"Then let the corporations build it. They're the ones who want to put up solar power satellites. They want to mine the Moon. Why should the taxpayers foot the bill for a big, expensive base on the Moon?"
"Because the heart of that base will be a low-gravity hospital that will—"
"Come on, Chet! You know it'll be easier and cheaper to build your hospital in orbit. Why go all the way to the Moon when you can build it a hundred miles overhead? And why should the Air Force do it? It's NASA's job."
Kinsman could see that McGrath looked faintly amused. He enjoys arguing. He's not fighting for his life.
Glancing at Diane, then back at McGrath, Kinsman answered, "NASA's fully committed to building the space stations and helping the corporations to start industrial opera- tions in orbit. Besides, we've got an Air Force team of trained astronauts with practically nothing to do."
"So build your hospital in orbit. Or cooperate with NASA, for a change, and put your hospital into one of their space stations."
"And running the hospital will cost twenty times more than a lunar base will," Kinsman said. "Every time you want a Band-Aid you'll have to boost it up from Earth. That takes energy, Neal. And money. A permanent base on the Moon can be entirely self-sufficient."
"In a hundred years," McGrath said.
"Ten. Maybe five."
"Come on, Chet. You guys are already spending billions on the strategic defense system. You can't have the Moon, too. Let it go and stop pushing this pipe dream of Fred Durban's."
"A lunar base makes sense, dammitall, on a straight cost-effectiveness basis. You've seen the numbers, Neal. The base will pay for itself in ten years. It'll save the taxpayers 178 billions of dollars in the long run."
A crowd was gathering around them. McGrath automati- cally raised his voice a notch. "That's Just like Mary-Ellen saves me money at department store sales. I can't afford to save that kind of money. Not this year. Or next. The capital outlay is too high. To say nothing of the overruns."
"Now wait . . ."
"There's never been a military program that's lived within its budget. No, Chet. Moonbase is going to have to wait."
"We've already waited twenty years."
The rest of the party had stopped. Everyone was watch- ing the debate.
"Our first priority," McGrath said, more to the crowd than to Kinsman, "has got to be for the cities. They've become jungles, unfit for human life. We've got to reclaim them and save the people who're trapped in them before they all turn into savages."
"But what about energy?" Kinsman demanded. "What about jobs? What about natural resources? You can't save the cities without them, and space operations can give us all those things."
"Let the corporations develop those programs. Let them take the risks and make the profits. We're putting enough money into space and too much into the Pentagon—including plans for a manned antisatellite spaceplane that your brass won't even tell us lowly Senators about."
The spaceplane, Kinsman realized. Neal's pissed because nobody's briefed him on the new spaceplane interceptor concept.
