I don't think you are wrong in some ways Mike is in a bind. Bush has Griffin making the return to flight of the Shuttle the primary task for NASA right now and doesn't want to expand the NASA budget. So science at NASA will be cut by at least 2%. This is a drag to say the least. I won't expect the MSL to survive such a frontal attack and many other projects are trash I suspect as well.

Ex-astronaut Bonnie Dunbar (the new head of The Museum of Flight Seattle) was honored at a dinner last night by the Boeing Employees Astronomical Society and she said some very interesting things about ISS and it's utility without the STS to deliver good there. Experiments and tools that are big simple can't be brought up or returned to Earth without the STS as it stands.