IN fairness to Marvel and astronomers like him, they've seen plenty of examples of near-term science projects get cut to support long term NASA human space programs that will enable much bigger science down the road -- only to see that bigger science never really materialize.

Given the clear need to cut some existing programs to make the numbers work (see the parent post) and the fact that studying quasars doesn't exactly help us get to Mars, if I were a deep-sky astronomy I'd be concerned too.

And optical telescopes (or just about anything but radio, I think), the Moon is a worse location than orbit.