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Kennedy space center in florida. >> table nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before the decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. >> reporter: to the moon we went, as j.f.k. promised, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. now the space program that gave us mercury, apollo, gemini is at a crossroads. shuttle program is coming to a close. follow on constellation program that was supposed to take to us the moon and mars canceled. so today, at the kennedy space center, president obama stood before an audience wanting to hear a clea...

>> yeah, and you know what? we've already had a million people log on this week. bill: whoa! martha: a million? >> yes, a million. now, when we started this, i was really worried that everyone was going to say no to everything, because they are concerned about more government spending and higher taxes. i was wrong. yesterday, we had people ask about the president's plan to end nasa's constellation program, basically putting men back on the moon, $3.5 billion, and you know what, 75 percent of the viewers said yes, i want to keep that program. now, contrast that with the $800 billion stimulus bi...

Includes an optimal balance between robotic missions and humans on missions. megyn: how are we going to get up there? how are we going to get up there? >> right now, again, be careful between making a difference between constellation being canceled and not having capacity to get up there. constellation wasn't getting us up there. it was relying constellation program also relied on russians to go up. what this program does is say, let's build better vehicles. so there is commitment to build additional heavy launch vehicles and make a decision on that 2015 after we explored new technologies, not...

So we need a different vehicle to allow us to take this -- these heavier materials up that are going to build the spacecraft that take us out to the asteroids or take us on to mars. >> the other specific in here, the constellation program, it was behind schedule, it was overbudget. was it right to essentially abandon it and does that mean we are going to give up hope for, say, the millennium for returning to the moon? >> i don't think so at all. if you look at the program, let's ask the american taxpayer what would they prefer. would they prefer that we throw dollars away, throw good money aft...

Beyond that the constellation program which was completely canceled, the orion, the capsule will be resurrected from that and&it will be taken to the international space station as an escape vehicle. it will be in the next couple of years and there will be $3 million thrown into the space agency for the re-training of the workers that will be displaced. so this vision is a far cry from what the original was, although commercial operations will still be largely responsible for getting astronauts to the space station during the next five to ten years. kyra? >> so, you know, people had a lot of w...