“President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night.”

He may not know how to handle illegal aliens, but when it comes to space aliens we’ll be ready!

I actually think this is really freakin’ awesome. I want to be able to look up at the moon and see human structures within my lifetime. I, like many others, can only wonder why we haven’t been back to the moon in more than 30 years.

I don’t even care if I never get to go up there. As far as I’m concerned, getting people living on the moon is like colonizing another planet, and that will be the most incredible human triumph…ever!

As far as building a lunar base is concerned, I bet it’d be a lot easier than building a space station or a shuttle. For one, there’s a lot less space debris to worry about. Building long-lasting freestanding structures on an actual solid flat surface has to be easier and probably cheaper than building something designed to float around in orbit.

It’s hard to not get too excited, especially since this won’t happen anytime soon, but man. Screw Mars! Sending people over there is all fine and good, but let’s do the easy stuff first so we know we’ve got our shit together ahead of time.