Despite the grandiose visit to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) president Barack Obama’s space plan is still being divisive even with the announcements of a 2025 asteroid goal and a 2035 mission to orbit, but not land on, Mars
In the video above Buzz Aldrin says he wish he could have spoken to his ex-Apollo astronaut colleagues before they sent a letter condemning Obama’s plan
Florida Today lists a series of reactions from notable people here, as does NASAWatch with its report here; qouting media organisations including Time magazine and Fox News. Below SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk tells Bloomberg tv NASA’s Constellation programme was uneconomic. Here the Orlando Sentinel reports that Musk spoke to Obama during his KSC visit. You can find here Musk’s long statement endorsing Obama’s plan
While Utah Senator Orrin Hatch continues to take issue with the Obama plan. Hatch met with NASA administrator Charles Bolden and was not at all happy with the outcome
Talking of Bolden, watch his 15 April space summit conference overview spiel below
Yet despite all the media coverage of the event Clark Lindsey’s Hobbyspace reports that the US public still know very little about what is going on
This blogger often uses the “taxi driver” test. This simply test involves asking a taxi driver if they have heard about subject X. At the height of the president George Bush Constellation programme none of the drivers knew about it. Neither did they know about the Space Shuttles retirement
For more international reactions to NASA’s situation go here for one-time UK astronaut hopeful Kevin Fong’s article in UK national daily The Guardian newspaper and here for Al Jazeera’s take