RAND SIMBERG: How Congress Sabotages Space Exploration.

The end of the Shuttle program ends more than the Shuttle era. Historians in the future will note that it ended a false notion, one half a century old: that humanity would open up space through the application of command-economy government programs. The future, even the immediate future, of human spaceflight lies not with a single type of vehicle developed by and for a massive government bureaucracy, but with public/private partnerships that create a robust, competitive commercial spaceflight industry. This is the only practical way forward to close the gap between the end of the Shuttle and new domestic capability that will eliminate our reliance on the Russians.

Unfortunately, Congress, caring more about space pork than progress, continues to have other plans.

This is one where the Obama Administration is better than the Congressional Republicans.