The word is out, the STS (Shuttle Transport System) will be retired as planned, Constellation will be put on hold, and commercial rocket makers will assume a greater role in day to day transport services:
President Barack Obama will ask Congress to extend International Space Station operations through at least 2020 but abandon NASA's current plans to return U.S. astronauts to the moon ... The president's 2011 budget request, due to be delivered to Congress on Monday, will direct NASA to invest in the development of U.S. commercial space taxi services ... The move is meant to reduce reliance on Russian crew transportation services after the retirement of America's aging shuttle fleet.
Constellation was a Bush era approach that consolidated all human spaceflight efforts into a single huge program. Some experts worried that it would have crippled NASA's budget for years while better solutions were rapidly becoming available in the private sector. Brett Alexander, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, noted that NASA's investment in the commercial spaceflight industry will create "thousands of high-tech jobs in the United States, especially in Florida, while reducing the spaceflight gap and preventing us from sending billions to Russia." He added that it's comparable to the U. S. Airmail Act in the early days of aviation, which "spurred the growth of an entire new industry that now adds billions to the US economy every year."
The new 'Obama plan' is a far more inclusive space program: people will feel more plugged in to NASA when entrepreneurs -- see Elon Musk for example -- are bringing a silicon valley feel to the space program and using technology (like live video streaming) to allow kids and adults alike to actually participate. And, while NASA will still direct US space exploration, the agency will have cheaper, commercial 'space taxis' manufactured right here in the US, and they'll have more money to pay more fare. That should translate into more missions, more people, and more payload into space over the next decade or so than in the entire last fifty years combined.