Jeff Bell's pessimistic outlook for "Plan Bush"
The Bush Space Initiative: Fiscal Nightmare or... Fiscal Nightmare?
The Columbia accident brought a huge amount of hidden frustration and anger with the current pointless manned space program out into the open. Not proposing some new plan was not an option. Asking Congress for enough money for a real space program was not an option.
And the kind of radical changes at NASA that would be necessary to bring the costs down would have upset too many political apple carts in an election year. The range of politically sellable plans was extremely small, and Plan Bush as announced is just about in the middle of that range.