Not an insider, but I think your comment gets to the core of the issue. One of the pictures used in the story has a Space Shuttle in it, and another has a Vehicle Assembly Building; neither of those have been used (for anything interesting to the public other than tours) for over a decade. NASA has become very constituency-driven, running many small projects which don't drive public support, or do anything visibly useful to the citizenry, which is why it's being cut. Choosing which navel-gazing experiment to fly to an expensive and obsolete space station seems very out-of-touch.