Four Years Later

Four years ago today, President Bush made a speech at NASA Headquarters laying out his "Vision" of Space Exploration. (This President Bush seems to have a penchant for visions, perhaps to counter his father's alleged difficulty with "the vision thing.") The VSE, as laid out in the speech, however, was a seemingly reasonable approach to reinvigorating the manned space program by moving beyond the shuttle and low Earth orbit. The President called for completion of the ISS, retirement of the shuttle in 2010, having a new manned spacecraft capable of deep space missions in operation by 2014, returning humans to the Moon by 2020, establishing a manned lunar base, and going on to Mars. NASA was to do all that with roughly one percent of annual federal spending over roughly thirty years.

Four years later is still early days in such a program, but the various elements seem largely on track so far. To expect military precision in such a far reaching effort is asking too much, even from the military. There have already been budget overruns, and management problems, and gripes from the science community that its favorite projects are getting the short stick in the new emphasis on manned exploration. Those sorts of issues are subject to Congressional oversight and media attention. So far, neither Congress nor the national press has been interested in setting hot fires under anyone's feet in this area. The biggest uncertainty about the effort is what the next presidenr may do about it, but that's been a factor all along.

Perhaps the biggest change in space since 2004 has been the push by private companies to develop space capabilities, including manned spaceflight, not dependent upon NASA. Several private concerns, as reported in this blog, are pursuing various manned projects. If they succeed, or even if some of them prove workable, NASA would be pursuing the VSE in an environment likely quite different from the one Mr. Bush and his advisors envisioned. Using those new capabilities to realize the Vision-- creating new capabilities as we move out-- may ultimately by the key to establishing humanity beyond Earth.