I’ve skimmed the report. It’s got a lot of good things in it, and it’s probably the best report of its kind to ever come out in terms of policy recommendations (which is to damn it with faint praise). I agree with Andrew that absolutely the most damaging recommendation in it is to initiate a heavy lift program as soon as possible, and to imply (with that photo of a Shuttle-derived vehicle on page 29) that the Shuttle would be a good basis for such a program. It provides absolutely zero support for its contention that (from page 30) “…Heavy-lift capability is a critical enabling technology for mission accomplishment and a plan for achieving this capability needs to be developed now.”

A major omission in the section on engaging the public was any mention about public space travel. This was disappointing–I had hoped that they would have paid attention to Tony Tether’s testimony. Apparently they didn’t. Instead, they fall back on the same time-worn calls for better propaganda:

The Commission recommends that industry, professional organizations, and the media engage the public in understanding why space exploration is vital to our scientific, economic, and security interests.

The poor proles just don’t seem to be able to understand why we should take money from their wallets to send government employees off to other planets so they can watch on teevee. Apparently we haven’t been explaining it well enough. This time for sure!

It was particularly disappointing that in support of a repeat of this flawed approach, they chose this comment from an audience member, rather than Tony Tether’s:

And so my One Urgent Request