In Florida, president explains controversial plan for NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL - Minutes after Air Force One rolled to a stop on the same runway that returning space shuttles use, President Barack Obama on Thursday declared himself a proud member of the space generation. It was a statement meant to answer critics who say his plan for NASA will destroy America's space program.

“Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am,” President Obama insisted. “But we’ve got to do it in a smart way, and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things that we’ve been doing and thinking that somehow is going to get us to where we want to go.”

The president's budget for 2011 calls for the cancellation of the Constellation program – the series of capsules and shuttle-derived rockets meant to replace the space shuttle and carry astronauts back to the moon. Much of those billions of dollars in funding would instead be used to encourage private companies to design and build their own fleet of spaceships.

But faced with mounting criticism from Florida space workers, congressional representatives, and even former moonwalkers like Neil Armstrong, the president proposed salvaging one element of the program – the Orion capsule – and turning it into a lifeboat of sorts for the astronauts on the space station.

The new plan was met with applause inside the Kennedy Space Center facility which is normally used by astronauts to suit up for launch. The audience of science and space industry luminaries – which included everyone from TV's Bill Nye to Buzz Aldrin and other former astronauts – all had been invited.

None of the rank-and-file space center workers – thousands of whom stand to lose their jobs as the shuttle program ends – were in the audience, much less in the building.

That did not stop some from voicing their opinions. Outside space center property, protestors gathered to show support for the space shuttle program and the Constellation program.

“I don't think its going to help,” worried retired NASA contractor Lee Starrick. “I think the president is going to come here and say a lot of things to make the politicians happy; he's not going to be saving that many jobs at KSC."

To cushion that blow, the president said he would spend $40 million to help displaced workers find new work, along with $6-billion on improvements to KSC itself. But Obama insists his plan will actually create 2,500 more jobs in Florida than the Constellation program would have.

Many in the industry say it's about time.

“There is now hope for a bright future in space exploration,” offered Elon Musk, the dotcom billionaire who went on to found SpaceX, one of the companies hoping to compete for NASA's business. “The new plan is to harness our nation's unparalleled system of free enterprise (as we have done in all other modes of transport), to create far more reliable and affordable rockets.”

With private companies handling the transportation of astronauts and cargo to the space station, the president challenged NASA to instead focus on developing new technologies that would enable trips to asteroids and the moons of Mars by the 2030s, and eventually, a landing on Mars itself.

“And I expect to be around to see it,” he added.