Frank Sietzen says that’s the inside scuttlebutt on the direction for the administration’s space policy.

Of course, the article also points out that the President’s father had such a policy, and it faltered on the shoals of a recalcitrant bureaucracy.

It’s also interesting that, at the same time, Congress is reining in the OSP horses.

While killing OSP is a good idea in general, in my opinion, it certainly makes sense not to move out with any major new initiatives until we’ve figured out what we’re trying to accomplish in space, and if Sietzen is right, we may know on December 17th. It will be somewhat ironic if Burt Rutan also flies a private spaceship into space on the same day, which, as rumor has it, he wishes to do.

[Update at 12:45 PM PST]

Leonard David has more. It has a typically stupid quote from Bob Park:

“NASA is looking a little sick. But to imagine that the cure is a larger dose of what made it sick is downright pathological,” Park noted. “Manned spaceflight is going nowhere because there’s nowhere to go.”

However, Wes Huntress says something sensible:

NASA must back away from their intense focus on the station/shuttle infrastructure as make-or-break for the agency, Huntress told SPACE.com, and the imbedded notion that the ISS is a destination. Furthermore, the space agency has to abandon the notion that the station/shuttle infrastructure is on the critical path to deep space destinations, except for research on human space physiology.

[Update at 1:12 PM PST]

Tomorrow’s Senate hearing will have a live webcast. And they have one unusual suspect testifying (not counting Bob Zubrin)–Rick Tumlinson of the Space Frontier Foundation. The hearing starts at 9:30 AM Eastern time.