The Obama administration apparently wants to turn NASA away from prestigious missions like Mars or Moon to basic research like space probes, space telescopes and such.
More for Astrophysics, less for engineers.
As much as I would want to see men on the moon again or on Mars, if you don't have the money, you don't do it.
And apart from Moon/Mars missions, NASA only needs a manned spaceship for the ISS.
The russians can do personel transfer to ISS, in future even ESA might do it, so a US crew transfer vehicle is really a redundancy.
Apparently they try to outsource cargo flights to the ISS to private launch firms, a disaster in the making, IMHO.
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