Frank Sietzen and Keith Cowing are claiming an exclusive on the administration’s new space policy, to be announced next week. Apparently they were waiting to see whether the Mars mission was going to be successful. [update: Keith writes in comments that the timing wasn’t related to the Mars landing, but doesn’t explain what did drive it.]

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago.

Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that NASA has been, or can be, reformed sufficiently to entrust it with such a project. I’m not sure what a “CEV” is–they don’t explain that–but I’m inferring that it’s perhaps a “Crew Excursion Vehicle,” which the Orbital Space Plane program will be morphed into. That would explain why the OSP Request For Proposal has been delayed. NASA probably knew that this was coming, and that the requirements just changed, probably necessitating a do over of the recently completed Systems Design Review.

Anyway, if true, I’m disappointed. I was hoping for a vision, rather than a destination, and one that included the American people. This is just picking up where Apollo left off, and that was a very expensive way to go. It seems to continue the philosophy that, as Trix are for kids, space is for NASA astronauts, who the rest of us get to watch on teevee. It also implies that reusable launchers don’t make sense, or can’t be done, which doesn’t help investment prospects for them privately.

If they were going to return to the sixties, it would have been much better if they’d picked up instead where the X-15 left off.

Fortunately, the private sector is doing that, and ultimately, I suspect that NASA isn’t going to be very relevant to the opening of space, regardless of this. If nothing else, assuming that it gets approval, such a program might keep them busy enough to at least not get in the way.

[Update at 8:15 PM PST]

Someone over at sci.space.policy points out this worrisome little bit:

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort.

Does that mean no more (among other things) robotic exploration of the outer planets?