http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=902
".....The return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade became "by default" the least expensive and risky of the paths proposed for the U.S. space program.

Bush will call for renewed U.S. activities leading to leadership of space exploration "in the Earth-Moon system" that could include manned lunar landings, the employment of a series of commercially-available launch vehicles and upper stages, new robotic lunar probes that will include orbiting communications and navigation relay satellites, and the development of a "flexible" manned spacecraft that is likely to be a form of the proposed Orbital Space Plane, but no new advanced launchers, large Apollo-style space vehicles or reusable replacements for the shuttles. Creation of a manned lunar base would evolve from more limited landings, if at all...."

God forbid we take any risk, set any hard goals, or develope any radical new technology.

2 decades before even thinking of a lunar base? How long to build one? 60 years? This is a crock. If Okeefe is a statesman it is for being able to cobble together a plan satisfying all NASA contractors.

see ya