No it doesn’t. Your uber-partisan discourse is a perfect example of why. Whatever Obama does, you will oppose it. That partisanship works both ways, by the way. No, in space exploration, presidents don’t lead anymore. Bush2 tried to lead, with his VSE, but then gave up on it. Presidents just don’t command the respect they used to. It’s been that way for a while now. The JFK model is a legacy that doesn’t really pertain anymore.

“John Kennedy was a very exceptional Democrat indeed, to’ve put such a driving force into America really achieving something big, in astronautics.”

With all due respect to JFK, what he put such a driving force into was beating the exceptionalistic crap out of the Russians. Achieving something big in astronautics was a sidelight for him. His “grandiose space adventure” was a success, but it is well understood that Kennedy had no designs about setting something into motion that wouldn’t come to a conclusion. It was a hugely expensive, and hugely important geopolitical stunt.

“If only Barack could’ve done good by future history, and have allowed Constellation to eventually’ve seen the light of day—-which it would have!!”

Ah ha ha ha! “Eventually”? Yep, maybe. Constellation might have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was looking to be a REALLY long tunnel. Someone had to take the responsibility of pressing RESET on Constellation, which was simply unaffordable. Obama did that, and thereby did good by future history. His legacy won’t be deep space human space flight, but rather human space flight fiscal responsibility.

I had no idea that Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush1, Clinton, and Bush2 had anything to do with decisions in 2010. Yes, they were Low Earth Orbit presidents as well. Bush1 and Bush2 pretended not to be for a little while, but it didn’t take long for them to effectively swing the wrecking ball at NASA’s ambitions for humans in deep space. They did that, by the way, without admitting that they did it. They just turned their back on it. Bush2 wrecked Constellation, which he started, by essentially looking the other way while it flew out of control. Obama cleaned up his mess.

But lets face it. To the extent that dramatic progress in human spaceflight is dependent on POTUS, and to the extent that the new political modus operandi is opposition by the other party to any kind of success by POTUS (yes, it sure won’t stop with Obama) dramatic progress in federally funded human spaceflight simply won’t happen. The opposing party will simply never allow a president to achieve the kind of legendary success that JFK had in starting Apollo.

The real problem isn’t money. If Obama raised the flag and told us we were going to head to Mars and beyond, the GOP would come down on him like a ton of bricks, with major quibbles about at least his wrongheaded way of doing it. I’m afraid our political structure no longer really permits leadership to be expressed in expensive, grand adventures. I think you’re living in the past if you think that it can.

Hard to argue with that, and I don’t think anyone is. It’s a non-argument. While one might prefer that we reach out faster, the funds available don’t seem to allow it. The real argument is about time scales. Sure we can pull the plug on ISS and spend that money on a lunar base. But didn’t we try that once before? Yep, but we decided that we couldn’t afford it, after flushing a huge amount of money down the drain. We now have a new program to flush a huge amount of money down the drain (SLS) that doesn’t even have an explicit goal. Is that progress?

But the idea that going in circles doing zero-g research is going “no place” is simply defining “place” as a distant rock. Not too many rocks that are even accessible really, and the usefulness of those rocks for our presence on them is arguable. The premise that ISS research doesn’t blaze the trail for going further is amusing, most simply considering the Boeing ISS-EP concept, which is to use ISS elements for a cis-lunar hab. We’re testing them in LEO right now.

Let’s admit it. The real frustration here is that NASA hasn’t bitten in to anything really *exciting*. It’s not about doing something useful, but about doing something exciting. Many would call such a wished-for strategy a stunt-driven one, and stunt-driven strategies do have a lot of popular appeal, though not necessarily for federal funding.

That being the frustration here, a more general and defensible frustration is that NASA hasn’t really committed to doing anything in particular with humans in space. NASA hasn’t really concluded that human spaceflight has a purpose, except maybe as a mode of travel. We need to travel to the stars! Uh, we do? NASA’s real failing is that it hasn’t presented an ultimate rationale for human spaceflight. Of course, that failing doesn’t belong exclusively to NASA, as NASA is an implementation agency, rather than an “ultimate rationale” agency.

“Go back and read what he said”

Government money going to private contractors. I don’t know why this is so hard for you to understand – NASA never built their own rockets and spacecraft, THEY PAID CONTRACTORS TO BUILD THEM.

NASA didn’t run the Shuttle program, THEY PAID CONTRACTORS TO RUN THEM.

Show me what is so different between you and Newt? The Taxpayer is still paying.

That’s right, it isn’t.

While SpaceX has flown an unmanned prototype of its manned DragonRider spacecraft into space four times now, Orion has flown no higher than a helicopter could carry it.

While CST-100’s contractor, Boeing, has developed every spacecraft NASA has ever launched with an astronaut aboard, Orion’s contractor, Lockheed, has never developed a manned spacecraft before, ever.

That puts Commercial Crew years ahead of SLS/Orion despite starting five years later and receiving a funding profile 1/5 as much.

Orion: All hype & no flight.

“Still stuck in the past”

You’re the one that measures everything to Apollo – if that’s not being stuck in the past, I don’t what is…