Majority Sees U.S. Leadership in Space as Essential

Pew Research Center ^ | 06/30/2011 | n/a

[NonZeroSum]

That still has nothing to do with ISS. In fact, the ISS partners are not “poor countries who couldn’t afford to go to space.”

[hedgetrimmer]

So you are a global wealth redistributionist then?

[PIF]

to continue:

It also means that no corporate fat cats will ever be able to capitalize on any new technology they invent, since that technology will instantly become property of the United Nations.

It also means that corporate fat cats who begin manned space ventures will never go beyond Low Earth Orbit, since every thing beyond that belongs to the United Nations.

It means that the United States of America will never ever put weapons into space, no matter how many other countries do so. We have so claimed the higher moral ground.

It means that when astronauts and cosmonauts will meet someday on the surface of the moon as brothers and not as warriors for competing nationalities or ideologies, under the banners of Crescent and Star or the Red Star.

It means that the United States of America will be able one day to cede all manned space exploration to more worthy countries.

It means that by signing of this wondrous treaty the United States will begin it's true path toward full navel contemplation as a rising third world socialist nation, whose population will clamor for more free stuff from government.

As your President, I can assure you that I and my colleges will do everything in our power to spend as much money as possible on free stuff, thus ensuring that the United States will never again have enough money to pursue these foolish and wasteful manned space ventures.

I can assure you my fellow Americans that when proponents of continuing manned space ventures raises it's head in the future, that the hue and cry will go up that we have no money, space is just rocks dust and radiation.

At this time I can announce to you that I have killed the last remnants of one of those damnable machines which proponents wanted to bring to fruition powered by the very terrible weapons we are hereby outlawing in space with this Treaty. Project Orion is officially dead.

They went around saying crazy things like: Mars by 1965. Saturn by 1970. Can you imagine what a terrible waste of money that would have been?

[NonZeroSum]

So you are a global wealth redistributionist then?

No, that would be a nutty assumption.

I am simply someone who is familiar with space policy and space history. For what it's worth, I think that we should renegotiate the Outer Space Treaty, because it makes property rights in space problematic, but it's also nutty to think that it has anything to do with ISS. The OST doesn't require international space stations, and the ISS didn't need the OST. It is international for reasons having nothing to do with the OST.