Giles Whittell had a misanalysis of the US space program at the Times of London yesterday (registration required):

President Obama is nothing if not rational. He came to office facing the collapse of the US economy and has since ordered a freeze on discretionary non-security spending. He has ring-fenced his education budget, committed the Treasury to paying $1 trillion (£690 billion) over ten years on health insurance subsidies, and still has two wars to fund. In the circumstances, Nasa’s quixotic lunge toward Mars with a “new generation” of distinctly old-fashioned rockets looked vulnerable at best. If Mr Obama has his way, it will be doomed.

I would dispute the assessment of the president’s rationality, but NASA (why can’t the Brits learn to capitalize acronyms?) wasn’t making a “lunge toward Mars,” quixotically or otherwise. It wasn’t even making a “lunge” toward the moon. It was more of a slow crawl, unlikely to ever get there. And it was a smart decision, regardless of the economic environment. No matter how wealthy we are as a nation, it would be foolish to spend tens of billions on so little capability as Constellation offered when we could have much more for much less, and much sooner.

The last graf doesn’t make much sense, either:

There are stronger strategic arguments for maintaining America’s lead beyond Earth’s orbit. If it steps back, China will become the world’s dominant space-faring nation and its goals there remain unclear. Mr Obama understands this. He also knows that the idea of journeying to the next frontier retains a powerful hold on the American psyche, which is why he claims that his plan to outsource research and development for new propulsion technologies will lead eventually to Mars. Yet the frail US economy leaves his hands tied. For at least ten years American astronauts will fly to space in Russian capsules, or not at all — because American consumers borrowed too much for their houses.

It’s not clear who would be the dominant space-faring nation if we were to truly “step back,” (in reality, by any sensible understanding of the phrase, there are no space-faring nations on this planet, and there never have been). China is certainly in no hurry to go anywhere, at their current pace, and the Russians remain far ahead of them. But as I noted in a comment over there, the notion that it will take ten years to put a capsule on a Delta or Atlas, or to get Dragon ready for crew, is a ludicrous one. And it was going to be at least seven years before Ares/Orion would be ready (for a cost of at least a billion dollars a launch, a point that the defenders repeatedly ignore).

Anyway, as a result of the shoddy reporting, Daffyd Ab Hugh (is that a pseudonym?) has an uninformed Anti-Obama rant over at Hot Air:

…it’s hardly a surprise that Barack H. Obama is in the process of killing the Constellation program proposed by (of course) President George W. Bush to return human beings, Americans, to the Moon, this time to stay; to explore lunar science and geology, investigate the origins of our solar system, and exploit the vast mineralogical, energy, and environmental resources found on our nearest neighboring planet.

No, it’s not a surprise to anyone who read the Augustine Report (and particularly to those who read between the lines) — the program was a disaster. But it wasn’t proposed by George Bush, and that’s not why it’s being cancelled. Bush proposed the Vision for Space Exploration, which survives in much better shape than it did under Constellation (with the exception of an explicit goal of moon first). Constellation was Mike Griffin’s deformed brain child.

And in quoting Congressman Bishop, he fails to note that he is the Congressman from ATK, whose oxen is most severely gored by the Constellation cancellation — the SRBs are built in his district.

I actually agree with the criticism of the president’s indifference to (and ignorance, perhaps even loathing of) American exceptionalism, but there are many better pieces of evidence for it than finally fixing a screwed- up space policy. I might email Ed Morrissey to see if I can get space for a rebuttal.