Apollo Astronauts Attack Obama Space Plan

On an eight-day tour of military bases in Germany, Turkey, and deployed locations in the U.S. Central Command, former Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and Jim Lovell took pictures with wounded soldiers, signed autographs, and the latter two also used the occasion to attack the Commander in Chief's space request.

According to the Air Force Times, Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, now 81, and Cernan, 75, and the last man to walk on the Moon, urged Congress to reject the plan to cancel the manned return to the Moon. "We will go back to the Moon notwithstanding our President and his outlook for the future, and future of space," Cernan said. "Under the President's proposed budget, it is a mission to nowhere."

Lovell said that while he appreciates concerns about expensive government programs, "The investment that we have made in the space program has a lot of intangible and tangible benefits that we sometimes forget."