I do not support the Ares or Constellation programs. The whole Vision for Exploration and return to the Moon was a bad idea. We couldn't support it financially. We've already been to the Moon, and of course everyone doesn't want to get on board because we can't get back there again. We do not have the resources and experience to get there before 2020. The best way not to lose a race (China plans to put a man there by 2020) is not to get into one. I think the best situation is to have companies (Admiral Lagrange's L3 Station LLC anyone?) get to where they want to go and perhaps be subsidized by the govenment. Look at this problem, we proposed to go to the Moon, now we changed it. Lockheed/Orbital (and others) was building Orion but now are going to have job problems since those projects are cut. It would be great to have a company put a outpost on the Moon. Or Bigelow can go out and mine an asteroid. Or his space hotel. Or we can open the first cord blood stem cell bank for Martians on Mars. But its all a luxery and not sustainable.
The problem I see is a balance between the government and the private sector. I think that NASA should essentially disappear or take a very pull backed approach. It is nothing but red tape. 50+% of all the projects are behind schedule and over budget. And we're doing repetitive missions in space. Waste of time. However the flip of the coin is that we are now reliant on yet-to-be proven companies. Since NASA is not the NASA from the 60s/70s, we are expecting that SpaceX can do the same in the same time (less than 10 years) which they can't. So it isn't a matter that I don't believe they can't. I very much want SpaceX to succeed but I don't see them succeeding on schedule. We are going to have to use foreign launch services until then.
The problem I see with everything is a unsustainable space bubble. There's more companies than interest and would envitiably pop. Public interest needs to increase. I think billionaires that are interested in investing (Bigelow, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos) are doing the right thing to invest rather than utilize government dollars (okay, they aren't available yet). But I think the dollars needs to come privately--as a show of public interest. For public interest, I think small firms need to want to have their own satellites, own sciences, and essentially want to do space. People are going to want to go into Bigelow's hotel. Want to stay on the Moon. Since its a big sunk cost right away until more people are swooned to get involved.
The current proposed funding wouldn't going necessarily toward that. You are being fooled. It is simply promotig the government's agenda on a different front. They are going to go for climate change research which is the bulk of the stimulus money. Many companies get funding for hokey research projects or directed by the government on projects that never ge used.
Look into beaming propulsion systems. There's a competition out in the Mojave with VERY IMPRESSIVE footage show casing beaming propulsion systems. These guys volunteer to do it themselves. They are directing what we see next. They are pushing where they think space needs to go, not the government. A grant for a project like this would be tremendous! But I can almost promise we will not fund that sort of project. Google's Lunar X Prize is another great example of private funding to get private interest in space going.
Scaled composites had people die during its rocket test for SpaceShipTwo a few years ago. No one knows what Jeff Bezos is doing, some specute its plasma based system.
The choice of the booster for Ares was chosen because there's an abundance of them, now useless. Going to the Moon the first time didn't yield more science than a robot mission. But it was the GLORY that we landed there. Like the glory of SpaceX putting a rocket up, or Weyland-Yustani terraforming Mars. I believe space is driven by competition and not cooperation.
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