Astronauts from some of America’s unforgettable space missions are taking the matter with President Obama’s projected NASA budget, which lays emphasis on robotic space investigations over human space probe.

Last week, President Obama gave space exploration a $6 billion increase when he revealed his budget for NASA at the momentous Kennedy Space Center. There, the Mecury, Gemini and Apollo missions were introduced and the Hubble telescope was lifted into orbit.

But in a memo signed by Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11, the first man to tread on the moon, James Lovell of Apollo 13 and Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17, the astronauts wrote, “Canceling the Constellation program, it’s Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating”.

The spaceships are in development as the next generation vehicles meant to transfer to the International Space Station and human spaceflights to the moon and Mars.

The letter from Armstrong, Lovell and Cernan said that the finances will make the United States depend on Russia to get into low Earth orbit and the space station. They assert that the nation is basically dissipating a $10 billion investment in the Constellation program.

But scientists are agreeing with Obama, quoting the competence and safety of robotic examination of the solar system and indicating the success of the Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini and Mars rover missions, amongst several others.

Dan Hooper, a Strophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, said, “The opinions of astronauts should not be the bulk of the story”.