Additions! We got yet additions here! (and some stuff about space)

Check out A Voyage to Arcturus, a blog that seems to be largely about science and space policy, by Jay Manifold (whose name sounds, in my ears, exactly like the name of one of those "super-competent everyman" types you used to find as protagonists in Heinlein and Asimov stories -- and I mean that as a compliment!).

He seems fairly sceptical about the recent/impending Big Space Policy Announcement by the Bush Administration, and I tend to agree: this strikes me as a big dollop of pork to the aerospace industry (big in Southern states), as well as a mildly transparent attempt to get the "vision thing" out there. The timing also interests me: they seem to have sat on this announcement until the initial results of the Spirit Rover mission were in (I wonder if this would have come out if the mission had failed), and there is political timing as well: the Iowa Caucuses are right around the corner, so this gives something of a positive to the President as the Democratic infighting rises to fever-pitch, and it also means that the announcement will probably be a bit of a distant memory when the fall campaign rolls around.

I want to see some specifics, but in a time when the country's fiscal outlook is a giant disaster, in an election year, and coming from a President in whose scientific interest and acumen I have little faith, I'm really feeling that skepticism is the way to go.