The Space Exploration Act of 2003 was introduced on September 10, 2003 by Rep. Nick Lampson of Texas. This Act "will call for a return to the Moon, trips to near-earth asteroids, and a manned mission to Mars within 20 years."

It must be stopped. And decisively.

This Act completely misses the point about what is wrong with NASA's manned space program. That is, it shouldn't exist. The solution is not more flags'n'footprints missions, more trillion dollar white elephants. The solution is to get NASA out of the way of private enterprise. It is NASA's very presence in manned launch markets that artificially inflates costs and stifles innovation. NASA is also saddled with having to follow through on a bad decision not for a few weeks or quarters or even years, but for generations, as in the case with the Shuttle and (soon) the ISS. A private company could not afford to make bad design decisions (like putting wings on a vertically-launched spacecraft) and stick to them for more than a few quarters before it affected their stock value.

Instead, businesses have to make good decisions or they fold. A business may have a good design and still fold, but it wouldn't be spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars on every launch of seven people.