Funding for NASA's effort to get the U.S. back to the Moon has been cut from the $3.8 trillion federal budget President Barack Obama has submitted to Congress.

It's a $100 billion cut to the Constellation program former President George W. Bush implemented.  The goal was to develop a new kind of rocket that get Americans back to the Moon by 2020.  Critics say the project was overbudget and behind schedule.

Former NASA Scientist and Author Homer Hickam, who is originally from McDowell County, says the payoff from such a trip to the Moon, though, would be much greater than the money invested in the effort.

"You can't be a great country without doing great things and a great thing would be to return to the Moon and build a laboratory there and open it up to the world," Hickam said on Tuesday's MetroNews Talkline.

Hickam says he's angry about the cut.

"It's really a foolish decision to take away the goal of going back to the Moon.  I can certainly see figuring out a better way of doing it, but simply to take away the goal, I think, is so shortsighted and so foolish that it's almost breathtaking in its stupidity."

At the same time the Moon plan is being cut, NASA is set to receive additional money in the proposed budget to develop new commercial spacecraft to carry astronauts into low Earth orbit.  Private companies would play a larger role in developing those transport methods.

Hickam says he supports that part of the proposal, but without the Moon, he sees no reason for NASA.

"It's essentially now an $18 billion slush fund to go off and do nothing," Hickam said.

"You can see a lot of political payoffs that are about to occur, going out to universities and so on for a lot of paperwork and studies that will actually not result in cutting metal at all."

Congress has to approve the President's proposed budget.