Just a quick lunch-time post here. Keith Cowing has an insightful analysis of potential Bush administration space policy.

Excellent report. Here's my guess:

Return to the moon by some POTUS-assigned deadline. (How does the end of a a second Bush term sound for the first of the second-wave landings?) An oratorical emphasis on an expanded private sector role, but the reality will be more in keeping with DoD's relationship with their traditional contractors. However, a path may be opened for new private enterprises to be seen to play with the big boys.

Return-to-the-Moon means the ability to sustain some kind of permanent presence there. OSP will be repackaged and repurposed as an LEO ferry for for lunar-bound crews, not as a platform for new technology development. ISS will not lose its international role (too much diplomatic heartburn there) but will become the getaway junction for lunar-bound transfer vehicles that travel between ISS and an unstaffed station in lunar orbit. Crews will descend to and leave the lunar surface via a purpose-built lander. One functioning lander will always remain on the lunar surface and one lunar orbit to ISS transfer vehicle will always remain attached to the lunar station. Crew size on lunar surface will not exceed crew capacity of lunar lander or transfer vehicle.

In other words, we build some kind of LEO-lunar orbit transfer vehicle to be launched in one piece from Earth for stationing at ISS, put a glorified docking station in lunar orbit, build a lunar lander that can carry 3-6 people and be launched in an emergency after sitting for months on the lunar surface, and ship some ready-made crew habitation modules to the lunar surface.

We'll invite the Russians to come with us, and make some noise about using Russian engine technology, but the real money will be spent in the U.S. Much verbiage will be applied to nurturing the growth of new private sector capabilities, but this won't really bear fruit until the replacement for the OSP-as-ferry comes around.

(Oh, the OSP won't have wings, this time around.)

If Bush proposes anything on a smaller scale, it won't impress the American public. If he proposes a grandiose On-To-Mars scenario, they won't believe him.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the thing about XCOR's application for an FAA-AST launch license being deemed "substantially complete."

OMG, I totally gave the wrong link, heh.

Let me try again.

That's old news. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago.

That's old news. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago.

Embarrassingly, I now remember reading that. I guess I had forgotten about it.

Is it me or is there a rash of double-posting on a bunch of blogs lately? Must be the recent storms.

Anyway, thought you might or might not find this little auction interesting.

Detected a disturbance in The Force (inside the Beltway) today. Seems that O'Keefe has consolidated some consensus in the past 48hrs. 17 Dec/Kitty Hawk might be a stretch for Bush to say something. Look for State of the Union/FY 2005 budget drop timeframe for some specifics.