The new issue of The Space Review begins with a discussion by Harley Thronson and Ted Talay of "the concept of a broadly capable, inflatable post-ISS long-duration human habitation system beyond LEO", which was studied at NASA pre-Constellation: “Gateway” architectures: a major “Flexible Path” step to the Moon and Mars after the International Space Station?.

Jeff Foust describes the administration's rollout of the new plan for NASA and the reception that it got: An agency in transition.

Bob Clarebrough argues for a new paradigm for space that involves a partnership of government and private enterprise: Maps and buried treasure

The last 50 years are history and we can’t change that. We can decide that the next half-century will be different: “we can believe in change”, to paraphrase a well-known campaign slogan. The new model spells the end of government monopoly and the opening up of space to entrepreneurial dynamism providing access to all who want to explore and exploit the solar system; the determination must be to replace the “Right Stuff” fixation with the “Wright Stuff” paradigm—that’s what brought us to today and will take us into the future.

Vision and action can change everything—despite the objections.

Dwayne Day returns again to the short lived TV seriess Defying Gravity, which is now available on DVD with episodes not broadcast in the US: Beating a dead space horse (yeah, Defying Gravity, again…).

Jeff Foust reviews the book Choice, Not Fate: Shaping a Sustainable Future in the Space Age by James A. Vedda.

Vedda, a senior space policy analyst with the Aerospace Corporation, makes it clear in the book that he is not a fan of destination-based approaches like Apollo and the Vision for Space Exploration. “Continuation of the destination-driven approach, which has dominated thinking for a half-century, is a persistent non-vision we cannot afford,” he writes. “Programmatically, human landings on the Moon and Mars are treated like the finish line in a race, and planners have insufficient motivation and resources to think beyond that point.”

Vedda instead argues for a capabilities-based approach, one that arguably is even broader than what NASA has proposed in its new budget. NASA should focus on capabilities that can help life on Earth: something that includes, but is not limited to, Earth sciences work.