Unfortunately, I can't find the quote, but I saw in the New York Times the other day that Doctor Ride was trying to find an exploration mission that would fit into the existing NASA mission. She said that, so far, one hadn't been identified, but that the panel was still looking.
The United States is trying to be a leader in space without spending any serious money in the process. This is comparable to trying to win a war on a budget, expecting that the gains that were made in the last fiscal year will still be there in the next fiscal year. Yes, we can build a new rocket on the current budget, but only if we get rid of the International Space Station. So, we get rid of the destination for the rocket before we build the rocket. By the time that the money is available to build a destination, the rocket will be obsolete.
This is the same thing that we did with the space shuttle. We built a vehicle which would be capable of building a space station, and then we refused to put up the money to build the space station, making the space shuttle relatively worthless. The only way that this kind of funding would have worked would be if we had mothballed the shuttles as soon as they were completed, so that we could gradually accumulate the money to build a space station without the space craft needed to build it aging.
If we build the Ares-1, we will have no use for it for years. The only way that we can have a place for the Ares to go is to put the money needed to build the Ares into keeping the space station in operation. Dr. Ride seems to be about to tell the Obama administration the sorry truth: Without more money, there will be NO manned space exploration by the United States in a few years.
What is truly heart rending is that the amount of money required to enable the continuation of manned exploration off planet is minuscule compared to so many other government projects. But there is still a lot of confusion as to exactly how much we are actually spending on space exploration, as is illustrated by the comment made by Congressman Bill Posey, (R-FL) He said he asked the Augustine committee “to think outside the arbitrary budget numbers placed on NASA - $18.8 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion budget, less than half a percent of the federal budget.” But the space exploration budget is less than half of that 18.8 billion dollars.
NASA has many projects underway, most of which have nothing to do with space exploration. If space exploration is important to this nation, it should consider an organization which has only one responsibility, off planet exploration. If space exploration is not important to this nation, we should stop wasting money by pretending to explore space.