Colleague Bob Zimmerman sighs at this so-called Shannon plan (by NASA shuttle program director John Shannon and team) to build a cheaper version of a manned moon landing system to go back to the moon in the 20s.  Bob Zimmerman writes that it is a rehash of the shuttle program and is a start-over of the whole project after $8 billion has already been spent on developing the Ares rocket and Orion capsule combination for the moon mission.   Bob Zimmerman frets with savvy that the Obama administration is seeking to slow down the manned moon mission to the point of aimlessness.  Also, Bob Zimmerman reasons that the Shannon plan is low-balling the Shuttle II at $6.6 billion.  There is an artless lack of vigor in the way the Obama administration has treated NASA (vividly in its indifference to the skillful NASA boss Mike Griffin) that points back to the candidate's original indifference to the whole program, from manned to robot to long term development.  Bluntly, there is some evidence that, though candiate Obama talked of endorsing and empowering science, his first overall science budget is barely changed from the Bush administration's last.  The excuse is the financial crisis.  NASA is strangling.  Yet that was $1 trillion stimulus package passed last March.  Is POTUS blind to the Moon Base?