Addressing nearly 200 attendees of the White House-sponsored Thursday conference at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, President Obama vehemently countered disparagement of his new space policy, and reiterated his commitment to “manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space.”

With his policy being largely seen as a radical change of course for NASA – cancelling the Constellation moon program and commercializing manned flights -, the President insisted that it is time NASA changed in sending people into space. Obama said: “We’ve got to do it in a smart way, and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things we’ve been doing and thinking that’s going to get us where we want to go.”

Noting that NASA would commence the development of a heavy-lift rocket by 2015; Obama laid out a projected timeline for expeditions beyond low-Earth orbit - the mid-2020s for manned missions to nearby asteroids; and mid-2030s for flights to orbit Mars, to be soon followed by manned landings.

The President also promised $40 million in financial assistance to workers who will be laid off upon the retirement of the space shuttles.

Having a go at the critics of his space policy, Obama commented on their failure to recognize the needs of changing times. He also blamed the earlier Presidents for their apparent lack of leadership on space policy, saying that NASA’s budgets have “risen and fallen with the political winds.”