What does this trial balloon mean?  The is longstanding precedent for a barrier between NASA and Department of Defense is due in part to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.  Bloomberg.com news reports:

President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China...

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

The article then describes that launch vehicles would be shared and emphasizes the rivalry between Chinese deep space goals and US fears for its state of the art, real time battlefield command, control and communications systems.

However what is being left out of the equation of rivalry is "why not cooperation in space" like the International Space Station project.  Are we, as a people, still stuck in the old 20th Century way of aggression and war making for a nation state to behave?