On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 19:12:46 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Michael Gallagher wrote:
...But right now I don't have any reason to believe he would
any more than the last Democrat in the White House did, especially
that in public statements after Bush's announcement, Kerry joined the
Legion of the Unsupportive.

As did Bush, please note -- unless I've missed something, he hasn't said a
word about it since. It's been suggested that he was hoping for a
stronger and more positive public response, and when he didn't get it, the
issue went very much on the back burner... which bodes ill for political
support of exploration if he *is* re-elected.

Henry, I think you miss the point. For the past twenty years, the US
national space policy has been that we will build a space station,
with no goals expressed beyond that. Now the policy is that we are
going back to the moon, and on to Mars.

You ask, what's the difference between now and 1989?

Two things.

First, the NASA administrator is the president's (and
vice-president's) man. Second, the president's party controls
Congress.

Those two factors mean that a new inertia for the new policy will set
in over the next few years (assuming, as I consider likely, a Bush
reelection).