Well, that's going to make the next NewSpace industry conference....um... interesting....

Bearing in mind that Burt was himself part of an effort by the 'commercial guys' to go beyond Earth orbit, I find his comments particularly... erm... odd. Plus there's the whole "we shouldn't rely on free enterprise because it might fail". What kind of attitude is that for an American (and a successful entrepreneur at that) to have?? :-p The (very brief) article doesn't make it clear what Burt thinks we should be using, but it should be pretty damned obvious that it's not Constellation. That is D-E-A-D, and even the defibrillator of stimulus funding isn't going to make it walk again. Maybe it's something DIRECT-shaped? I guess we'll find out in due course...

Sigh. I can almost hear Sen. Shelby cackling with laughter from here...

Update: Clark has more details on Burt's actual views, which aren't quite as black-and-white as the WSJ paints them.. He laments the perceived loss of ambition in deep-space exploration, rather than lambasting the transfer of manned LEO capability to the commercial sector.

Burt says:

"I am concerned to see NASA manned spaceflight disappear, since they provided world leadership in the '60s and part of the '70s. The result was America’s universities being the leader in science/engineering Ph.D.s. Many American kids will be depressed by the thought that our accomplishments will not be continued and thus America will fall deeper away from our previous leadership in engineering/science/math. I believe our future success depends on our ability to motivate our youth."

Personally, I would have thought a whole slew of new American manned vehicles carrying more people into orbit much more frequently to multiple destinations would be pretty exciting, but there you go. All that Constellation was going to achieve (maybe by 2030) was flags and footprints. Again. We need a more affordable, sustainable and robust programme of exploration, and that means multiple providers enabling reliable and inexpensive lift to orbit.