Neil Armstrong Blasts Obama’s Space PlanApril 14, 2010
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON -- Apollo 11 hero Neil Armstrong Tuesday lashed out at President Barack Obama's decision to axe NASA plans to return to the Moon, describing the move as "devastating" to the US space program.
Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, was one of three former astronauts who signed an open letter to Obama ahead of his visit to Florida on Thursday where he will deliver a space policy speech.
Budget plans unveiled two months ago proposed scrapping the Constellation program, which was developing a new rocket to take Americans back to the moon; and giving private industry the role of building the space vehicles to take humans to the International Space Station (ISS).
However Armstrong and fellow Apollo program commanders James Lovell and Eugene Cernan bemoaned the proposals for the US space effort in a letter released to NBC News on Tuesday.
Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan said that while some of Obama's NASA budget proposals had "merit," the decision to cancel the Constellation program, the Ares 1 and Ares V rockets and the Orion spacecraft, was "devastating."
unhappycamper comment: I will miss the Hubble telescope when it falls into the ocean because We The People no longer have the ability so send men into space.
p.s. You Guys should scrape all the Mars stuff. We got no bucks here so we ain't going.