The ISS has only been operating for about a third the time that Mir did, and counting Salyut, the Russians have had men in orbit on stations for about 30 years. We know an awful lot about space stations and how to run them already, what with Skylab, Salyuts 1-7 (especially 4 and after), and Mir. The ISS is by no means making the first mistakes or successes. We're not learning anything tremendously important on the ISS in terms of engineering, except perhaps the mating of equipment from different countries - but we did that in 1975 with Apollo-Soyuz. And science on the ISS? Have you heard of even one scientific discovery that's been made there to date? New drugs, new computer chips, etc. will never be developed on the ISS, regardless of the "research agenda", because research is not really done there. The most important thing we've learned on the ISS is that this piecemeal construction business does not work; it's at least 8 years behind the original schedule once this configuration was finalized.

We'll always here that "now is not the time". Congress and other policymakers want to push spaceflight back into some time when everything is perfect, when no more problems are present. Isn't a little suspicious that these "problems" preventing us from launching space initatives "now", never seem to go away? They're just replaced by other ones. Think Confucius and the single step.

How about "the President's vision"? He is President, after all. We should accord him the fitting respect.

The funding's not ridculously high. The shifting of funds from the notoriously overpriced Shuttle is the right way to get the money.

Comparing the amount science done, say, on Apollo 15, and over the entire lifetime of the ISS is not even an issue. Lunar and Mars flights are definitely better for science.

This is a question that's always going to be asked about any space mission. It's not a problem specific to the President's plan.

There hasn't actually been a specific strategy for how the flights will be accomplished, so I would contend that the first part of the question is attacking an aspect of the plan that hasn't been fleshed out yet. As for ISS cuts, I think it's been given enough money as it is. Consider, as I quote another post I made:

Most estimates place the cost of the ISS at around $100 billion. If Skylab cost $7 billion in 1994 dollars , then:

Space inside Skylab = approx. 10,000 cubic feet
Cost of Skylab = $7 billion
Cost per cubic foot on Skylab: $700,000

Space inside ISS = 43,000 cubic feet
Cost of ISS = $100 billion
Cost per cubic foot on ISS = $2,325,581

That's over 3 times the relative cost of Skylab. www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=315 describes a budget overrun in the ISS of $4 billion, over half the cost of the entire Skylab, which was launched in one day by one rocket. If you're going for science, consider the number of Skylab-equivalent "supermodules" you could launch for the price of the ISS. Say you inflate the $7 billion to $15 billion in today's money, and launch three Skylabs and dock them. There, even without any substantial modification to the original Skylab design, you have created a station that houses 9 astronauts and does some real science (assuming these modules work as well as the original Skylab did), for less than half the cost of the ISS. And all that in only three launches, too. Assuming you built them all at the same time, maybe a year to launch the whole thing, maximum.

I think that whoever wrote this had misunderstood what the senators were saying. The first part of the new directive explicitly states that NASA will finish the station and fulfill its commitment before the Shuttle is retired. How a winged vehicle will help in a significant way for lunar or Mars landings, I'm not quite sure.

Valery Polyakov spent 678 days in space (that's 22 months) in 1994-1995 and experienced no significant medical problems. That was all in zero-g. A Mars crew would spend a significant amount of their time in .38g, which is presumably less damaging to human health. Artifical gravity could also be employed. I'm not sure what the specific nature of these "serious" problems were, but I don't imagine that they were anything beyond normal bone and muscle loss in prolonged zero-g.

The rest of what you've quoted seems to be the same rehashed arguments against spaceflight seen again and again, the radiation hazard, the risk of crewmembers getting ill, etc. This writer seems to have a distinctly liberal slant, also. One thing that's confused me when people say this is a "stunt": public support for this is not overwhelming, as if 80% of the country likes the plan. It's more like 50%, like every other issue. Regardless of the political motivations that may or may not have been behind the plan, this is more or less the way to get to the Moon and Mars; this is something manned spaceflight needs to do (get out of LEO). If you have lingering doubts, read the Aldridge commission report to see why this has nonpartisan benefits aside from science.

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"Too low they build, who build beneath the stars". - Edward Young, 1745