As Jeff Foust notes, yesterday was the third anniversary of the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration. Jeff thinks that the next two years are crucial. I agree.

When the president made the speech from NASA HQ, I was staying at a motel in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, looking for a house somewhere in the area (we ended up getting a place in Boca Raton). I live blogged it using the wireless in the motel room on my laptop, and then had some further thoughts. I think they hold up pretty well.

In fact, there were several related posts over those few days. You can check them out by scrolling about halfway down here.

2008, LRO launch is the first critical milestone, denoting real change of direction ( apart from shuttle flights, but this is more of the same old )

Before that its hard to tell, in a way of tangible results, whether the VSE thing is on track or not. There simply werent any near-term milestones built in.

Note that around four years or so, take or give one, was also critical for NASP, SLI, OSP, X-33 and X-38 etc...

You've got blog spam in the comments of some of those.