Secrecy News, a blog run by the Federation of American Scientists, reported Tuesday that the text of NSPD-31 has been released. What is NSPD-31? It’s National Security Presidential Directive 31, titled “U.S. Space Exploration Policy”, dated January 14, 2004, the day President Bush unveiled the Vision for Space Exploration. The document had not been publicly available until Wikileaks.org, a site that specializes in the publication of leaked documents, published the document earlier this month.
However, if you’re looking for any secret insights into the policy, you’ll be sorely disappointed. In fact, NSPD-31 is virtually word-for-word identical to “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery”, a document published on the White House web site that same day. One of the few differences: the section in the web document titled “Bringing the Vision to Reality” is, in NSPD-31, given the more prosaic title “Implementation Guidelines”.
I wonder who actually wrote this P.O.S.
Paul Shawcross? Thanks Paul. Sheer genius.
[…] A not-so-secret document – Space […]