Obama's official site still claims (Warning: PDF http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf ) that it will "delay the NASA Constellation Program for five years." That's not defining priorities; that's disbandment of a very large and very smart workforce. I have yet to cast my lot with any candidate, and this is the only issue preventing me from whole-heartedly supporting Obama.

Ha, fiscal responsibility? He's talking out of both sides of his face. One side says 'I support NASA'. The other side pillages the NASA budget to fund other initiatives, further compromising our geo-political position when it comes to space. Might as well start negotiating with the Russans and Chinese for access to space right now if he gets elected. Make no mistake, both would exact a price that goes beyond money. And using the 'savings' from the Iraq war? If I'm not mistaken, that's money we wouldn't normally be spending in the first place, so he's advocating an increase in government spending by implying that he would continue to use money we wouldn't normally spend. In addition, while the Iraq situation isn't desirable, it is pure hallucination to think that he alone could single handedly bring an end to the conflict and get 150,000 troops home in the timeframe he proposes.

I can't believe people cannot see the naievete that reeks from this misguided agenda.

Change? Yeah, he'll bring change, but you have to stop and ask, is this the right change? I would say, no, thank you to the kind of change he's advocating. I'm all for hope, and a bright outlook, but having a positive attitue about changing things for the worse just doesn't fly with me. Sorry. I don't reallly like McCain either, but if I have to choose at least the platform he's pitching is in the general direction of my thinking. Obama is no where near the mark.

He talks of Hope, yeah, I hope I still have a job in the aerospace industry if he gets elected.

Cheers!

"While Andujar said he came to the event undecided about his candidate preference, he was no longer undecided when he left."

I hope by that statement Andujar means he has now decided on either Hillary or McCain. Because this is just more dodging from Obama. He has never actually spoken about space or manned space flight without being questioned first. He has also never spoken favorably of manned space flight. NASAs priorities are more defined now then they have been in years. He aims to destroy that definition. Also, mind you, Orion was never intended to go to ISS, its mission is the Moon, anything less is selling the program far short, and that is precisely what he wants to do.

According to the link, Obama still intends to delay Constellation by 5 years to fund the education plan. I'm not sure where he expects to get all the money, since he says he supports Orion, and most of the Constellation spending is for Ares 1/Orion in the relevant time period. Also, even NASA Administration Griffin, a great advocate of ESAS, agrees that Ares 1 and Orion don't make sense without continuing to Ares V. Without Ares V they are just an expensive way to make an expensive ISS transport system that will compete using its political jobs advantage against our nation's commercial space industry.

Anyway, beyond all that, it seems that killing the high-profile NASA "Moon and beyond" plan for an unrelated education program would be a big, glaring wake-up call (or go to sleep call or party all night call, rather) to any students planning science, technology, and math careers.

If Obama's plan is to cancel Constellation if he becomes President, he should at least have an education plan that is in some way directly supportive of space. For example, use a good chunk of the funds for:

- more scholarships and graduate assistantships specifically for majors related to space, like the various Earth sciences (which use satellite data heavily), astronomy, aerospace engineering, space policy, space law, GIS, and so on.

- more University space projects that students can participate in.

- Teachers in Space (or even Students in Space) - giving rides on parabolic flights, rocket racer planes, high-altitude balloon flights, suborbital flights, smallsats, and even orbital flights to excellent teachers, students, or their experiments or other contributions.

- more space, science and technology competitions for students of all ages like the ones you see on Spaceref (FIRST, Team America Rocketry Challenge, Great Moonbuggy Race, etc). Bigger competitions like Centennial Challenges that are open to students and non-students would also help, as they usually involve student teams, student-oriented sub-contests, and educational content.

Most of this can be done on a very reasonable budget, and would leave plenty of funds to address other NASA areas that Obama supports like robotic space probes and climate change studies, as well as the unrelated education program. It could be implemented in a way that gives special attention to balance unfair social conditions, like the Lunar X PRIZE bonus prizes or the Teachers in Space plan that awards extra flights to disadvantaged school districts. It's disappointing that Obama plans to fund an unrelated education program with NASA funds without *directly* addressing ways that education and space are complimentary.

Obama's strength is his politics on social welfare, and ultimately, the base of welfare dependent voters who rely on the free money and large government machine. They are not aware of or worried about science and math in the schools, or, for the most part, space exploration. This is truly science fiction to them in today's day and age.

One might not want to confuse Obama's message of 'delay' of core NASA programs with the reality of 'cancellation.'

Once the money is deferred or fully taken away from the NASA programs, it will never return. If you have been in government service for some time, you know this is often more true than not, as a rule.

He offers no firm time line for the return to the vision of exploration. He also offers no real tangible return on investment of those lost exploration dollars. Both of these facts bother me.

As an intellectual, this bothers me as I feel that I am being pandered to to accept an unconditional promise of delay with the real possibility of the total loss of vision for space exploration funding, as an appeasement of my concern for better education funding in our schools. There are no guarantees that the money on education will be spent well.

For someone who likes to paint himself as a "Kennedy-esque" candidate, Obama is a doing a great job of saying he intends to destroy forever one of the last vestiges of JFK's Presidency: a robust manned space program, unequalled in the world and a bridge to the future. So he intends to educate more young people?! Well, good! But with a severely weakened aerospace community, just WHERE will the graduates end up working?! This will outsource *forever* these jobs to Europe and China. What sort of 'science' will these graduates actually do -- ever better shoot-em-up game graphics, ways to better SIMULATE space travel in BAD Sci-Fi movies, better viagra, better ways to measure carbon levels, better compression codecs for internet downloading... You get the idea. Dull, dull, MUNDANE.

Editor's note: the poster (Matt Black) is from New Zealand.