At best all Obama did was continue the program.
[...]
Both Presidents Bush announced plans to go to Mars yet failed to provide any leadership in terms of getting funding to get it to happen or even building any infrastructure to make it happen.

Then again neither does Mitt Romney [really care to offer any real leadership]

Indeed that is why Obama deserves credit. He continued the programme. Despite also handling a catastrophic economic collapse that literally threatened to delete America's main industrial engine, the automotive industry. It took a lot of political capital and risk to continue that programme, instead of just lying about it the way those other presidents did.

the appointment of Charles Bolden as administrator of NASA was nearly the very last of any high level agency appointments made by Barack Obama, and the longest it took for any president since Eisenhower to appoint somebody into that position after taking office

Again, it's not easy spending money on something like NASA when the country is flooded by propaganda calling any government spending "socialism" during the biggest economic collapse in a lifetime. Appointing someone against that headwind, and NASA getting its various work done especially since a Republican Congress has insisted on interfering with anything Obama could take credit for (including killing Binladen), was real leadership.

So it's a good thing Obama will be defeating Romney in 6 months. That makes it look a lot better than if Romney and his party of Bush, Bush, Reagan (who did nothing but keep the Shuttle programme on the treadmill while pimping the Star Wars SDI boondoggle), Ford, Nixon and Eisenhower were running NASA. Those people showed leadership only in screwing the best thing America's ever done, our space programme. Obama deserves credit for keeping NASA going, even growing private industry into space the way Republicans would always lie about but never do. He will get that credit, and will do more to deserve more credit when reelected. Especially the fewer Republicans around to interfere with it.

The percentage of people who directly work for (and so are) the government who are elected politicans is smaller than the rounding error on the turnover of government employees. Most of what the government does is to enforce and obey laws, not make them.

They are expensive, their cost comes out of your budget, and they cause huge delays in your program.

Which your aerospace contractor insists be expensive, since your budget is charged cost-plus to the government/taxpayer. So your aerospace contractor wants its costs to rise, since that's the basis for its profits to rise. Which is why NASA wants to be expensive, because NASA's every move is scripted by lobbyists from aerospace contractors who write the legislation and budgets that control NASA.

It will indeed be good to get NASA out of a lot of that loop. Even though these private space companies like SpaceX will still be paid by NASA/taxpayer, they'll take some unindemnified risks and losses. Eventually they'll have enough private orbital infrastructure that the public will have only a purely regulatory role, not any expense role except enforcing the regulations. If we're lucky. More likely private space operations will have rid themselves of regulation entirely, and the only justice for people there will be what they can buy from the giant exoplanetary corporation.

As relativity explains, every point in the Universe is to some degree "near" any number of "large" masses, with the proportional gravity effect on/by them that Newton described.

That's right - rentacops are so much better than government cops.

It's easy to push a car with good bearings on level ground. I have pushed cars that weight over 10x my weight without any problem. And good bearings still have substantial friction compared to the air resistance inside an orbiting capsule, especially as the RPMs get up there with any speed. Otherwise cars would get far more MPG on cruise control than they do. Even lightweight, aerodynamic electric vehicles designed for maximum coasting still consume about 125W:Km.

Yes, if you jump at a nearby wall you will split your skull. Even here on Earth.

The same person will stop and turn it with the same strength and time as they started it moving.

It will be easy to get going, but somewhat hard to speed it up (just not as hard as when there's friction along the bottom enforced by gravity). It is exactly as easy/hard to slow and stop it.

In orbital microgravity, every action on a separate object requires either bracing oneself on infrastructure, or accepting the opposite reactive motion from what you pressed away, eventually contacting some infrastructure. This has been the case since the first orbit, though some spaces are getting bigger and the possibility of losing contact with infrastructure greater, requiring actual deliberate bracing more often.

It takes time and strength to stop the half-ton cargo load equal to the time and strength used to start it moving. As long as someone of similar power begins stopping it no later than halfway to the far bulkhead, it's no problem at all. In fact the push to start it should probably be pretty weak, as the spaces are small and there's no great rush, leaving the same or lesser strength able to overpower it in the event of a sudden recalculation of when and where it should stop.

All this will be second nature to astronauts with more than a few weeks' experience in microgravity. If not, the loads can be secured with cables at length to stop them before colliding, then released as they slow to as stop, or restrained if the stop doesn't go as planned.