I knew this would happen - President Obama's decision to kill the manned space program has provoked pushback of the worst kind. A letter was written by Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Eugene Cernan blasting Obama for his moves against NASA. Had it been Buzz Aldrin, I wouldn't have thought much of it. He has a reputation of being a bit out there - I would have expected it of him. Armstrong is notoruiously one who doesn't look for publicity. Throw in Lovell; known by everyone because of Apollo 13 and Gene Cernan to boot, and you have a REALLY bad story.
I don't know what President Obama is going to say at his planned 'Space Summit' but he better get ready to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Whatever he is doing; he needs to stop right now and get to work on one hell of a speech. He might not care about space, but at lot of Americans do. If he doesn't articulate that he believes in the dream, expect to see major problems.
Here is the text of the astronauts letter.
"The United States entered into the challenge of space exploration under President Eisenhower’s first term, however, it was the Soviet Union who excelled in those early years," the letter begins."Under the bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and with the overwhelming approval of the American people, we rapidly closed the gap in the final third of the 20th century, and became the world leader in space exploration. ...
"When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development, an extension of the International Space Station operation until 2020, long range planning for a new but undefined heavy lift rocket and significant funding for the development of commercial access to low earth orbit.
"Although some of these proposals have merit, the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.
"America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz (at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future) until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves. The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.
"It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.
For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.
Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.
Neil Armstrong
Commander, Apollo 11
James Lovell
Commander, Apollo 13
Eugene Cernan
Commander, Apollo 17
UPDATE:
Seems that pushback from these three astronauts - as well as a second letter signed by a bunch more astronauts (thanks, Rimjob) has had an effect on President Obama. He has decided to save the Orion space capsule in a limited form - sending it up to the ISS on an existing rocked (unmanned) and keeping it there as a lifeboat. That'll save some jobs - not really sure how much good it does for the space program in general, but it's something. Of a bit more value is the decition to build a heavy lift rocket - again, though, they won't chose the rocket design until 2015 - which would be near the end of a second term assuming he's re-elected. It's better than nothing - at least it seems he gets it - but frankly, I'm not all that impressed. I hope that pressure it kept up on him to make more commitments to space - and to act sooner.
Here's a link to the Time Article laying out the changes.