so we need a different vehicle to allow us to take this these heavier materials up that are going to build the spacecraft that take us out to the asteroids or take us on to mars. the other specific in here, the constellation program, it was behind schedule, it was overbudget. was it right to essentially abandon it and does that mean we are going to give up hope for, say, the millennium for returning to the moon? i don t think so at all. if you look at the program, let s ask the american taxpayer what would they prefer. would they prefer that we throw dollars away, throw good money after bad in a program that really could be retrofitted to do better work for us? or is it better to cut it off now when you look at what the annual budget of the united states is anyway, if we can save some money, let s save some money and put it where it really can be put to good use. i think the rest of the program as being described, once it really gets fully fleshed out and we see what all the deta
beyond that the constellation program which was completely canceled, the orion, the capsule will be resurrected from that and&it will be taken to the international space station as an escape vehicle. it will be in the next couple of years and there will be $3 million thrown into the space agency for the re-training of the workers that will be displaced. so this vision is a far cry from what the original was, although commercial operations will still be largely responsible for getting astronauts to the space station during the next five to ten years. kyra? so, you know, people had a lot of warning that they might lose their jobs. are you surprised by the outcry now? do you think the feeling is, okay, here we are. it s come down to the moment. president obama is going to be right there making this big speech, and, you know, this has been a part of our culture for such a long time. you know, everybody knew that
because they canceled the constellation program that was going to have us go back to the moon and then over to mars. here s what buzz said. what this nation needs in order to maintain its position as the 21st century leader in space exploration is a near term focus on lowering the cost of access to space and on developing key cutting edge technologies that will take us farther, further and faster, i believe this is the right program at the right time and i hope that nasa and our dedicated space community will embrace this new direction as much as i do. i applaud the president for his boldness and commitment. you know, it seems you know if, you take it buzz doesn t want nasa to continue but if you look deeper into it. he wants nasa to continue, stronger, further, mars and not just the moon projects. right, the moon projects, the spacecraft evidently will be a smaller version of what president bush wanted. orien is going to allow not going to go to the moon. he s going to allow
moments from now you are going to see the president walking up to that podium that this gentleman is walking up to. that s the kennedy space center, and you are going to hear about the future of the space program from the president. he is making an announcement coinciding with the fact that the budget for nasa has been increased, but a number of the programs that we associate with the space program are being discontinued, including the shuttle program, the constellation program to the to the to the moon. that s senator bill nelson, who is speaking right now. we will expect very shortly, i believe that s the nasa administrator behind him. in a moment we ll be seeing the president coming up there and having a discussion about the future of the space program. we ll keep an eye on that and bring it to you live as soon as it happens. bring you up to speed on the few top stories we re working on. in kansas city, every principal and vice principal will have to
and encountered technical problems that offered rocket programs and development encounter, its costs started to increase and the gap started to grow. so that job crisis was always looming no matter what. people either through self-delusion or nasa being very fuzz bewhat numbers were actually going to be lost, it was never clear about what would happen. now that the shuttle program is ending and there is no constellation program that is going to follow on and it wasn t going to follow on even before obama cut it, it looked like the job numbers were just in kennedy space center and that doesn t include other centers about 9,000 which here on the space coast of florida is a big loss because the local unemployment rate is about already 13%. yeah. so that number will be magnified in other centers as well. without constellation, there s a concern that that kind of loss