By Dan Klepal and Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Teacher Michelle Ford talks to her second-grade science class about the Bush administration's space plan at the Hamilton County Mathematics & Science Academy in Mount Healthy. (Glenn Hartong photo)

Despite war in Iraq, an unpredictable economy, astronomical costs and countless needs on this planet, many Greater Cincinnati residents Wednesday gave a thumbs-up to President Bush's plan.

But Ohioan John H. Glenn Jr., the first American astronaut to orbit the earth and a passionate advocate of space exploration, was not nearly as enthusiastic as others who remain captivated by space travel.

Bush's plan would require abandoning the space shuttle fleet in six years and the International Space Station. They would be replaced with a station on the moon to launch a mission to Mars - and possibly beyond. A lunar landing could happen by 2015.

Scrapping the shuttle and space station would be "a big mistake," Glenn said.

"I'm particularly concerned about the space station, because that's where the most valuable research for folks here on Earth is going to be done," said the 82-year-old Glenn. He became the oldest man in space when he joined the crew of the space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

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"The International Space Station is about to pay off in a big way. This is no time to end it."

Glenn, who served four terms as a U.S. senator, said he is not certain Bush's plan will fly with Congress.

"We're already running huge deficits. The country is at war, and there is no end in sight to the war on terrorism," Glenn said.

"Someday we will go back to the moon and, someday, there will be a manned mission to Mars," he said. "But if the president wants to do it this way, I don't know that this is the time.''

"Doing it on the cheap is not going to work,'' Glenn said.

Why not Mars?

Others were quick to embrace Bush's plan.

And even the expense did not bother Mia Supe, whose brother, Sgt. 1st Class Bobby Elliott, will return to Iraq today after a two-week leave. The 40-year-old woman said she's not a "science person" and doesn't support "big government spending."

But she does support the new space mission, and so does her brother.

"The space program, in the past, has changed the world over and over with new technologies," Supe said. "There are certain things that can't be accomplished sitting on this Earth."

Among the space-age technologies developed from the space program are cell phones, high-speed Internet connections and supercomputers, said Pam Bowers, director of the Drake Planetarium at Norwood High School. She is a Jet Propulsion Laboratory "ambassador" in Cincinnati who educates local residents about space flight.

Bowers said the idea of building a moon base is more important than actually doing it in the president's time frame.

"The thought and desire to do it may be a challenge to scientists, to look again at the Earth's most intimate partner," Bowers said. "By doing that, it will open other realms of space."

Michelle Ford's second-grade class at the Hamilton County Mathematics and Science Academy got a crash course in the solar system Wednesday. Ford told her students that they will be old enough to participate in the space programs.

"I'll be in my house, in a rocking chair with a blanket over me because I'll be old by then," Ford said. "But you will be just the right age." Milford teacher Steve Heck, a candidate last year for the NASA Educator Astronaut Program, applauded Bush's ambitious plan.

"It's a chance to explore the universe," Heck said. "It will open up a lot of keys to a lot of things." The retired Air Force pilot who now teaches science and social studies at Meadowview Elementary said his only hope is that other important issues would not be sacrificed.

"I've got older parents; they're concerned about health care," Heck said. "But I'm also a scientist who says exploration has got to go in there.

"And if we do it right, the lessons we learn through exploration are going to help us in other fields, like health care, that will make life easier in the future."

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com; hwilkinson@enquirer.com.

Anna Guido contributed to this report.