More of a note to myself, if anything, to be expanded on later, in another venue.

It strikes me that NASA’s response to the president’s challenge is a statement of fundamental unseriousness about it.

A serious program to go back to the Moon, and beyond, would be based on a foundation of an infrastructure that would dramatically reduce the marginal costs of getting to orbit, operating in orbit, and getting to the points beyond low earth orbit. It would be a decision that would allow dramatic and affordable increases in space operations, for both the government and the private sector.

That they have chosen an architecture that makes the marginal, per-mission costs of doing anything in space as high or higher than they’ve always been indicates that they’re more interested in short-term milestones (getting back to the Moon and completing the lost missions of Apollo) than in opening up a frontier. I thought that I heard the president say something else over a year and a half ago, but perhaps, politically, they’re right, and I’m wrong.

[Update on Saturday afternoon]

Clark Lindsey has some expanded thoughts on this subject.

Jon Goff on trade studies, and why you can use them to justify almost any answer you want.