Frank Sietzen and Keith Cowing are claiming an exclusive on the administration’s new space policy, to be announced next week. Apparently they were waiting to see whether the Mars mission was going to be successful. [update: Keith writes in comments that the timing wasn’t related to the Mars landing, but doesn’t explain what did drive it.]

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago.

Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that NASA has been, or can be, reformed sufficiently to entrust it with such a project. I’m not sure what a “CEV” is–they don’t explain that–but I’m inferring that it’s perhaps a “Crew Excursion Vehicle,” which the Orbital Space Plane program will be morphed into. That would explain why the OSP Request For Proposal has been delayed. NASA probably knew that this was coming, and that the requirements just changed, probably necessitating a do over of the recently completed Systems Design Review.

Anyway, if true, I’m disappointed. I was hoping for a vision, rather than a destination, and one that included the American people. This is just picking up where Apollo left off, and that was a very expensive way to go. It seems to continue the philosophy that, as Trix are for kids, space is for NASA astronauts, who the rest of us get to watch on teevee. It also implies that reusable launchers don’t make sense, or can’t be done, which doesn’t help investment prospects for them privately.

If they were going to return to the sixties, it would have been much better if they’d picked up instead where the X-15 left off.

Fortunately, the private sector is doing that, and ultimately, I suspect that NASA isn’t going to be very relevant to the opening of space, regardless of this. If nothing else, assuming that it gets approval, such a program might keep them busy enough to at least not get in the way.

[Update at 8:15 PM PST]

Someone over at sci.space.policy points out this worrisome little bit:

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort.

Does that mean no more (among other things) robotic exploration of the outer planets?

Now here’s a blog post that I could really sink my teeth into, if I had the time. If you’re interested in space policy, and the intersection with politics and left-right ideology, this has it all in the comments. Matthew Yglesias wonders why the government explores space.

This post epitomizes the fact that space is a non-partisan issue–neither side gets it. This is, in my opinion, part of the problem, because as long as both sides agree, right or wrong, or at least as long as there’s no consensus in either party about what we should do, there’s unlikely to be little progress, because it’s not a differentiating political issue on which people vote, as I pointed out after the elections last year.

But Matthew’s comment section is chock full of the standard myths about space, by commenters both “left” and “right,” and interestingly, not being a regular reader of his blog, I was pointed to it by science writer and blogger Dave Appell, himself somewhat of a lefty who thinks that Matthew is totally out to lunch here.

That’s what this article says.

Iran’s defence minister said the Islamic republic would launch its own satellite into space with an Iranian-made launch system, the official news agency IRNA reported.

“Within 18 months, Iran will launch its own satellite. Iran will be the first Islamic country to enter the stratosphere with its own satellite and its own, indigenous launch system,” Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted as saying.

I don’t know how much of this is due to bad translation, but it doesn’t make any sense as written. Something that’s only launched into the stratosphere is neither in space, nor a satellite.

It doesn’t say what kind of satellite they plan to launch, for what purpose. I also wonder if they’re planning on launching from Iran, and if so, how they’ll handle the overflight issues. Looking at a globe, there’s no ocean corridor east, so they’d have a hard time launching to low inclination without overflying Pakistan and India. If they want a high inclination (e.g., for a surveillance satellite) they’d have to do it from the south coast near the Pakistan border over the Arabian Sea, just missing Oman. If they were to skirt the Indian coastline, it looks like the lowest inclination they could get would be forty degrees or so, which would make for an expensive trip to GEO, considering the plane change.

Anyway, color me skeptical. Sounds more like bluster to me, especially considering the source.

The Army Reserve troops in Iraq have come up with specialized vehicles for detecting and removing roadside explosives.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with the Pentagon procurement bureaucracy knows that it can be a nightmare, but when we’re actually in a fighting war and people are dying, it’s surprising how fast red tape can be cut:

The operation caught the attention of top brass, said Lt. Col. Kent Savre, commander of the Fort Lewis Wash.-based 864th Engineer Battalion, the team?s higher headquarters.

Savre, 43, of Edina, Minn., recommended that the Army supply one system to each division in Iraq. Three weeks after filing the request, a half-dozen more sets were shipped out, Savre said.

?I?ve never seen anything like this in my 19 years in the Army,? Savre said. ?The senior leaders saw the threat and immediately bought more [systems].?

Blue Origin has expanded the information on their home page.

We are currently working to develop a crewed, suborbital launch system that emphasizes safety and low cost of operations.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

Jeff Foust has a year-end roundup similar to mine over at The Space Review, but longer, with additional points.

I’d read it.

Zell Miller zings his political party some more in today’s Opinion Journal:

I’m not sure what Al Gore will contribute. Is he going to advise Mr. Dean to roll down his shirtsleeves and put on a coat, preferably in earth tones? Will he teach him to speak in that stilted highfalutin way? Maybe he’ll teach him how to win a Southern state. Like Tennessee.

Ouch.

I flew back to California on Friday evening, but decided to take a blogbreak for the weekend, because we had a lot of things to do to recover from Christmas and prepare for a possible move in the next couple months. However, Keith Cowing apparently decided that I didn’t deserve any time off, and berated me in comments to this post for not congratulating JPL for their successful Mars landing this weekend.

As I said in the comments section, no one should expect to come here for the latest in space science, even when I am in full posting mode, let alone when I’m on break. It’s not an area in which I’m anywhere near as interested or knowledgable as some other people, particularly when it comes to Mars. My focus is, and will remain, space policy, particularly with regard to manned spaceflight.

But congratulations to JPL anyway, for a job well done. Mars has been a tough nut to crack, as the apparent recent loss of Beagle shows, and the US has, so far, been the only space power with any notable success.

Iowahawk explains.

He also has the lowdown (and I do mean low) on Dean’s southern strategy.

Cover your data-entry device with something sputum impermeable before reading, and don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

The idiotarians over at TomPaine.com think that we have to make a choice between “the children” and the moon. Thomas James, thinks…errr…otherwise.