[polyfractal]

Didn't down-vote (or upvote for that matter), but I think this might be glossing over some details. My understanding is that Constellation was ridiculously over-budget, behind schedule and there was no reasonable way it would accomplish it's stated mission without a massive influx of cash. The Augustine Committee results were pretty damning. There's no way the program would have made it to the moon, let alone mars. Keeping Constellation running would have been a classic sunk-cost problem.

That said, while Constellation was canned, large components of it were/are reused by the Space Launch System (SLS), including the Orion crew capsule and Aries I/V rockets. So in reality Constellation lives on as SLS, albeit with a much more vague goal now. Cynics could argue it's even more of a jobs program than Constellation was.

As an aside, what'd you do at NASA? I'm super jealous! Thanks for taking the time to share your summary of the events, I largely agreed with what you wrote :)

[garmaine]

Program support for planetary science at the HQ level. Great place to work in the sense that I imagine Google to be — I was never the smartest person in the room.