Robot Guy has an analysis of the current space effort entitled "Why Do Space At All." The analysis contains all of the usual complaints about NASA. It is bureaucratic. It wastes money. It is not using the right hardware to go back to the Moon.

The first two complaints are certainly true, but I think irrelevant. The third is debatable (and indeed is being debated ad infinitum, ad nauseum.)

Any government agency tasked with doing anything is going to be bureaucratic and waste money. It is in their nature. Complaining about that fact is sort of like complaining that a Bengal tiger tends to maul and eat other living creatures. The trick is not to wish that NASA did not behave like a government agency, but to find ways to reduce those bureaucratic and wasteful tendencies as much as possible.

Providing focus on a single mission, which the Vision for Space Exploration tries to do is one way. Encouraging innovative programs, such as COTS and the Centennial Challenges is another.

Balancing out NASA's bureaucratic and wasteful ways is that it has access to far more money than any private business could realistically have. A lot can be done with 16, 17, 18 billion a year, even considering NASA's infrastructure needs.

That leads us to the third complaint and there I am in the midst of a puzzlement as to why it persists. Despite the hyper ventilation from certain quarters, there seems to be no evidence that the Orion/Ares approach is so dysfunctional that it is bound to fail. Is it the absolute best way to get back to the Moon? Define "best."

In the best of all possible universes, with no budgetary and political constraints, it probably isn't. But we don't live in that universe; we live in ours. So we have to make do.

And, really, isn't complaining about Orion/Ares sort of like complaining to President Jefferson that Lewis and Clarke were not going to get to the Pacific is the best possible way. It would be inconceivable two hundred years ago to suggest that the best way to cross the Louisiana Purchase would be to walk and paddle about in collapsible boats (which had all sorts of problems that would sound familiar to rocket scientists today.) But the answer would not be to hold Lewis and Clark back while we argue over methods.

The first mass migration to the American West took place using Conestoga wagons. But the really interesting fact is that most people who went west in the 19th Century took the train. Neither technology was directly the result of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. But their exploration did show that the West was worth going to, worth settling.

I suspect that is what will happen with VSE. Most people in this century will not migrate to space because of any transportation technology developed by VSE. But because those future astronauts will have explored the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, discovering resources that will enrich our species, those that follow will develop the means to get at those resources cheaply and reliably. A lunar base will serve as a destination, given a lunar COTS program especially, for those inventive folks who want to go back to the Moon on their own dime.

It is therefore not NASA's job to build the rockets (or space elevator) that will get you beyond the Earth. That is your job. I suggest getting to it.

Addendum: Robot Guy responds with some ideas of his own.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has proclaimed himself to be a global warming skeptic. Look for the inquisitors of the Church of Global Warming to demand he recant and, failing that, to be fired and then burned at the stake.

Jeff Kueter sounds the alarm on Chinese space ambitions.

Ken Murphy has his own report from ISDC, with a focus on film and the arts.

Using the Moon as a platform to monitor climate change on the Earth.

More about those radiation eating fungi.

How science has been inspired by Star Wars.

Tom Olson has some advice that every space entrepreneur needs to pay heed to.

The security measures surrounding the production of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows rivals that of most military space launches.

Meanwhile a judge in Georgia turned back a silly attempt to get the wizardly one banned in schools on a (I'm not kidding) a church/state seperation basis.

Mother Sheehan has given the world the greatest gift anyone could ever bestow by capitulating on capitulation and promising to shut up.

Abraham Lincoln said it much better than I could ever:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

As it was on November 19, 1863, so it is even more so today.

Paul Spudis discusses what he feels is going right and what he feels is going wrong with the Vision for Space Exploration. He even has an alternative method of getting back to the Moon--L1 rendezvous (with a fuel depot) using a Shuttle C.

Addendum: Dr. Spudis' presentation can be found here.

One comment. Unlike other concepts, Dr. Spudis' has certain attractive features, which include a better potential for adding on a commercial infrastructure. My only question is that it might be a little too ambitious for a first generation lunar transport. I can see encouraging private companies to build and maintain the L1 Depot as part of a Lunar COTS program.

Ok, second comment. I still don't see any problems with political sustainability (at least in comparison to any other concept) in the current scheme. Most polling shows that most people will swallow a NASA that consumes 1 percent of the federal budget, which is higher than anyone right now contemplates. We'll see if the Congressional effort to add more money succeeds or not.

Spudis is dead on about a simple definition of the mission.

Looks like the Chinese now want to add air craft carriers to their Navy.

The Orion does seem to be making some progress toward actually becoming real, despite some of the misgivings previously noted.

Glenn Reynolds gives his impressions of the International Space Development Conference just concluding in Dallas. The one major change from the ones I've attended in the past appear to be that the space entrepreneurs actually have funding and are actually working on stuff. That's encouraging.

Some what less so is that there also seems to be a somewhat fatalistic view about the Vision for Space Exploration, one that seems based not so much on how its actually proceeding, but on disappointments of the past, at least from Glenn's perspective. My reading of the political situation is somewhat different, of course, though things can certainly change.

Even so those who confidently predict the demise of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration remind me of Harry Reid proclaiming that the Iraq War is lost. At best both are somewhat premature. At worse, both sentiments are a kind of Vietnam Syndrome. Iraq (or any large scale military involvement) is Vietnam to Harry Reid and his ilk. VSE is the space shuttle, the space station, X-33, or name your favorite space boondoggle to others.

(On the other hand, I got to admire, in a left handed fashion, anyone who thinks that he's going to sell Barack Obama on Mars colonies. It reminds me of two ladies I met fifteen years ago who were pretty sure that Ross Perot would buy into Zubrin's Mars Direct concept.)

One reason that a lot of hope is being invested in the private sector is the perception that it is less subject to the vagaries of politics than is NASA. That may be true or it may not be. We'll find out the first time one of those sub orbital tourist rockets filled with rich folks makes a hole in the ground. My fear is that if we're not careful, the trial lawyers will feast like a school of blood crazed sharks and the space tourism industry will be strangled in its crib. Leaving hope for a space faring future, where?

Glenn concludes with a quote that on the surface sounds good, but on close examination is really pernicious:

And the best line on space policy is actually an old one from Rand Simberg, but it represents how the next Administration, of whatever party, ought to approach the subject: "It's not NASA's job to send a man to Mars. It's NASA's job to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to send a man to Mars." Indeed.

This sets up a phony controversy that has the potential of being as tiresome as the robots vs humans fight. Public vs private space development is, in my way of thinking, a false dichotomy. There is room in the great scheme of things for both. The COTS program is a prime example of that. There would be no COTS program were it not for the International Space Station, as great of an example as it is of government waste.

What is NASA's job? Well, to send a man to Mars and make it possible for National Geographic to send a man to Mars. I suspect that the first will be necessary for the second to occur.

Pete Worden discussed NASA's new virtual island in Second Life and what it means for public participation in the exploration of space.

"We can walk or fly along with a lunar rover as it makes its way over the lunar landscape," Worden said. "Your avatar can explore along with those of scientists and engineers managing the mission."

Worden said that, in this manner, everyone can participate in space exploration. "When the next people step onto the surface of the Moon in a little over a decade, your avatar could be with them," he noted.

General Worden went on to say:

By matching the attributes of cyberspace with small, inexpensive space probes using micro-satellite technologies, a new world of space exploration is feasible, Worden suggested. "As we expand into and settle the solar system...we'll all be going."

"This is not your father's space program," Worden said. "The new technology of virtual life in cyberspace means we can all participate in the vision for space exploration. The revolution in nanotechnology means we can do pretty surprising things in very small packages too."

Worden told SPACE.com that one of the key objectives of the vision is to activate the private sector to activate opportunity. Using the cyberspace tools and techniques being created via partnerships at Ames Research Center, individuals can design projects, analyze data, "or just go along for the ride," he said.

NASA wants commercial participation for the return to the Moon.

Some tasty rumors about Indiana Jones 4. Possible spoilers.

John Carmack discusses the Pixel lunar lander prototype.

Congressman Nick Lampson, who won Tom Delay's Texas House seat last year, spoke upon the effort to increase NASA's budget by about a billion and a half dollars. Lampson, a liberal Democrat who finds himself representing a conservative House district, has rested his hopes of remaining in Congress in this undertaking to deliver for the large number of NASA and contractor employees that are his constituents. "Anonymous" makes a comment that actually approaches the truth in that the effort would have far more of a chance if the Republicans still controlled the House and Tom Delay was still Majority Leader. However, it is somewhat interesting to hear of an effort to plow more money into NASA than to siphon funding out, as has been the case in previous years.