Thursday, March 10, 2005
It's Time to Kill NASA
Before NASA Kills Us: America's plans for humans to explore space may cause it to relax its laws on weapons proliferation
A few months back, I wrote about the collosal boondogle that is the International Space Station (ISS). $100 billion dollar tin can in the sky, built for scientific research. (And am I the only one whose tired of hearing that because of NASA we have technology like Mylar ballons and Microwaves). But as I opined then, $100 billion is enough to pay for the Kindergarten through Phd eduction for more than 1,000,000 new engineers or scientists. Alas, it doesn't matter.
But this week's economist touches on two important issues; 1) After this year, NASA will have no way to send astronuaghts to the space station because it's contract with Russia expires, and 2) Russia may be in violation of a non-proliferation treaty, which cloud preclude a renewal of the contract that let's our astronaughts ride on Soyuz spacecraft. Bottom line, with $50 billion spent and another $50 billion planned, we may have a useless space station that we can't get to.
http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3738886
A few months back, I wrote about the collosal boondogle that is the International Space Station (ISS). $100 billion dollar tin can in the sky, built for scientific research. (And am I the only one whose tired of hearing that because of NASA we have technology like Mylar ballons and Microwaves). But as I opined then, $100 billion is enough to pay for the Kindergarten through Phd eduction for more than 1,000,000 new engineers or scientists. Alas, it doesn't matter.
But this week's economist touches on two important issues; 1) After this year, NASA will have no way to send astronuaghts to the space station because it's contract with Russia expires, and 2) Russia may be in violation of a non-proliferation treaty, which cloud preclude a renewal of the contract that let's our astronaughts ride on Soyuz spacecraft. Bottom line, with $50 billion spent and another $50 billion planned, we may have a useless space station that we can't get to.
http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3738886
