January 16, 2004
Big Welfare Daddies in space
The Big Welfare Daddies are lining up to feed from the Space Odyssey trough that President Moonbeam announced this week: (I think I keep mixing MLK and space stuff together simply because those were the 2 big photo-ops this week? The common thread is disingenuous vote mongering)
Industry officials said yesterday that they see a huge boon to business in Bush's "renewed spirit of discovery," which set a mission to Mars as a long-range goal after astronauts build a science base on the moon. Among the companies that could profit from the plan are Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and Halliburton Co., which Vice President Cheney headed before he joined Bush's ticket.Posted by Norwood at January 16, 2004 07:57 AM"Going beyond the moon is big news for us," said Ed Memi, a spokesman for Boeing, which is NASA's largest contractor.
As an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission, Steve Streich, a veteran Halliburton scientific adviser, was among the authors of an article in Oil & Gas Journal in 2000 titled "Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries." The article called a Mars exploration program "an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth," because technology developed for the mission could be used on this planet.
