Five months ago, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama released NASA’s budget proposal for 2011. The plan included the surprisingly drastic decision to cancel NASA’s follow-on to the space shuttle program, the Constellation program. Constellation would provide the means to service and utilize the international space station and escape low Earth orbit to begin exploring again. I believed at the time that such a dramatic reversal risked ceding American leadership in human spaceflight for the foreseeable future.