Cancellation of Constellation - Good or Bad?

I am still sorting through the ramifications of the President's FY11 for our space biology community. I guess we don't care how we get into space, other than we have the necessary resources and capabilities to do so. Our science is not destination specific, but we do care what the destination is so we can do the research and engineering to enable exploration, especially in the area of life support. We want to reveal the understanding of gravity-dependent biological/chemical/physical (all intertwined) mechanisms using the environment of space. We want to develop closed loop life support systems. Do we need the moon to do this? I don't know, but we do need continual access to the space environment. As for the bigger picture for manned space flight, I look back to an exceprt of CAIB report (p.210).

"All members of the Board agree that Americaʼs future space efforts must include human presence in Earth orbit, and eventually beyond, as outlined in the current NASA vision. Recognizing the absence of an agreed national mandate cited above, the current NASA strategic plan stresses an approach of investing in “transformational technologies” that will enable the development of capabilities to serve as “stepping stones” for whatever path the nation may decide it wants to pursue in space. While the Board has not reviewed this plan in depth, this approach seems prudent. Absent any long-term statement of what the country wants to accomplish in space, it is difficult to state with any specificity the requirements that should guide major public investments in new capabilities. The Board does believe that NASA and the nation should give more attention to developing a new “concept of operations” for future activities – defining the range of activities the country intends to carry out in space – that could provide more specificity than currently exists. Such a concept does not necessarily require full agreement on a future vision, but it should help identify the capabilities required and prevent the debate from focusing solely on the design of the next vehicle."

I italicized the above words, in that lacking in specificity is where the problem may lie in the future for this nation's manned space flight activity. I don’t see any specificity in the Obama plan and I am beginning to think Obama’s plan has problems for manned space flight as a whole. Hopefully the details are there - maybe in the seven contracts announced, and I am just missing the details..