Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Alabama last week for a meeting of the National Space Council, where he made a little news. "In Space Policy Directive-1, the president directed NASA to create a lunar exploration plan," the vice president said. "But as of today, more than 15 months later, we still don't have a plan in place. But Administrator Bridenstine told me, five minutes ago, we now have a plan to return to the moon."

(A day earlier, the White House issued a statement that said Donald Trump is "boldly putting Americans back on the moon." These guys really do love their adverbs.)

Pence's remarks drew hearty applause, though they were a little odd. As the Washington Post reported soon after. "Pence did not provide details on how the agency would achieve landing humans on the moon in the five-year time frame, a monumental goal NASA had been hoping to achieve by 2028. He provided no details on the cost or how the mission would unfold."

And, of course, by the vice president's own telling, he only learned about the "plan" to return to the moon by the year 2024 just minutes before beginning his speech.

Complicating matters, the "plan" appears to be missing a few things -- such as every relevant and practical detail.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday that the agency will need additional funding to meet a White House mandate to land people on the moon by 2024. But he did not say how much more money NASA would need or provide any specific details of how it plans to accomplish the mission. Speaking at a town hall meeting at NASA headquarters, Bridenstine made it clear NASA was scrambling to figure out how to get to the lunar surface before the presidential election in 2024.

It's true, of course, that when John F. Kennedy called for a manned mission to the moon, there was a lengthy list of unanswered questions as to how achieve such a goal, but Kennedy put his money where his mouth was -- and NASA, with a soaring budget, had the resources needed to make the dream a reality.

The Trump administration wants to return Americans to the moon and is apparently just hoping NASA will figure something out.

But I'm especially interested in the White House's target date: 2024. Maybe Team Trump picked a five-year timeframe because five is a common number to work with, but it wouldn't surprise me if the administration prioritized an endpoint at which Trump expects to still be in office.

Because this president would probably think it was cool if he could go on television and say, "I put Americans on the moon again."

Circling back to our earlier coverage, at a conference two years ago, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross described the administration’s vision for using Earth’s moon as “a type of gas station” for ships en route to other destinations, including Mars. When Ross was asked whether a gas station on the moon would happen in the next decade, the cabinet secretary said it’s coming “a lot sooner than that.”