Much of the mainstream response to Constellation’s cancellation and replacement by more effective spending reads like everything was going honky dory with Constellation in the first place. The reality is that this porker is already many years behind schedule and well along the path to failure. Rescuing Constellation would require dramatically increasing NASA’s budget and cutting out many of the other things NASA does. The first is improbably, to say the least, in the current environment. The second costs way more jobs than cancelling Constellation does and punishes success rather than failure.
All that the administration is proposing is that we recognize reality and refocus on things that might actually work. It spends less money and creates more jobs! What’s not to like?
If you care about a free and open frontier in space, are a US citizen, over 18 and can possibly get to DC next week Take Back Space is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring just a bit of reality about space to Capitol Hill. Don’t miss it.
We are transforming space from a government- owned bureaucratic program into a dynamic and inclusive frontier open to people. We are determined to convert the image held by many young people that the future will be worse than the present, and we reject the idea that the world's greatest moments are in its past. 
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I don't know if you were listening in on the news conference today, but some of the comments about Constellation really hit the nail on the head. You can listen to a replay @ 866-431-2903 or 203-369-0952
Statement by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420994main_2011_Budget_Ad…
"Now let’s discuss the Constellation Program. The Program was planning to
use an approach similar to Apollo to return astronauts to the Moon some 50
years after that program’s triumphs. The Augustine Committee observed that this
path was not sustainable, and the President agrees. They found that
Constellation key milestones were slipping, and that the program would not get
us back to the moon in any reasonable time or within any affordable cost. Far
more funding was needed to make our current approach work. The Augustine
Committee estimated that the heavy lift rocket for getting to the moon would not
be available until 2028 or 2030, and even then they found “there are insufficient
funds to develop the lunar lander and lunar surface systems until well into the
2030s, if ever." So as much as we would not like it to be the case, and taking
nothing away from the hard work and dedication of our team, the truth is that we
were not on a path to get back to the moon's surface. And as we focused so
much of our effort and funding on just getting to the Moon, we were neglecting
investments in the key technologies that would be required to go beyond"
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