President Bush's re-election will jump-start his plan to send astronauts back to the moon, transforming a new vision for space exploration into serious marching orders, analysts said Wednesday.
What's more, NASA will have until 2011 to get the new presidential initiative entrenched enough to make it difficult to undo.
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Posted by jburk at November 3, 2026 11:12 PM | TrackBackThis is the first time I have ever voted for a candidate on a single issue. I voted for the president strictly for the Vision for Space Exploration. It’s not a perfect plan by any means, but it dose put NASA on a path of exploration and it’s the most comprehensive direction given to NASA since the moon landings. It’s now up to us to see that the president stands by this plan so that by the time he leaves office it has become so ingrained in NASA and the American public that it can’t be turned back by the next administration or congress. On Wednesday president Bush said the election gave him political capital and that he intended to spend it. I just want to make sure that he spends some on the VSE.
To those of you who do not support the Vision for Space Exploration, I know it has flaws. It doesn’t include enough opportunities for the private sector and the time lines are too long especially to put men on Mars which has no definite time frame. All these things can be fixed. One thing that has always limited the space lobby effectiveness has been the fact that there are too many special interest groups, fighting for their little specialty, to be done their way or else and they’ll slam any other group who doesn’t totally agree with their “vision”. That has to end if we want to make any meaningful human exploration of the solar system in the next 50 years.
To those of you who didn’t support the president, the American people spoke in one of the biggest voter turnouts in 40 years. What good dose it do to put down a plan for human exploration for the solar system, (something most of us agree should happen soon,) just because it came from the wrong candidate? Lets make lemonade out of lemons and at least get something you care about, a more robust space program.
How can we do this? First write the White House. Letters, phone calls and emails have great effect in large numbers. Same goes for your representatives and senators.
Second join a lobbing group like the Planetary Society or the National Space Society or the Mars Society. Make sure that they belong to the Space Exploration Alliance fighting to make the Vision for Space Exploration real. If we don’t put the squabbling aside and work together this will just become another missed opportunity and we have no one to blame but ourselves.