Boldly Going Nowhere...

The demise of NASA is shocking and painful to watch. It is a topic I tend to avoid thinking about, but there are times where I feel I require punishment.

Congress has asked NASA for clarification on it's plans so many times that I think NASA's tired of trying to come up with a good story. The White House said this week that:

"It is this administration's goal to use NASA's resources for more real world applications such as weather monitoring and seashelf erosion tracking while scaling back our astronaut corps."

There's two very interesting things about this press release. The first one is that I made it up. The second is that it clearly shows how this administration has abandoned our manned space program.


Why is having a viable manned space program important? For one, because other nations are catching up... some faster than others. Take Europe for example. The European Space Agency is starting to make a bit of progress in its space program. But once they develop a rocket fuel mixture that doesn't react violently to cigarettes, the skys the limit for them.

So, here we are, the Shuttle program was supposed to be replaced by the Constellation program (canceled) and now the International Space Station may have to be abandoned because we can't catch a ride.

There was a time when this American supported abandoning the multi-billion dollar boondoggle known as the International Space Station. But the stakes have been raised recently. China is seeking space supremacy and plans to have a permanently manned space station by 2020...the same year the ISS is scheduled to be moth balled. What to do? How about selling the ISS to the Airforce in 2020 and put this man in charge of redecorating the place.