Part of the plan to...
...undermine support for the Shuttle.
On the hot seat was NASA Associate Administrator for Science, Mary Cleave. She advised a standing-room-only crowd of scientists that the NASA fiscal year budget for 2007 has been impacted by "budget liens in the shuttle program. And those liens needed to be covered."
Cleave said that there was no money left in aeronautics. "So we were the only ones left, so to speak." She emphasized that the pace of growth in space science has been reduced to cover the shuttle program.
The shuttle will soon have almost no support anywhere and be killed by the end of the year and the money saved will go to restoring science funding and accelerating the CEV, HLLV and the stick.