The news headlines claim NASA has discovered that Mars was "drenched" with water. But go to Space.com and you will get the true scientific, non-hyped story: "Pinning down whether there was ever standing or running water at the landing sites of the twin Mars rovers is going to take some time. And the eager public will just have to wait...Opportunity has off-and-on for several days been grinding into rocks that are layered and might have formed in the presence of water... As with all the other possible hints of water, though, scientists aren't sure what process caused the layering. Water would do it, but wind and volcanism could also do the trick."

Today, in a transparent effort to pull a positive rabbit out of a hat full of plummeting approval ratings, Haitian crises, etc., the Bush administration played the Mars card. Trouble is, it's a joker: There is no such thing as an instant 'revelation' in space exploration. Data sent back from Mars is subjected to extensive analysis and interpretation. Conclusions are presented in scientific papers, which are then subjected to rigorous peer-review. Some findings from earlier Mars missions took up to two years to be formally presented. But read this gushing report: "Officials with NASA announced on Monday that Mars scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were flying to Washington for a 'significant' announcement, but shied away from saying what it would be. 'I can't confirm what they are going to say ... just that it's a significant ... finding,' by the rover Opportunity, JPL spokesman Guy Webster said." Just in time for Super Tuesday!

Haaretz reports: "One year after the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, some of the astronauts' families refuse to forgive NASA, claiming its concealment and 'fudging' practice vis-a-vis flight security has not been uprooted. Jonathan Clark, the widower of astronaut Laurel Clark, told USA Today that he knows there is still resistance in NASA to the changes being made following the disaster.' Despite much well-publicized lip service by NASA head Sean O'Keefe, a Bush-appointee many say contributed to safety failures by ignoring or penalizing employees who pointed out dangers, little has fundamentally changed at NASA." Yet Bush now wants to send astronauts to the Moon!

"Two days after George W. Bush unveiled a new NASA vision requiring a shift in the space agency's spending priorities, NASA announced that it was curtailing any further space shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched aboard the space shuttle in 1990, Hubble has been serviced by astronauts four times since then. The last such mission was in 2002. NASA had planned to visit Hubble one last time in 2006 to change out instruments and replace its gyroscopes with the intent of keeping the telescope in service until at least 2011, when its heir apparent, the James Webb Space Telescope, is expected to launch. Scrapping the final servicing mission raises the likelihood that Hubble will fail before Webb is on orbit... Grunsfeld said the decision, announced by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe on Friday, was driven in part by the need to make tough choices in light of Bush's new vision." New Vision -- or Delusion???

On the afternoon of Wed., Jan 14, Scott McClellan was asked by a reporter why Bush is spending billions on space instead of putting that money into education, jobs, and healthcare here on Earth, Scott McClellan's response was an outrageous lie. He pointed to the "great healthcare benefits" that have come from the space program, specifically citing the kidney dialysis machine as a "product" of the program. What a hoot! The kidney dialysis machine, originally called "the artificial kidney" was developed by William Kolff in the 1940s using cellophane, sausage skins, and discarded metal industrial drums. Didn't exactly require a $400 billion dollar space program! If you want the real kidney dialysis story, here's a link - it only PROVES that money is best spent here on Earth on people, not space ships. Just think what Kolff could have done with a decent budget!! see also http://members.aol.com/amaccvpe/history/kolff.htm

Mike Allen writes, "The decision [to build a moon station] was controversial within the White House, with some aides arguing that it would make more sense to focus immediately on Mars, since humans have already landed on the moon and a Mars mission would build cleanly on the success of Spirit, the U.S. rover that landed safely on Mars last weekend. Bush himself settled the divisions, according to the sources, [following orders from] Karl Rove. One presidential adviser, who asked not to be identified, said, after discussing the initiative with administration officials, that the idea is 'crazy' and mocked it as the 'mission to Pluto.' 'It costs a lot of money and we don't have money,' the official said. 'This is destructive of any sort of budget restraint.' The official added that the initiative makes any rhetoric by Bush about fiscal restraint 'look like a feint.'" Feint - or Brain Fart? We report, you decide.

Reuters reports: "Space may become a war zone in the not-too-distant future, a senior U.S. military officer has said, hours after China became only the third country after the United States and former Soviet Union to put a man in space. 'In my view it will not be long before space becomes a battleground,' Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command, said in response to a question at a geospatial intelligence conference on Wednesday. 'Our military forces ... depend very, very heavily on space capabilities, and so that is a statement of the obvious to our potential threat, whoever that may be,' he said. 'They can see that one of the ways that they can certainly diminish our capabilities will be to attack the space systems,' said Anderson, who was formerly with U.S. Space Command. 'Now how they do that and who that's going to be I can't tell you in this audience,' he said at the unclassified conference."

The Telegraph (UK) reports: "The United States is planning to take control of parts of space and develop patrolling military aircraft in orbit as part of a revived Star Wars proposal for an American military empire above the ozone layer. According to James Roche, the US Air Force Secretary, America's allies would have 'no veto power' over projects designed to achieve American military control of space. The key theme of the ambitious plans is described as 'negation' - the denial of the use of space for military intelligence, or other purposes, without American endorsement... The Pentagon believes that the struggle to control space will form the next stage of a global arms race. Its plans confirm that America expects space to be 'weaponised' in the medium-term future, and is determined to take an unassailable technological lead."

Prof. Karl Grossman on Democracy Now!: "I broke the story in 1986 about the Challenger's next mission to be a mission involving lofting plutonium into space. That would have been in May of '86 if it hadn't blown up in January of '86. And now NASA is involved in... a sweeping expansion of its space nuclear program.... The L.A. Times quoted [NASA Administrator] Sean O'Keefe as saying we're talking about doing something again, this Project Prometheus, on a very aggressive schedule. Talking about getting missions up, nuclear-propelled rocket missions up by the end of the decade. So here you have this agency that can shoot right in space, being charged with negligence, serious negligence in connection with the death of the seven astronauts on Columbia.... [T]o embark on this foolish atomic course endangering lots of life - not to be anthropomorphic - lots of life on earth, for this agency to do this is just horrific. And it just must be stopped."

Here is a noteworthy report from WashPost: "Bush was at Camp David when he heard the news about the shuttle. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., also at Camp David, had been watching the shuttle landing on television, and at 9:15 a.m. informed Bush that NASA had lost contact with Columbia." In a story entitled "Shuttle Cover-up?," NewsMax declared that this 'raises a big red flag... It is odd that the White House chief of staff would watch a shuttle landing. Such a routine event - early on a Saturday morning, in the midst of Blair, U.N. inspections, Colin Powell's upcoming intelligence revelations to the Security Council - seems to be something that a White House big shot would pay no attention to. If he had a heads-up that something might have been amiss, then we need to be told. And it will come out - eventually.'" But not with the help of NewsMax - they profusely apologized to their readers for raising the slightest doubt about Saint George.

The Guardian UK reports: "Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed. [A letter to George W Bush warned] that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'... Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems... White House officials rejected Nelson's plea for a moratorium. He tried to talk again to Nasa's administration about his worries in October but was again rebuffed."

On September 10, the Berkeley City Council passed Resolution 61744, making Berkeley, California the first city in the world to pass a Resolution calling for a ban on all space-based weapons in support of the Space Preservation Act, introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and soon to be re-introduced in 2003, and the companion Space Preservation Treaty. Berkeley is the first city in the world to declare the outer space above their city to be a space-based weapons-free zone. Berkeley Councilwoman Dona Spring will appear on the nationally syndicated webcast Michael Medved Show Thursday September 19, 2002 1:00-2:00 PM PT, 5:00-6:00 ET. If you'd like to introduce this Resolution in your city, as the intention is for every city across the country and the world to pass this Resolution, ask a councilmember in your city to introduce it. Contact info@peaceinspace.com for more information.

The Berkeley (CA) City Council made Berkeley the first city in the world to pass a resolution calling for a ban on all space-based weapons in support of the Space Preservation Act, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and soon to be re-introduced in 2003, and the companion Space Preservation Treaty. Berkeley is the first city in the world to declare the space 60 kilometers above the heads of all citizens in their city to be a space-based weapons-free zone.

Like all the other international laws, Bush is now ignoring those pertaining to space. As America is distracted by 9/11 remembrances and warnings of new threats, His Heinous has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called TransOrbital that has a far-reaching, frigthening agenda for the corporate domination of space. All TransOrbital had to do was promise not to contaminate and pollute the moon - yeah, right. That's what the oil companies say about ANWR. There was no Congressional vote - not even any consultation. Bush simply acted as if the moon were his to give away. The TransOrbital venture could be disastrous for the globe - no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure or removing mass, via mining, will impact the delicate gravitational interplay between Earth and its only satellite. The moon belongs to all the people of the Earth - not to George. W. Bush or his friends at TransOrbital.

The company that Bush turned the moon over to as its personal corporate playground is a chip off the old Blockhead. Check out this home page: http://www.transorbital.net/index.html - notice the ad at the top of the page, where the company brags that it will make it possible to display commercial messages on the surface of the moon. Now check this site out for the Artemis Society - the group that is behind TransOrbital. It reminds us of those rghtwing front sites that lead to multiple front sites and nothing is what it seems. You'll notice that their web host calls itself the "Illuminati" and is based in Texas. How Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney can you get!? Here's another one of their "subsites": Project Leto, a moon tourism outfit based in Las Vegas to attract the glitzy crowd.

Everyone by now knows with painful clarity that the Bush administration does not do a single thing without having something in it for them, and usually something big and juicy. Now put two and two together: Bush gives a wacko commercial company with a scheme called the Artemis Project the green light to be the first to commandeer the moon, commercially - that means patents and legal privilege of a sweeping and unprecedented nature. Now add to that the USS Space Command's long range plan - military control of space. It doesn't take more than two neurons to figure out that once the Artemis Project gets its foot in the lunar door, the "state-sponsored" construction of a military space base will follow.