from other species.
As Brigham Young University faculty member Daniel Fairbanks has written, "d]enying the evidence of evolution, including human evolution, is honest only in ignorance." A legal mandate to teach otherwise is a legal mandate to deceive. Legislation cannot establish the origin of species any more than the infamous 1897 Indiana pi Bill could set the value of pi to equal exactly 3.2.