NASA budget released by White House - Marshall Space Flight Center Ares I rocket and return to the moon dead

NASAIn this rendering an Ares I blasts off with NASA's proposed crew vehicle the Orion capsule. The White House has canceled the program after almost $4 billion spent and five years of work invested in the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed rocket. 

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, with plans to cancel the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed Ares I and directions to shift focus away from returning to the moon to continue support of the International Space Station.

The plan does call for funding a heavy-lift type vehicle, currently NASA has the Ares V under development for that, but the outline does not specify what this rocket would be. The OMB information gives no job specifics.

From OMB:

NASA's Constellation program - based largely on existing technologies - was based on a vision of returning astronauts back to the Moon by 2020. However, the program was over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies. Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA's program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA's attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President's Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration that includes:

• Research and development to support future heavy-lift rocket systems that will increase the capability of future exploration architectures with significantly lower operations costs than current systems - potentially taking us farther and faster into space.
• A vigorous new technology development and test program that aims to increase the capabilities and reduce the cost of future exploration activities. NASA, working with industry, will build, fly, and test in orbit key technologies such as automated, autonomous rendezvous and docking, closed-loop life support systems, in-orbit propellant transfer, and advanced in-space propulsion so that our future human and robotic exploration missions are both highly capable and affordable.
• A steady stream of precursor robotic exploration missions to scout locations and demonstrate technologies to increase the safety and capability of future human missions and provide scientific dividends.