“The government has decided to stop doing something that it does badly. That’s a rare occurrence, so pause to savor it. This week, President Obama announced that he was putting the kibosh on George W. Bush’s $100 billion Constellation program, which had the short term goal of getting Americans back on the moon by 2020. This was a reasonable response to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) recent history with manned missions — a long, sad tale of bureaucratic woe, complete with unreliable cost estimates, missed deadlines, and limited scientific payoff. And even this big move is far from revolutionary: NASA’s overall budget will continue to grow, if only by a modest 2 percent. ” (02/04/10)