our wonderful NASA desided to piss away the next 40 years of human space flight to build a hunk of complex junk that can BARELY Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth.NASA doesn't write its own budget, the Congress does that. Johnson's and Nixon's war in Vietnam ate the Apollo program. I love that scene in the movie "Apollo 13" where the politician says to Lovell, "if there is an Apollo 14," then goes on to complain that, having beaten the Russians to the Moon, there wasn't any further point to funding Apollo. The short attention span of most the public regarding space is well summed up by those fictionalized remarks.
AGAIN. I'm not pissed that Apollo went poof. I realize it was a race, that we won, to imply get to the moon. Apollo unltimately failed becaue political pressure was such that they only cared about the second we crossed the finish line, versus what we would actually do when the race was over.
Fine, cut the budget. Get your house in order. Take a decade or two "off" to do something LESS grandiose. But what happened? NASA desides to spend a massive chunk of it's funding to build the most complex machine in human history to go 300 miles up.
The whole shuttle concept was a waste of 40 years of Human space travel. It has sucked the joy out of it. Childrens dreams of being an astronaut have been replaced with being in a boy band or being Britney Spears.
Was it going to take a hit with the budget cuts? Sure. Did it have to sink to such a low that it is today? Nope.