This is pretty impressive if it pans out. A few thoughts, though.

1. Sounds like it might be good for space science -- parsing the language carefully it implies that research activities _on ISS_ will be pared tot hose supporting long-term human spaceflight only. It suggests there will be an immediate *boost* in money for "exploration".

2. Yikes, relying on Arianne-launched Soyuz craft? Pretty big step for an administration that hates relying on other countries. I'm not sure how keen I am putting the Russians and the French so squarely in our critical path. Provides some real opportunities for them to do a bit of extortion or for problems to arise if cooperation is hindered due to unrelated political disagreements.

There may be a bit of clever politics in there, in that Congress and the areospace community will so hate relying on ESA and Russia that it'll spur more spending on our own next-generation launch vehicle.

3. Minor point, but a manned Mars orbit-only mission? Doesn't seem to be a lot of point to that.

4. Real prospects: doubtful but not hopeless. The budget situation is so tight and space ranks sufficiently below other priorities that I find it hard to see how they'll get a sustained 5% annual increase -- and I doubt even that will fund what they want to do. The numbers start looking very very bad just after 2010, which is right when it sounds like the big ticket missions would start up. On the other hand, the space contractors will need *something* to do post - ISS (vs the situation in 1989, when the SEI could die without leaving the contractors hanging).

This is good short run politics, capitalizing on the Mars enthusiasm of the moment and the Columbia anniversary, and a "visionary" project to talk about in the 2004 election campaign. Bush had plenty of other ideas in 2000 that never went anywhere, and big-ticket space initiatives have a particularly distinguished history of coming to little, so I won't start expecting to see anyone on the moon until I see those big budget increases continuing into 2006 and 2007.

It does sound like this admin wants to burn their bridges rather than hedge their bets, however, with the accelerated shuttle retirement and all that. If we don't do something major and new, we have nothing.

I'll make the safe bet that what we ultimately see is something vaguely recognizable as the descendant of this initiative, but dramatically scaled back and slowed down.