Comments from feedback form - "The opposing argument was not ..."

The opposing argument was not represented in a credible way, but the article did reliably accomplish its goal as a press release for the POTUS. An accurately represented counterargument would be that the President not only had ended human spaceflight at NASA indefinitely with the cancellation of the Constellation program, resulting in an inevitable knowledge vacuum surrounding the piloting of spacecraft within NASA but also wasted billions of dollars in penalties by the cancellation of those contracts and furthermore the outsourcing of piloting human spacecraft to foreign nations.

If you had taken the time to read the article, you would have seen that the Constellation Program was retained, at least in a large part. The Orion capsule is to have development continued; hell, Obama even made provision for a new rocket instead of the Ares launchers. There's really no longer any downside to his plans, other than the shuttle retiring, which is, no doubt, why no-one's come up with a significant counter-argument.

While The space shuttle clearly needed to be retired (and replaced with a robust multi-stage rocket system), Outsourcing human spaceflight to private venture capitalists seems an unpromising and frankly dangerous option for the American Space Program. Granted, I would've expected a move like this from the Republicans, but to see it coming from Obama is disheartening indeed. Also the "Propulsion Breakthrough" that Obama seems to be investing his hopes in, seems more science fiction that reality. Despite massive improvements in precision and efficiency, Basic propulsion technology has scarcely improved since the 1960's. Perhaps this is yet another case of the "faith in the magic bullet of technology" that all too many leaders seem to believe will end the worlds problems, whether it be with Climate change, Peak oil, or our ability to explore space.