NASA's Black Hole Budget

Transcript

the Obama administration's vision for NASA has touched off such a heated debate because of what they have planned for the agency and liftoff of discovery this is a watershed moment for NASA it is an abrupt departure a dramatic departure from the way they've done things in the past gone is the Bush administration plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 a 110 billion dollar project called constellation that the government has already sunk nine billion dollars into it liftoff gone too is the space shuttle which the Bush administration had ordered into retirement by the end of this year Atlantis on its way for the next five years at least NASA will be out of the business of launching astronauts in dispensed US astronauts are going to be forced to hitch rides on Russian Soyuz rockets to and from the International Space Station at more than 50 million dollars a seat good afternoon everybody the administration is promising to build a new rocket for deep-space exploration and while a manned mission to Mars is still a goal there is no timetable former astronauts including Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell are slamming the plan in an open letter to President Obama they urged him to drop this misguided proposal transitions are always difficult but one administration advocates Apollo 11s Buzz Aldrin now pitted against his peers he says Americans have already been to the moon and the focus needs to shift people with patients with an open mind and the willingness to listen would understand that this is a doable exciting program the Obama administration says revamping the country's goals in space will create 2500 new jobs but not enough to match this 7,000 that will be lost when the space shuttle stops flying Jeff Glor CBS News New York you