JT says:

A government make-work project in all its heavenly glory. Talk about watching your tax dollars literally float off into space.

Don says:

And how much science or trading did Columbus do half a millenia ago?

The full potential of space will not be reached in my lifetime, not my daughters lifetime, and maybe not in my great to the 10th grandchild’s lifetime.

While the attempts to travel/work/explore space may seem expensive and a little silly today, just think how silly Colubus’s trip seemed back then. Many thought he was going to fall off the side of the planet for cripes sake. What a waste of 3 perfectly good ships that seemed like.

We surely need to watch NASA and try to get them to account for their money( good luck.) Things may not go perfect. Trillions of dollars will be spent. Many more people WILL DIE. But we need to continue to explore space. Other than the ocean floor, there is nowhere else for us to go. Where will the Human Race be in another thousand years.

Think about it, that’s a LONG time.

Don

Miguel says:

My friends, here’s how it’s like: you either INVEST in space or you give up.

If you decide to invest, you need the shuttle, or something like it, you need a cheaper launch system (at the same time), you need a space station, you need experienced astronauts.

This is what you have now, except the simpler lauch system, but you must continue to invest, otherwise it will all be money thrown away. NASA and the US seem to be very fond of choosing an ambitious path and then givng up on funding it decently.

If you are serious about a more permanent presence in space, you must invest, and sustain those investments, instead of half-heartedly funding them on and off. In that way they will never be fruitful. The ISS is useless right now because there’s no money left to do anything useful there. Now, why don’t you continue investing and developing it, and the know-how you’re acquiring as you do it? What’s the point? Does this serve any political purpose?

Same goes for the Shuttle.

But nooooooo, let’s give up on everything and go back to 1970.

My friends, remember these next years. Follow all the shuttle missions to the ISS, and hopefully the last Hubble repair mission. They’ll be the last spectacular things you’ll ever see coming from the US space program. There’s only 14 launches and 4 years of life left in the shuttle. Enjoy them! The most amazing machine of all time will then stop flying, and we will NEVER AGAIN see anything like it. Yes, it is expensive, but it is also the most capable space machine ever designed. And if operated according to original (and revised over time and with increasing experience of flight) specifications, nobody would have ever died – Challenger and Columbia were results of failing to follow specified and accepted lauch criteria – Challenger was launched in too low a temperature, with previous history of SRB problems in those conditions, and Columbia was launched even with foam falling onto the orbiter, which is something that, BY SPECIFICATION, should never have happened. Why that problem was never addressed before is still something to be investigated, but it only started being addressed afterwards. Maybe there’s more problems lurking, problems that hopefully will never cause a disaster if launch criteria are followed to the letter…

I digress. If you want to go ahead, you must invest. And keep in mind that the DoD spends in a day the same ammount that NASA ‘wastes’ sending two shuttles up there… NASA’s budget used to be equivalent to 2 weeks of the Defense budget (last time I saw, some years ago, but I doubt it’s much different now). If NASA and the US can’t find a way to be at home in space, one day someone will, and many people, including myself, a European, will not be happy.

Please guys, get your (space) act together… Please…