[Cincinatus]

The administration's Mars proposal is at least a step in the right direction, and its adoption of nuclear space propulsion indicates more realism than the flags-and-footprints approach favored by the previous Bush administrations.

First, I'm aware of only ONE "previous Bush administration" (from 1989-1993). Second, it's simply not true that G.H.W. Bush favored a "flags and footprints" approach. One of the things that killed SEI (his Moon-Mars Initiative) was that it intended to do precisely what this guy wanted -- make nuclear rocket engines and establish permanent footholds on both the Moon and Mars. That's why the Democrat Congress killed it.

[ASA Vet]

That's why the Democrat Congress killed it.

That was a large political error on their part.
Those with guts enough to go to the wilderness and make it on their own would be conservatives.
That would reduce the numbers of conservative voters here, thus increasing the commieRATs percentages in elections.
If the new colonists send in absentee ballots, the Rats can spoil,
lose, or ignore them, as they do to US Military absentee ballots.

[NonZeroSum]

One of the things that killed SEI (his Moon-Mars Initiative) was that it intended to do precisely what this guy wanted -- make nuclear rocket engines and establish permanent footholds on both the Moon and Mars. That's why the Democrat Congress killed it.

NASA killed SEI themselves. In fact, Truly had his congressional liaison actively lobby against it. In addition, the people working up the cost estimate used it as an excuse to justify every single thing that NASA was working on in its hobby shops at the centers, and came up with a price tag of half a trillion dollars.

Both Congress and the Administration got sticker shock, and the program died.