Chopping the U.S.'s Only Current Spacecraft Development Program

Neil Armstrong says don't cut it.  We'll lose vital expertise and infrastructure for the long-shot hope that commercial launch services will eventually fill the gap, and in the meantime will be wholly dependent on the Russians for manned access to space.  Trashing a 10 billion dollar investment doesn't sit well with him either.
Buzz Aldrin says chop away and good riddance.  His thinking is that this move will free up money for other NASA priorities (good ones too: ISS operating funds, planetary science, and Mars mission planning), and spur private manned access to space.


My take: the both make valid points, but why isn't the damned thing flying already?  Yeah, I know: money.  But it's not like we had to – expensively – invent everything completely from scratch either.  Ten billion wasn't enough?  In constant 2005 dollars that's about 10% of what we spent on all of Apollo.  Most damming though is that it's been SEVEN YEARS since since Columbia crashed and the decision was made to go with Constellation.  That's longer than the initial "go" for Mercury to fully operational Gemini spacecraft.  The whole Constellation program reeks of development hell.


Here, go read up on it a Wikipedia (and keep going from there) and make up your own mind.