President Obama is facing pressure from most of the NASA community not to cut any space programs. Space is a high tech jobs program and NASA has contractors in every state keeping up the political pressure to keep up the spending to keep the highly trained workers employed. As a member of the post-Star Trek generation my heart is with those at NASA who want go to full-speed ahead with the whistles and the bells. That means a yes to every toy a space engineer can dream up.

In the Star Trek universe money has been abolished so Star Fleet doesn't have to worry about funding. In the real world, space work and space toys cost money. The USA has to set priorities on how and where to spend its scarce money. And when it does spend its money and other  resources the USA need to spend where the need is the greatest. The USA does need to go full-speed ahead with smarter space programs, that will provide continual scientific research and technological development. This could be done with unmanned vehicles. Maybe it could be done using private contractors. In any event, to loosely borrow a little Mr. Spockism -- if the human race is going to "live long and prosper" as the human race, we are going to have to keep going into space. And like Spock, we have to be wise, prudent and logical.