The group also consulted at least two outside space experts

01/14/04 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

In Beyond the Moon: Inside Bush's space plan Sietzen and Cowing divulge who made up the team that produced what President Bush talked about yesterday. Quoting directly, emphasis added is mine:

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Late in the spring, O'Keefe spoke with Cheney and Bolton about how to proceed. The decision was to seek additional perspectives. In early June, they brought in John Marburger, the president's science adviser, to the discussions. Soon others joined, from agencies such as the Department of Defense and the State Department.

At one time or another, Richard Russell and Brett Alexander from the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Gil Klinger from the National Security Council; Mary Kicza, NASA's associate administrator for biological and physical research; John Schumacher, its chief of staff; Steve Isakowitz, its comptroller; Paul Pastorek, general counsel; and, Gary Martin, the agency's space architect, all participated in the discussions – including some at the White House.

The group also consulted at least two outside space experts.

This explains a lot. My suspicion is that even the two experts were supporters of NASA and government programs. But as Andrew Case says in this thread:

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NASA now has a concrete goal, something to get the various internal interest groups in line. Everyone will try to use this to advance their pet project, but the goals and budget are limited enough that most of them will be told to take a number. Most important is that this won't tread on the toes of entrepreneurs, since the only new vehicle being developed is the CEV, and the entrepreneurs are either developing orbital boosters (for which CEV could potentially be a customer), or working on suborbital vehicles (which NASA doesn't even notice).

This could have been a lot worse, and may even turn out to be quite good.

Yes, it could have been a lot worse. So I'm going to stop bitching about it and happily ignore most of it. The timelines are so long anyway. I even think that my expectations for something more ambitious were nothing more than my own desires for a 'silver bullet' to make things easy. Its an easy trap to fall into.

In other words, the show's over. Back to the slog and the grind….