As NASA continues to chop everything in its budget other than the least cost-effective things–Shuttle, ISS and ESAS–Lou Friedman of the Planetary Society is starting to whine about the loss of space science. But Clark Lindsey points out the irony:

[Dr. Griffin’s plan to delay planetary science programs] would make perfect sense if the CEV program promised to significantly lower the cost of space access and of its utilization. Lower transport costs would make all of those science projects much cheaper to build and operate and would allow for many more science missions than can be flown now.

However, as has been argued often here and in many other sites, flying capsules on Shuttle derived expendables and building a hugely expensive and seldom launched heavy lifter just isn’t going to lower the cost of space very much over what it is now. While halting the Shuttle program now would help to fund a handful of space science missions, it would not help overcome the long term limitations to space exploration and development caused by the extremely high costs of getting to space…

…I’ll note that much of the basic CEV architecture using Shuttle components was born via a Planetary Society sponsored study (pdf) by Griffin and several collaborators before he came to NASA.