The President Explains Space Exploration

It's about time someone clearly articulated the VSE - the Vision for Space Exploration - which is driving NASA's direction nowadays. Unfortunately, the President's recent remarks in Cleveland don't exactly rise to the standard of "clearly articulated".

I think that NASA needed to become relevant in order to be -- to justify the spending of your money, and therefore, I helped changed the mission from one of orbiting in a space shuttle -- in a space station to one of becoming a different kind of group of explorers. And therefore, we set a new mission, which is to go to the moon and set up a launching there from which to further explore space.

And the reason I did that is, I do want to make sure the American people stay involved with -- or understand the relevance of this exploration. I'm a big -- I support exploration, whether it be the exploration of new medicine -- that would be like NIH grants -- the exploration of space through NASA. I can't give you the exact level of funding.

OK, so NASA's new mission is "to go to the moon and set up a launching there from which to further explore space." Glad you clarified it for us.