A New Era: Background & Easter Eggs - #3

A few days ago, (23 July 2020), the National Space Council – at the White House – issued a fascinating document.  “A New Era for Space Exploration and Development.”
 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/A-New-Era-for-Space-Exploration-and-Development-07-23-2020.pdf
 
This new policy is significant.  This policy will have ripple effects in the future.  It will influence the commercial, civil, academic, and defense space sectors – for years to come. This kind of national policy shift is part of the new ‘adventure’ of building systems for space.  (They are not usually this big, and they don’t usually come this quickly.  There have been 3 big policy documents released in the past month!)
 
Lately, these changes are being considered and deliberated (by some very smart people) over the course of a few months, and then enacted.  Honestly, it is both refreshing, and it also requires us to modify our overarching plans.
 
We have posted two other videos on this policy.  We will post several more videos; we will deep-dive into the specifics and nuance that such a document deserves. 
 
In this post, we will look at the background papers that support and inform this current document.  In DC, you don’t usually have a clean-sheet new policy.  Most documents are built on layers upon layers of prior rules, papers, or laws.  This doc is no different – however, there doesn’t seem to be as thick a layer of supporting docs as most.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons it seems ‘new.’ 
 
And we will look into some key phrases that might (or might not) be “Easter eggs” – hidden details that have special significance to the writers; hidden details that might give us clues as to the author’s mindset and motivations.
 
This deep dive into national policy will become a regular feature of our Channel.  This stuff matters: all the decisions we make, internally, must be anchored in the reality of Washington DC’s priority matrix.  One of the reasons we decided to restart the company was – precisely – because of the international attention that the Moon is getting these days.  Stay tuned!
 
(In the video, I reference Ken Murphy’s paper on the CisLunar EconoSphere.  It’s here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2027/1 and https://thespacereview.com/article/2033/1)

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Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group