Administration deliberatedly vague on costs to go to Mars

Government officials said Friday that President Bush would call for relatively modest budget increases to pay for the early stages of his plan to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars, but for reasons both technological and political, the administration was vague about the long-term costs of the proposal.

"The Bush White House is taking its obsession with being bold to new heights," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic research group. "There's no real rationale for a manned space program, much less colonization of the moon, so it's hard not to be cynical and conclude this is the space-age equivalent of bread and circuses."