Key quote from:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102064.html

>But space-loving lawmakers appeared most interested in
>preventing NASA from tying its future solely to the
>moon-Mars initiative. "I'm concerned about cannibalizing other
>missions," said Rep. Bart Gordon (Tenn.), the House Science
>Committee's top Democrat.
>
>"Then in four years we could vote to put the Mars money into
>something we need on Earth, like school buses," he added.
>"If you've undercut NASA's other missions, there's nothing good
>left in NASA, so we'll cut even more."

At least Bart Gordon is paying attention. I'm skeptical there is enough money allocated to VSE for it to be anything other than Flag and Footprints. Public apathy would force termination of a Lunar Flag and Footprints exercise within a few years of the first lunar landing (a repeat of Apollo). If NASA is entirely focused on VSE and there is no RLV/CATS program on the back burner then the whole Space Program could face a complete shutdown. This would be much worse than what happened after Apollo's termination because there would be no projects like Skylab, Voyager, Viking or Space Shuttle to pickup the slack.

I would be much happier with VSE if it was clearly established that the Moon was merely a stepping stone to Mars. Everything that I have read indicates the primary mission of VSE is to get people on the Moon with Mars seen as a vague objective far off in the unforseeable future. Given that VSE is only a scaled down version of Apollo then it's not at all obvious that VSE could survive the next President (Hillary?). It is vital that Mike Griffin make it very clear that the ultimate destination is Mars with the Moon serving only as a temporary stepping stone (technology demonstrator) towards getting people to Mars.

Gary