A report that was almost immediately ignored by both of the Whitehouses appointments for NASA Administrator. From my outside view it seems as though the Whitehouse flushed the Aldridge Commissions report and has outsourced the entire process of defining the VSE to whoever happens to be Administrator.

I still support the VSE, just not the particular spin on it that NASA has come up with. I would be much happier if the Whitehouse came back to the VSE and clarrified its views (not NASAs) on some of the non-hardware specific bits and let it be known that the Vision still stands as a committment across agencies and that NASA is just one part of the “master plan”.

But given the other political nightmares going on in the Whitehouse right now I don’t see this getting much of the President’s attention. I’ll say it again, if we get a Democrat in the Whitehouse and people are still bad mouthing the ESAS, expect the entire Vision to be tossed out as part of an anti-Bush house cleaning. If that happens lord knows what we’d get as a replacement. Maybe a space program run by the UN?