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Obama's Plans for NASA Changes Met With Harsh Criticism
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
Harrison Schmitt's credentials as a space policy analyst include several days of walking on the moon. The Apollo 17 astronaut, who is also a former U.S. senator, is aghast at what President Obama is doing to the space program. "It's bad for the country," Schmitt said. "This administration really does not believe in American exceptionalism."
Schmitt's harsh words are part of a furious blowback to the administration's new strategy for NASA. The administration has decided to kill NASA's Constellation program, crafted during the Bush administration with an ambitious goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020. Obama's 2011 budget request would nix Constellation's rocket and crew capsule, funnel billions of dollars to new spaceflight technologies, and outsource to commercial firms the task of ferrying astronauts to low-Earth orbit.
The new strategy, however, has been met with outrage from many in the aerospace community. The entire congressional delegation from Florida, Democrats and Republicans alike, has sent a letter of protest to the president. Doubters fill op-ed pages and space blogs.
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