Jeff Foust has started up yet another blog–on space politics. He also has some good stuff over at The Space Review today: a roundup of space policy positions of the Democrat candidates for president, and some suggestions for the president from Rick Tumlinson, with very little of which I disagree.

Any discussion of a permanent return to the Moon (RTM) must be centered on two overriding questions: ?why?? and ?how?? The answers to each of those questions are interrelated. If we go for the wrong reasons we will fail. If we go for the right reasons and do it the wrong way, we will fail. And if we don?t go at all, then we will have failed in a way that will send ripples down through the ages….

…NASA must shed operational activities such as LEO transport and running the space station. The Orbital Space Plane should be canceled?now. Prizes, multiple source contracts, investment and tax incentives must be put in place to encourage the new ?Alt.Space? firms to take over human transport to space, and drive the traditional aerospace giants to modernize or get out of the field. The space station should be mothballed, handed to our partners, or be taken over by a quasi-commercial Space Station Authority as a destination for commercial and university users. ISS and other NASA pet projects must not be grafted onto a moon project simply because they exist. If they really support it they are in, if not, they are out.

RTWT