Rand Simberg wrote:
FWIW, in brief, I'm not impressed. It strikes me as more a
tendentious political document, chock full of conventional wisdom (and
whining about the lack of international cooperation), and clueless
about more serious problems, than a serious policy paper.

The paper:

http://www.amacad.org/publications/spacePolicy.pdf

My comments:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005421.html

In your reply you say:
quote
Second, simply stating that the goals of the plan are no less
challenging than Apollo doesn't make it so. While the goal of
establishing a permanent lunar presence is more of a challenge, it's not
that much more of one, and we know much more about the moon now than we
did in 1961, and we have much more technology in hand, and experience in
development than we did then.
end quote

This is just not true.

The U.S. has less capacity now to send people to the moon
because all the ground force is gone. All the people that
built the Saturn 5 are not there any more, and the US has
not educated any new replacement.

An interesting analysis of the US situation was done by the NY Times
in the edition of March 24th, 2004. I cite from the
QUOTE

.... Technical skill is slipping away as the generations of engineers who
gave the nation the Apollo and shuttle programs have been laid off or
have retired. The aerospace industry has shrunk by half since its peak
of 1.3 million workers in 1989. Some 27 percent of those remaining will
probably retire by 2008, according to the Aerospace Industries
Association; three-quarters of NASA's technicians are over 60.

When NASA needed to build a new shuttle after the Challenger disaster in
1986, companies like McDonnell Douglas had to bring engineers out of
retirement, said Randy Jayne, a former aerospace executive who is now a
senior partner at Heidrick & Struggles International, the executive
search firm. Now, he said, with retired engineers even older, rehiring
them "is less realistic as an option."

And their expertise is not being replenished. Bright engineering
students are now more likely to go into areas like the Internet or
biotechnology. Once the "industry of choice" for technical workers,
aerospace "presents a negative image to potential employees," the
industry association said. A survey of 500 American aerospace workers
found that 80 percent would not recommend that their children follow
them into the field.

Consolidation has hurt, too. Pulling rivals into a big tent can create a
"more comfortable atmosphere" for corporate management, according to a
study by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice
University in 2002, but over time it drains the industry of competition
- the lifeblood of innovation - and "leads unavoidably to stagnation."

Reduced financing causes a further squeeze, the report said. Companies
shifted their focus from the space business, which has thin profit
margins and is subject to the capriciousness of politics, making even
the commercial jet business seem reliable by comparison.

END QUOTE

Your failure to see this explains why you just dismiss the problem of
finding people:

Quote
While it's troubling that not as many native-born are getting advanced
science and engineering degrees as there used to be, there will be no
shortage of engineers, since the foreign born will more than pick up the
slack.
end quote.

Yeah, you will have to hire a lot of russian and chinese aerospace
experts...

But...

Will they want to come? Why would they? The russian and chinese programs
will take the relay of the disappearing US space program.

And last but not least, you say:

quote
What's actually most notable to me is that they completely ignore the
potential for private passenger flight, and commercial space in general
end quote

This will be done by a nation that can offer a space ship. The US
doesn't have it, only the russians do. They have earned the first
millions with space tourism, and they will develop this. It mustn't
be forgotten that is the russians, with Gagarin and their Sputniks that
started all this. They will go on.

jacob