“Using the Private Sector: Obama will stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities. NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a good model of government/industry collaboration.”

This statement is in the part of the Obama Space Policy document on “Closing the Gap”, so my interpretation is it specifically promises to encourage the private sector to reduce the U.S. human spaceflight “gap” problem, with the current NASA COTS effort as a favored model.

A new NASA Administrator is obviously very important. We need someone with the brains and the background — and the political heft — to fight and win the inevitable battles within the Administration and with the Congress, and be a convincing spokesperson to the broad range of scientific and industry constituencies whose support and participation are essential. This is going to be a tough job to fill. Not sure Lampson is up to it.

You may have a point, I just wanted to stir the pot myself. If you are correct and the US Govt/NASA never gets this capability up and going and in a technological readiness level 6+ for Nuclear Propulsion & power in space then who will do it?

The private sector SpaceX 2050? or Maybe the Chinese? Any thoughts?

Not when the Administration’s core support base is vehemently anti-nuclear!!

Either Mr. Holdren is a true free thinker and wants to stir up debate on this idea by floating a balloon (which I think is ok in his role as an advisor – including the geo-engineering stuff) or he is naive in the extreme at the hornets nest he is about to stir up.

Perhaps he is telegraphing President Obama’s intent to re-cast NASA as the leading International agency for space instead of it being a US agency that portrays itself as the Pre-eminent Civilian power in space. This could work into this administrations foreign policy goals and could serve as a make the ISS cheaper going forward. Is this so bad?

Maybe getting China and India into the Vision for Space Exploration is a good idea? Maybe that will free up enough money to keep Constellation going and to do the moon “right” or re-start nuclear propulsion programs like the canceled Prometheus.

I cannot imagine he means the coming 4-6 year gap but rather the long term – 10-30 years. If he does mean the short term gap, then he musn’t know about ITAR (which alarming given his position) and he is really a free thinker or the other alternative I mentioned above…..

However, maybe this is NOT the philosophical foundation he has when looking at our space programs…perhaps this makes more sense if they instead see our space programs as jobs and politics.

Jobs for political gain. Space programs as political poker chips and symbols. That’s surely not a new thing, but it’s not what I think the basis of our nation’s space programs should be.