Frank Sietzen says that Congress is coalescing about a plan to do just that.

With the rapidly dwindling calendar -- fewer than 60 legislative days actually remain before Congress recesses for the fall political campaign -- next year's federal spending may be wrapped into a continuing resolution that funds all non-defense and homeland security agencies at 2004 spending levels.

There is one exception to this outcome, sources said. That would be NASA, receiving the funding requested by Bush for 2005.

The breakthrough emerged during negotiations over the new Senate budget resolution, which sets a ceiling on federal spending. A bipartisan effort managed to amend the original NASA amount adopted -- only a 1.4 percent boost for the space program -- to restore nearly all of the $866 million the administration was seeking.

And for those who think that the administration's silence on the subject, in the State of the Union and elsewhere, indicated that support for the new initiative was wavering, this explanation makes more sense:

According to congressional sources, several House members complained Bush has failed to say anything more about the moon-Mars plan since his Jan. 14 speech, and his silence has been interpreted as a cooling of support. The group was told the White House was silent, not because Bush was rethinking his grand space plan, but was instead trying to avoid further politicization.

One source told UPI that Bush would "keep his powder dry until the myths, legends, and political barbs on this strategy subside," and the president probably would speak again about his space plan sometime late in his re-election campaign.

It's not an obvious big vote getter, and the myths and legends about it (particularly the costs) have been well documented here and elsewhere, so it seems like a reasonable strategy to me. People shouldn't infer support or lack of it from speeches by the president. Everything that I see going on at NASA, to the degree I have any visibility of it, indicates that plans continue to move forward.

I'm not a big fan of the president's plan, as far as it's been described, but I do like the fact that we've declared it national policy to go back to the moon and the rest of the solar system with humans. There's plenty of time to fix the specifics of how that occurs, and I suspect that after the election perhaps more hard decisions will be made.

If NASA can be exempted from a general freeze of programs at 2004 spending levels, that speaks volumes about the existence of a bi-partisan consensus for space.

Now, how we spend thet money will be controversial as well, yet we space advocates would do well to avoid making space policy a forum for partisan bickering or for partisan credit-mongering.

"I'm not a big fan of the president's plan, as far as it's been described, but I do like the fact that we've declared it national policy to go back to the moon and the rest of the solar system with humans."

Wow, Rand. That's unusually high praise from you. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Can I get you anything - some chicken soup, perhaps? ;)

I think Bush is exhibiting good leadership by keeping quiet on the policy. In his vision statement, he announced the creation of the (now) Aldridge Commission to recommend implementation strategies. His silence tells me that he's not micromanaging - a quality which I find admirable in my leaders.

OT - Rand, kudos on the increased posting. You've achieved higher volume with no loss of quality. Good work.

I'm not sure why you say that's high praise. I've always wanted a national policy to expand humanity into space. My problem is that I've also always wanted an effective one, and it's not clear that's happening yet.

It's certainly not praise of NASA, or the means by which such policy is proposed to be implemented. But thanks for the kudos regardless.

High praise by your standards related to the President's vision. Of course I was being a bit facetious.

Like you, I have no false hopes of NASA being the model of efficiency in implementing the vision. But honestly, I don't much care. Even when we end up doing it inefficiently, it'll still be some of our best spent tax money. As long as we're continuing to expand the bubble of humans in space outwards, I vote yes. What I'm really hoping for (perhaps naively) is that Congress and NASA will allow X Prize and its commercially-driven descendents to be the air that fills that bubble. If the Feds don't loosen the reigns as we expand outwards, then the vision will falter sooner rather than later.

There's one issue I haven't seen people paying much attention to -- and it could be a real killer for the future of any space industry in this country.

Who's going to do the work?

The current aerospace workforce is aging. Reports indicate 80% of the current workforce don't want their children to follow in their footsteps. That's one hell of a commentary.

Young people are avoiding careers in science and engineering -- especially aerospace science and engineering. We've been increasingly filling openings in universities with foreigners. That has its own set of problems.

Aerospace still has a certain attractiveness that other fields do not. People in IT (like me) can work in a variety of industries. Which would you rather do? Write programs that help unlock the secrets of the universe? Or write programs to set auto insurance rates in Oklahoma? The first is intrinsically more interesting. But people will likely go for the latter when confronted by management that is incompetent, abusive and dishonest.

Until I see a higher profile addressing of these kind of issues, I will think that the people making these proposals aren't aware of how many problems the industry has.

Breaking news - Burt Rutan just got his launch license from the FAA.

My birthday's coming up in 6 days, and I can't think of a better present than a successful flight of SpaceShipOne.

Given the consolidation in the aerospace market, I’m not very surprised what has happened to the workforce. I don’t expect any big changes from the traditional aerospace companies, and NASA is a drop in a bucket compared to the defense and commercial markets. It will take some outside group to open up new markets. My hope is that one of the X-prize companies will eventually demonstrate the market with the space equivalent of the Apple II. I fully expect the traditional companies to muscle their way in after that (think IBM). If that happens, people will want those jobs again.

I expect things to get really interesting inside of twenty years. Computer, biotech and materials science/technology are all advancing wildly. True nanotech or not, engineering will increasingly become fancy programming. It is impossible to predict specific developments, but I don’t think planning beyond a 10-year horizon for space is useful.