Mel Martinez and NASA's Moon program

by Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) has just announced that he will be taking the lead to ensure that NASA's Moon base missions will stay a top priority in Congress.

That means that Martinez and I will get to play hardball once again as the Global Network has long been working to bring the light of truth to NASA's Moon program.

The Moon base the U.S. wants to establish is really about two basic things. One is the establishment of mining colonies on the Moon to extract helium-3, a precious resource that could be used for fusion power here on Earth. Scientists have long been saying that the profits from helium-3 extraction will make the money made from oil exploration on Earth look like nothing in comparison. But in order to make the Moon mining program possible, new launch capabilities must be developed to lift the heavy payloads necessary to build the Moon bases and return the mined resources back to Earth. This is where the nuclear rocket comes in. Nuclear reactors for rocket engines, NASA says, would give rockets greater lift capability and speed up transit time to the Moon and Mars. (NASA is working to create mining colonies on Mars as well. The Halliburton Corporation is today building a drilling mechanism for Mars.)

(More here.)