The president's plan would add $1 billion or roughly $200 million per year to NASA's five-year, $86-billion budget in a three-pronged proposal that calls for finishing the International Space Station by 2010, beginning work on a manned exploration vehicle and a return visit to the Moon between 2015 and 2020. "Bush's vision represents a definitive change in NASA's direction," Coy Davidson, vice president in Houston for Colliers International, tells GlobeSt.com. He says NASA's programs in recent years have focused on developing new technologies and didn't represent the type of "Lewis and Clark" explorative approach now proposed.

Davidson says Johnson Space Center in NASA/Clear Lake clearly stands to benefit since it's responsible for manned missions. It's his assessment that the 5.6-million-sf office inventory, with a 15.1% vacancy, is unprepared for sudden growth because it has few large chunks of contiguous space.

Davidson says a 123,972-sf block at 3700 Bay Area Blvd., a Trizec-owned property, was open, but Boeing recently filled 45,000 sf. The second-largest block of available office space is 70,000 sf at Clear Lake Commerce Center at 17146 Feathercraft Lane plus there's a 68,628-sf chunk up for sublease in the Raytheon Building at 2224 Bay Area Blvd.