In front of Congress last summer, former NASA administration Mike Griffin framed President Obama's looming decision on manned space exploration in terms of two presidents. Barack Obama, he said, could inspire like Kennedy or defund like Nixon. Today the proposed White House budget boldly goes where both presidents have gone before. NASA's constellation program initiated in the wake of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster. Today it happens to mark seven years since that awful tragedy and constellations goal sent astronauts to the International Space Station. Return them to the moon by the year 2020. The Obama budget cancels constellation which is described as behind schedule over budget and lacking innovation. NASA's current administrator Charles Bolden saying on a conference call today quote, we were not a sustainable path to get back to the moon's surface. So if you're like MSNBC's Monica Novotny and you own land on the moon, sell now. The White House proposes spending money in the private sector instead of six billion over five years to commercial spaceship manufacturers. NASA would then pay those companies to fly astronauts into outer space. Obama budget director Peter Orzag today explaining Americans will eventually explore infinity and beyond. We just can't spend infinity and or beyond. We do have a actually a small budget increase for NASA. What we're saying is let's redirect that towards longer range R&D, advanced robotics, research and development, and find those new technologies that will actually allow us to go further in space and not just repeat what we've already done. Let's turn to the chief astronomer for the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia Derrick Pits. Derrick, welcome back. Hi, Keith. The last time you were here we talked about this lava tube on the moon that would be perfect for colonization. The White House didn't see that segment. The problem is they didn't see the price tag on that segment. There really is. So they were really in trouble on this whole program from the beginning because as you said, you know, it really cost too much to do what they were planning to do. They're behind schedule over budget on this and at the end of this, they wouldn't even end up with a vehicle to land on the surface of the moon with. So it was really doomed from the start. They were just filling a gap in what they what people knew of as the program. Thinking of the Mars rover and the telescope, the Kepler, even the Hubble after the initial problems with it. NASA seems to do unmanned pretty well. Does the move to farm out the manned part of it to entrepreneurs make any sense? It actually does make sense because when you look at the whole program, NASA does a really great job as you said with all the unmanned stuff. And the problem with the man part is that it's extraordinarily expensive and it really takes a lot for Congress to get behind such a mission because of the great expense that's involved. At the same time on the commercial side, there is commercial development coming along that will put people into space. So what they're trying to do is to put the money where it's best spent on the unmanned stuff and also give the commercial space sector an opportunity to blossom where it really can avoid a lot of the pitfalls of working within government and trying to get Congress to agree on everything. And all that sort of red tape bureaucracy that's holding up that part of the program. So is that the next man who steps on the moon will he be going there as an employee of someone or will he be going there to do some mining or will he have paid $3 million for the privilege? I think you're going to have all of those things mixed in together already. You know, Keith, you can go visit International Space Station for a mere $25 million. Yeah. But for all the rest of the exploration stuff, here's what's going to happen is that it'll be a mixture of the governmental stuff that will have additional support provided by the commercial space sector. So we'll put all of these assets together to build the exploratory program we want to build. And it's not that we're not going to go to the moon and go to Mars. It's just that it's not going to be done in the way that has, that we've done it classically. It'll be a new hybrid way of doing it that involves the commercial aspect. Mr. Bolden, the current director of NASA, says this is going to allow NASA to explore more of the solar system and faster than it would have otherwise. Is he just saying that because his budget has been gutted or is there truth to it? No, I think there's actually a lot of truth to it. When you look at it, one of the things that NASA has done extraordinarily well and people have sort of missed the boat on is the exploration of the solar system. I hope everybody realizes that by the time we get to Pluto in 2015, NASA will have explored very, very closely every planet of the solar system. And that's a remarkable achievement. So pushing off this other work to another group that can do it better only makes it easier for NASA to do what it does best. Is Pluto a planet again or do we have to go and ask them or what is it? You know, in my book, I've always thought it was a planet and the plutonians really don't care what we think, Keith. Marvin the plutonian. Do you like the idea though of the essentially private enterprise being taxi drivers for NASA people? Yes, I do like this. And I think it's a good thing to be done because there's a tremendous amount of capability over in the commercial space sector. And right now, even as we speak, there's a space port being built in New Mexico. And so that means that the capability is there. We should take advantage of it to achieve what we want to achieve. Derek Pitts, Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, always our great pleasure and we always learn something. Thank you, Ken and Lisa. Thank you, Keith. My pleasure.