Some scientists doubt Bush space plan

Scientists and space policy experts say they will debate whether President George Bush's call for a return to the moon and voyage to Mars is feasible.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent the last four years to design, build and test spacecraft in the program dubbed Constellation, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

The program, however, has not caught the public's imagination as did, say, the Apollo program, and with a new president to be elected late this year, some question whether the program needs to be revamped, the Post reported. A Feb. 12-13 conference at Stanford University is to debate the issue, said Louis Friedman, head of the Planetary Society and an early advocate of much of the Bush space plan.

"Some of us have real doubts about whether the money will be available for the Bush plan," Friedman told the Post.

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