I've been at the Space Frontier Conference, but was in and out, having to split my time with issues at my current day job in El Segundo, so I haven't had my computer there, and consequently haven't been live blogging it. But Michael Mealing has.

He also useful thoughts on nomenclature:

In light of the desire for budget controls in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, Congress is possibly in the mood to cut budgets either now or in the future. If the space community is misunderstood by Congress to be against the Vision itself then Congress may not have any qualms about forcing the Architecture to be indiscriminately cut. Currently the Centennial Challenges program is part of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate which is the part of NASA in charge of the Architecture as well. If ESMD's budget is cut and money has to be moved around to support large contracts with the primes then that money will in all likelihood come from programs like Centennial Challenges. Ambiguous punditry that confuse the Vision with the Architecture now would most likely result in future cries of "That's not what we meant!"

VSE is the nebulous and misleading promise. ESAS is what we actually get. Any questions?

Everything said by an executive in most organizations is supposed to be that nebulous. They're supposed to be nebulous statements of long ranging desires. I would assert that 1) you are confusing a vision statement with a mission statement (they are different) 2) if you confuse both you will get neither and 3) if you give up and assume that ESAS is what you get regardless then you end up right back at the beginning of the Shuttle process in the 70s where everyone attempted to dump their requirements into the one single Uber Program.

I don't think you're saying you prefer the status quo? If you don't then what in the VSE do you disagree with _as stated_. By "as stated" I mean you need to use the words, definition and speach manerisms of the President, not attempting to recast his words using other's definitions to score rhetorical points.

While the word "nuance" seemed to pick up some bad connotations in the last election, I think a little "nuance" on the part of the community when it critiques both the VSE and ESAS would go a long way toward producing something useful. Pithy, lazy rhetoric is not only useless but dangerous.