With China’s recent announcement of its agressive new space program , including their own orbiting space station by the year 2020, the space race has started anew.

In response to this latest development President Bush has stepped up the U.S. space program to include a permanent U.S. presence on the Moon by 2020 with Mars a target for a base soon after that.

There is one problem however. With NASA spending nearly 40% of its current budget just dealing with its Space Shuttle problems and maintaining its share of the cost of the International Space Station (ISS), some experts are questioning the reality of the President’s Lunar and Martian Base timetable.

They aren’t denying that there will be a U.S. Lunar or Martian base, only questioning the rationle behind making it happen in less than fourteen years, considering NASA’s current concerns and inability to come up with a viable rocket design that is both safe and economical.

NASA scientists are confident that within 6-months they should have a vew vehicle designed and ready for inspection by their bosses. Yet, Larry Troups, NASA’s head of habitation systems for its Advanced Projects Office feels that where Moon and Mars bases are concerned, “It’s deep in the future before we go there.”

That kind of reality check hasn’t curtailed the scientists at NASA who are busy working on and trying to develop technologies that don’t even exists yet and are on the grand scale of Star Trek. But everyone right down to the pencil pushers are acutely aware the the President is insisting that this happen and that, not only China, but Russia and Europe are racing to get there as well. NASA see’s Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration” in much the same way the Kennedy Lunar mission of 1963 was, a goal and one that can be reached. Kennedy’s vision of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the 60’s decade was reached 2-years earlier than his original timetable. Many at NASA are thinking that if we could do it then, why not now? Others, however, are quick to point out the difference: In 1968 we went and left, In 2020, we are there to stay, build and live.

Darryl Calkins, a civil engineer, spoke of some of the real day to day problems associated with a Lunar and Mars base operation and building project. He stated that dust, low gravity and wild temperature flucuations, not to mention gale-force winds on Mars, will make, for not only great environmental difficulties, but psychological problems as well. “You can’t put a disesel up there,” Calkins reminds NASA. “You can’t put a 20,000-pound bulldozer up there; and none of our oils or hydraulics are going to survive.”

In spite of these difficulties and challenges NASA scientists and engineers believe it’s doable, and while hard, they know they can learn it.

When asked “Can the Moon and Mars be habitable?” NASA and the President have only one answer. “Yes!” It is that kind of “can-do” attitude that got the U.S. to the Moon in the first place and will get them back there and beyond.