On a day that we have for the first time landed a probe on another planet’s moon, it is also the first anniversary of the day that President Bush announced a new direction for our nation’s space activities. I don’t use the phrase “space program,” because I hope that it will be much more than that. To paraphrase the Space Frontier Foundation’s motto, it’s a vision, not a program.

How are we doing?

Well, while the president (probably wisely) didn’t emphasize it in any way after the announcement, NASA has moved forward in implementing it, with a new Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, with a new and apparently able man in charge (Admiral Steidle, of Joint-Strike Fighter fame). After the recent election, he (along with Tom Delay) ensured that it received full funding for the current fiscal year (in the face of budget cuts for almost all other domestic programs). Exploration architecture studies were let, technology studies have been selected, and an RFP is about to be released for the first phase of development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle. I’ve been spending this week in Houston at a fairly intense workshop to work out many of the implementation issues, in support of one of those architecture studies.

This could all be contrasted with the response of his father’s announcement in 1989, in which the project was immediately ridiculed in the media and the Congress, the NASA administrator worked behind the scenes to sabotage it on the Hill, NASA came out with an unaffordable price tag for it, and it died within a couple years.

I have many issues with the implementation of it (that I won’t go into now), but it has many promising aspects, and if we’re going to be spending government funds on manned space, they’re probably being spent more effectively now that they have been since the end of Apollo (and perhaps in the history of NASA). If you’re interested in what I had to say about it at the time, I actually had quite a bit. Just go here and scroll down to mid month, then scroll back up.

My real hope for our expansion into the cosmos continues to lie with the private sector, but it’s nice to, for the first time in decades, not feel utterly hopeless about prospects for the government civil space sector.

Thank you, Mr. President.