NASA Moon-Shot Cities Blast Obama Cancellation

In cities where jobs depend on the NASA back-to-the-moon program, outraged locals see President Obama's move to shelve the program as a threat not only to the local economy but also to the American spirit of exploration. "People here care about going to the moon. The last thing they want to do is have our astronauts become cargo on some company's space ship," a radio show host in Huntsville, Ala., tells the AP.

The city's mayor also criticized the president's plan to scrap the Constellation program in favor of privately funded spacecraft: "We are in danger of diminishing that American spirit altogether," he wrote to the White House. Critics counter that Constellation, a moon program proposed by former President George W. Bush that would have constructed two rockets and a crew capsule, is too expensive and lacking in technological innovation.
(More NASA stories.)