Where were you when we bought the SST/ISS at the cost of the SSC? Because you can 'understand' the SST/ISS technology show and can't the science of the SSC (that could have been) doesn't make the SST an entirely good thing.
How about, the SST will play no integral part in a trip to Mars?
Time to cut our losses and do some SCIENCE. Let the private sector profit from the technology bandwagon.
I expect the Vision will end with the end of Bush's term in office. Very few programs outlast their President. Same is true of Congress, except they don't even last 8 years. Spending bills originate in the House, where the term is 2 years, and the programs last about that long. Look what happened to Apollo. They couldn't very well just stop the program before the landing, but they could stop it after general interest shifted over to Vietnam.
Then, there's this perspective:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/alternative3.html
Supposedly landing on Mars in 1962 . . .
"Mission to Earth."
The direction NASA has been heading is to join forces with current and former enemies in order to contribute to the dismantling of US engineering and science capacity.
Should the Republican candidate embrace the Bush renewal? My guess is, whoever wins, the renewal will go on in some form, insofar as the Shuttle will be replaced.
I hope the "reusable" mantra / propaganda dies a horrible and public death.
A public embrace of the Bush renewal may be difficult because the Pubbies are permitting the Dims and their partisan media shills to win the propaganda war over tax cuts. File that one under "never fired a shot in self-defense."
The way to beat the Dims in 2006 and 2008 is to paint them as they are -- anti-US, tax-increasing, pro-draft, anti-Christian, obstructionist, anti-democratic, single party state advocates.
In the case of tax cuts, the cuts should be altered -- rates should be left alone, but the personal exemption should be radically increased, in order to give everyone a tax cut, but have it fall disproportionately on those (like me, incidentally) who don't make a lot, and to have little impact (so Rush says) on the overall gov't receipts.
In the case of the space program, the independence of the US effort should be trumpeted, and heavy lift capability restored without resort to the four-engines-welded-together Russian answer to the old F1.