Monday was probably a bittersweet day for NASA. Told that it would no longer be following President Bush’s lunar comeback effort or even launching its own astronauts into space, the agency must now look to contractors for their escape velocity needs.

This is probably for the best. As a sustainable program, the Space Shuttle has fared better than almost every other aerospace program except Soyuz. Compared to these proven launch solutions, the Apollo Program was a bright flash in the pan.

This, the first manned lunar program, was designed for results, not longevity. But even so the era of moon landings was surprisingly short: 1969-1972. Many people have assumed that political pressure to curtail costs in an inflationary period was to blame, but probably the bigger reason was quite literally big: only 15 Saturn V rockets were ever manufactured by NASA. Two were intended for tests (expensive tests!), 11 were actually used for missions, and the two leftovers were intended for Skylab support but never actually used. In fact, repurposing these rockets contributed to early cancellation of later Apollo missions, such as Apollo 19. The two-and-a-third Saturn V survivors now inspire awe at Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers and the Smithsonian Institute

And now, perhaps, a mock-up of the Ares will soon footnote the legacy of government-sponsored space exploration in the U.S.

Is there an upside? Well, for starters, the taxpayers won’t as easily be mired in a tremendously expensive program that would inevitably attract political criticism and attacks over the perception of wasteful spending. NASA’s “far-out” exploration mode will allow it to leave the heavy lifting to commercial parties, who will likely proliferate with the promise of lucrative government contracts. The added benefit is a distribution of the costs in a competitive atmosphere.

Will there be failures? Of course, but the kinds of contracts that contributed to safety issues under the shuttle program will no longer exist. Instead, companies such as SpaceX Bigelow Aerospace, and some as-yet-unborn ventures will have to answer to their own investors or stockholders.

And they’ll be willing to carry the risk, too, because instead of losing allocation, NASA, under President Obama’s $60+ billion R&D, STEM, and technology budget for 2011, will see its leverage increase appreciably from 2010 levels: about $391 million. The generous funding levels of the early 2000s might not materialize, but NASA will be able to refocus its efforts on lower-cost solutions and longer-term exploration efforts that focus on Mars.

But it’s certainly not all roses. $9 billion has been spent on Constellation technology—how much of that gets dumped in the Texas desert where a supercollider was started, or in the empty spaces at Yucca Mountain? NASA has built tremendous capabilities that shouldn’t be simply given away thanks to re-appropriations. The taxpayers paid for it; the U.S. space program should benefit now from Constellation’s lessons.

Perhaps that’s cause for real celebration from contractors like SpaceX. They may get years of federally-sponsored development for free, and new contracts to the horizon. I just hope they make sure Falcon 9 doesn’t join the museum exhibits early.