The comments are interesting because most of these people commenting are economists or people regularly posting on economist blogs. The comments then are mostly from the point of view of whether it can be afforded or not.

Interestingly, as usual both blogs are hyper critical of Bush's economic policies. In fact all economic blogs think Bush is doing a terrible job.

The main point is that they all seem to think this is unaffordable, and many are in a position to know this from the economic figures they see. Which is another way of saying this isn't going to happen.

Because of that many seem to think this is a political stunt that will never happen, so don't get your hopes up. Others think it may be designed to be pork to defense contractors. More ominously a few people are starting to say (as if they have sources) that the ISS and shuttle are going to be cancelled and perhaps all the Mars probes to supposedly pay for this new policy. It's unlikely they would be saying this without having heard something so Robert may be right.

The real policy may then be a fake Moon and Mars plan to give an excuse to axe most of NASA's current programs. They could for example ask NASA to plan things and give them less money and promise them a lot of money later when the plans are complete, money that won't be there.

In other words this could be a huge threat to all space programs. Gotta pay for next year's tax cuts to the rich somehow.