The President's new budget includes canceling the Bush Era plans to go to the moon. Down here on the Space Coast everyone is a bit panicked by this as there are a lot of jobs involved in space industries (that is why they call it the Space Coast). In actuality what has happened is that Nasa's budget has been increased by $6 billion dollars. As Phil Plait the "Bad Astronomer" says it is actually a good thing as most of the Constellation was simply a rehash of 40 year old technology that might eventually get us back to the moon but with a lot of cost overruns. [Link].

Over at IO9 Annalee Newitz is also thinking positive about the change in direction for Nasa.

In Kim Stanley Robinson's classic Red Mars trilogy about colonizing Mars, he offers a scenario very like the one we're poised to create with Obama's new strategy. Before humans set foot on the Red Planet, a gang of robots are sent ahead to scout habitable locations and construct living quarters. This is by far the most feasible way of colonizing space: It makes no sense to send humans out at great risk and cost to break ground on colonies that can be more easily built by robots. That's why we need to be investing now in the technologies that will make such a scenario possible - and Obama's plan takes great strides toward that.
[Link]