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As Yogi Berra said, "It's déjà vu all over again."

The president has put into action a program to place Americans on the moon within the next decade or so. NASA is gearing up to that job, and then (if all goes well) to send human explorers to Mars.

And many of the nation's leading space scientists are howling bloody murder.

This is nothing new. When President John Kennedy started the Apollo program, almost every segment of the nation strongly favored the idea of landing Americans on the moon. Except for much of the scientific community.

In 1961, the U.S. was deeply engaged in a Cold War struggle against Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union was impressing the whole world with its space achievements: the first artificial satellite of Earth, the first flyby of the moon, the first man in orbit.

Kennedy wanted to use the Apollo moon program to prove that American technology was second to none.

So there was widespread popular support for the moon program — both for the sheer dramatic adventure of it, and for the purpose of beating the Russians in the "space race."

Except for many scientists. They bemoaned the fact that billions of dollars were being spent on Apollo instead of being spent on their own research programs. They pointed out — correctly — that unmanned spacecraft could return more scientific data about the moon and planets than a set of former jet fighter pilots could. The scientists completely missed the point.

Apollo was more than a "flag and footprints" program. Apollo produced the hardware, the know-how, and the trained teams that allowed us to go anywhere in the solar system. Anywhere that the politicians and taxpaying public would allow, that is.

NASA had follow-on plans to move beyond Apollo and erect permanent bases on the moon, from which scientific explorations could be launched.

But by the time Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon, Richard Nixon was president. While he personally congratulated our astronauts on their achievement, his White House staff was killing the Apollo program and its follow-ons.

We had beaten the Soviet Union; we had won the "space race." As far as the politicians were concerned (including Ted Kennedy and his fellow Democrats, who then controlled the Senate), there was no more interest in space. The nation had other priorities, including the Vietnam War.

Since Apollo, manned space efforts have been confined to Earth orbit, to the space shuttle and the International Space Station. And public interest in space has slumped to the "ho-hum" level.

Last year, President Bush unveiled his Space Exploration Initiative, and ordered NASA to start pumping billions of dollars into it. NASA found that it didn't have the budget to support all its scientific programs, plus operate the shuttle, plus finish construction of the ISS, plus fund the new exploration initiative. NASA had to cut some of its scientific programs. The scientists are deeply unhappy, understandably.

It would be wonderful if Washington gave NASA all the funding it needs to accomplish all the tasks the agency has been given. But that's not going to happen. So cuts have to be made somewhere, and some science programs are bearing the brunt of them.

Several programs dear to the hearts of space scientists have been either deferred indefinitely or dropped altogether. These include the billion-dollar Terrestrial Planet Finder, a program to place equipment in orbit capable of finding Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars; and the Mars Sample Return mission, which was to land an unmanned vehicle on Mars that would pick up samples of Martian soil and rocks and return them to Earth.

Desirable as these programs may be, they have fallen victim to the Space Exploration Initiative. By order of the president, NASA is taking money from space science to help fund human missions to the moon and Mars.

Frankly, it's about time.

NASA has always had two basic missions: to explore the universe, and to develop the technology that makes that exploration possible. Since the 1960s we have been riding on the technological fallout from the Apollo days.

Apollo produced the hardware and the skills to send spacecraft anywhere in the solar system. The Vikings and Voyagers and Pioneers that probed Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets were built from Apollo's technological heritage.

The unmanned astronomical telescopes that peer deeply into the universe from orbits high above Earth's obscuring, turbulent atmosphere are also based on that heritage. And the Hubble Space Telescope's success depended, ultimately, on the ability of astronauts to repair and refurbish it in orbit.

The Cassini craft that is now exploring Saturn and its moons, and its partner Huygens that landed on Titan, rode on the technology and teamwork originally developed for Apollo.

Now NASA is being ordered to shift its emphasis toward developing new technology that will allow humans to return to the moon and set up permanent bases there — and eventually to explore Mars.

The scientists who are complaining that this is cutting into their cherished programs are once again missing the point.

Once we have permanent bases on the moon, new scientific studies will be possible. Some astronomers are already planning to build observatories on the moon's airless surface, gigantic new telescopes that will see farther and more clearly than anything we have yet built.

And, since they will be built at sites of permanent human habitation, these new telescopes will have human technicians to service and maintain them constantly.

How many scientists want to explore Mars? To search in the red planet's iron crust for evidence of life? Perhaps even to find creatures living today, deep beneath that surface?

Space science will be curtailed while NASA's emphasis swings once again to building a new technological base for the Space Exploration Initiative. Space science will revive and eventually thrive as never before — on the moon, on Mars and beyond.

Naples resident Ben Bova was a member of America's first space project, Vanguard. He is the author of more than 110 books, including "Titan," his latest novel. Bova's Web site address is www.benbova.net.