Spudis and Zubrin Join Forces to Oppose Obama Plan

In an op-ed for The Washington Times yesterday, Paul Spudis and Bob Zubrin joined forces to oppose President Obama’s new human space flight plan and support President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and well known advocate for lunar research. Zubrin is an ardent supporter of human exploration of Mars and is President of the Mars Society. President Obama sees no need to return to the Moon “because we’ve been there before” and wants to focus on sending crews to orbit Mars first, with a landing only sometime within his lifetime. Thus it may not be as surprising as it would seem at first blush to see Spudis and Zubrin working together to support the Bush plan despite their past differences.