[TheRealThing]

According to the Huffington Post, we taxpayers pay nearly 71 million dollars to Russia for each astronaut we send up. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30...87481.html


The average shuttle mission cost was 450 million. We normally sent up seven of our own astronauts who did exclusively as we wished them to do. We had complete control of space and were the undisputed reigning king of space travel and technology, not to mention our own national interests. Nations once paid America a handsome price to launch space hardware and astronauts. Now, Russia gets that money. Guess how much it costs American taxpayers to send up 7 astronauts to the international space station these days? 497 million. But, according to the administration, the space program was an obsolete and unnecessarily burdensome weight for taxpayers to shoulder. Forget the thousands of jobs the cessation of the shuttle program caused. (Kind of like the 100 or so eagles that have been killed by wind farms. If it's for a liberal cause just shut up about it!) This savings rationale in the face of the unbridled spending spree for the launch of ObamaCare. Case in point would be the 300 million the federal government just threw at only one of 50 states, as in the case of Oregon. We can spend 300 million per state if administration officials deem that a political benefit to them for the ACA sign ups in Oregon, an effort and expense that netted only 44 individuals. LOL heck, at that rate, why not just give Russia a contract to sign up folks on ObamaCare?
Comrade, sign zee papers.

George W. initially decided it was time to develop a new vehicle to replace the shuttle around 2004. But, his idea was to fly fewer, safer missions, with an enhanced emphasis on maintenance. Not to drop American manned space travel like a hot potato. It was stupid to mothball every ship in the fleet IMO. But wait, we didn't exactly mothball them did we? No, we sent those shuttles to museums, an action we knew for sure would ensure they'd ever fly again. So, like everything else we Americans have abdicated in this world thanks to the liberal lunacy of which, we find ourselves presently stricken, we go from king to also-ran, with yet another stroke of the presidential pen. Hopefully, we are clinging to military superiority and world economic leadership, like a mountain climber hanging by his fingernails from the face of El Capitan. However, every other leading honor, has melted away. Education, morality, statesmanship, you get the idea.

BTW, has anybody given any thought to what we would do if there was a catastrophic failure at the ISS? I mean, I know we cut loose those folks in Benghazi but, hopefully that won't be the precedent for the 'new' US Ghost Protocol.