It is a sour Joke.
There is nothing more painful to me than to see the end of the Space Shuttle program and there is NO replacement scheduled for it now!
What had been scheduled (Orion) was apparently over-ambitious, over-zealous, over-bureaucratic, over-schedule, AND over budget!
Calls to privatise Space have been made for a long time, and maybe it was about time for NASA to get out of the "Space Trucking" business and leave it to private enterprise.
But why did it take so long? Why is the USA now (again) without a Manned-Space program launch vehicle? This is what irritates me to no end. Politics and Pork-Barrel spending by US congressmen and Senators have stifled true innovation and turned NASA into a bloated bureaucracy where engineers literally spend their days throwing paper airplanes around between cubicles... if what I have read elsewhere is to be believed.
I grew up in the Space Program and the Race to the Moon between the USA and USSR in the 1960's. My father was manufacturing supervisor of the doors and windows on Apollo I. Prior to that, he had helped build such interesting airplanes as the X-15 and the XB-70 Valkerie. My inspiration as a child was to be an Astronaut. Less than perfect eyesight prevented me from being accepted into a US Military Academy guarenteed pilot program, so I knew I could never become one of those Spacemen but I still decided to pursue my dream of aviation. As time went on, I realized I loved aviation so much I needed to make a career of it.
Seeing my country without a manned space program is galling to someone like me.
RC