I was reading a post below about the dilemna people like myself face when voting for Kerry, aware he may not share my enthusiasm about space exploration and it gave me a thought. What a wonderful bunch of articulate and politically motivated people we have on this board that could actually do something together should Kerry win today.

I've often said that, even though I truly believe Kerry to be the obvious choice over our current President, I will work tirelessly to hold his nose to the grindstone as I have tried to do with Bush. As soon as the results are in, it would be a wonderful opportunity to get in some serious lobbying about the space program and manned exploration. From Kerry's stated platform, we could ping on ideals such as job creation, the growth of education, and research on new power sources. He also has this thing about JFK so we could shame him on Kennedy's moon program. (By the way, should Bush win, I've never been convinced of his "vision" about space. My guess is that his pronouncements about the return to the moon program and the future manned landing on Mars were hollow campaign promises meant to galvanize some support in the scientific community or bring some short term funds to Texas. He'd also need constant monitoring and prodding to keep him on track.)

So how about it folks? Ready to put aside our bickering on politics and all get behind a serious lobbying and letter-writing effort?

If so, first order of business would be coming to some consensus on what exactly it is we want for our space policy. The floor's open for discussion. I'm all for any program that has a good mix of robotic planetary exploration and a push toward man landings on other bodies. I'd also like to see some simplicity restored to our primary manned launch vehicles.