One of the most aggravating things about having a representative government is dealing with the consequences of the choices they make.

We don’t get a direct vote on how money is spent, but we vote for the people who do. And sometimes they don’t make the best choices. Shocking I know, but just how bad these choices can be sometimes doesn’t hit home until those consequences come home to roost.

In a week, one of those choices is literally coming home: on July 21st, Atlantis will land for the last time, and the choices made for us over the past few years mean that we have no rocket system to take its place.

I’ll iterate once again that the Shuttle was canceled by Bush, and the followup rocket system, Constellation, was canceled by Obama when it was clearly over budget and behind schedule, and given the circumstances it was also very unclear it would perform as promised. I think both these decisions were correct.

Right now, the House of Representatives is making decisions about the future of NASA, and it’s looking like a 9% cut is in ...