Posted on 07/29/2011 5:34:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Now that America has no way to put people into space, we have to rely on the Ruskies. They might have been Communists for almost 80 years but they sure understand market economies (specifically, supply and demand) because the pre-negotiated deal of $51 million per U.S. astronaut expires at the end of 2013. The General Director of Russian Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, said in 2010:
We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this. But after that? Excuse me but the prices should be absolutely different then!
The Comrade was right… NASA just inked a deal that bumps that figure to $63 million per astronaut for 2013-2014.
Deputy Director Vitaly Davydov had some surprise news for NASA regarding the multi-billion dollar International Space Station: It’s going into the ocean in 2020.
According to Fox News “knowledgeable government sources and NASA spokesmen were aghast at Davydov’s plans to sink the station in the ocean.”
It should be remembered that President Obama cancelled the Constellation program, begun under George W. Bush’s tenure, to return Americans under their own power to space (and the moon) by 2020.
The Fox News article points out that the last time the Americans and Russians met to discuss the fate of the space station no mention was made of 2020 being a cut off date.
U.S Senator Bill Nelson (a former astronaut himself) tried to spin the situation:
All the Russians are saying is that when the time comes to shut the station down — whenever that is — it will have to be brought from orbit in a planned ‘crash’ so there’s no space junk left behind or debris that falls in populated areas.
How Obama must think of the Russians.
Sure… and Barack Obama is good for the American economy.
Meanwhile, Russia is not only working on a mission to Mars but China is sending their people into orbit and is working on building a space station of their own by 2020.
The requisite Lyndon Johnson quote from the movie The Right Stuff:
And as I was sayin’, whoever controls the high ground of space controls the world. The Roman Empire controlled the world because it could build roads. Later, the British Empire was dominant because they had ships. In the Air Stage, we were powerful because we had the airplane. And now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. Pretty soon they’ll have damned space platforms so they can drop nuclear bombs on us, like rocks from a highway overpass. Now HOW IN THE HELL did they ever get ahead of us?
Let’s face it, the Space Shuttle was a bad idea and so was Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation program. Now, the Russians have us by the short and curlies and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
Prerequisite Yakov Smirnov joke:
Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there. They are dead, but they are there.
Too bad the joke’s on us.
I hope to God there are a bunch of stone cold serious men in the Pentagon who are NOT, under any cicumstances, going to stand by and permit Russia, China, Iran, or anyone else, to establish their predominance in space over America -- treaties, the president, the congress, the media, and the supreme court be damned.
BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars spent, with the russians dragging their feet at every turn. And now, they are going to throw it all into the trash can and disallow any possible return on the investment. Another check mark on russia's list of things to do to impoverish us, payback for their beloved, worthless, USSR.
Never in my life did I think I would see this day.
REMOVE THIS SOB FROM OFFICE!!! Before he does any more damage.
They won the high ground
I have a nightmare scenario, in which enemies of the U.S. blind or take out all of our communication satellites, spy satellites and any military hardware. Just one at a time, or a few at a time, we will be blind just when we need eyes. We will have to beg to get a ride to check it out, or borrow massive quantities from the Chinkonese to build the next gen way to get back to orbit. We are without the ultimate advantage, information, and communication if our enemies want us to be.
No. They are saying they are going to do it in 9 years. My bet is that pretty soon the Russians will back off the 2020 date, but talk a lot about how very expensive it is and that the US should be chipping in far more money to keep the station active. Cha-ching!
Yes, but what can a Dorito in space do against china?
The space shuttle was a great idea. The purpose of the shuttle was to carry payloads from Earth to a space station. The original space station (Freedom) was engineered to have the capacity to build spacecraft for launch to the moon and other planets. It also had a space manufacturing facility, a science lab, a module to house astronauts, science experiments, and observation platforms.
It was killed by administrations more interested in buying votes via entitlement programs, sponsoring programs with results around election time, and unenlightened as to what promise R&D has to the economic and technological future of the country.
We have unenlightened leadership that has no clue as to relationship between economic leadership and R&D. Instead we have leadership that has enslaved our future to debt, and more and more entitlements, government regulation, and more taxes. There is no need for scientists and engineers in our new socialist economy.
The ISS is not Russian property. It’s owned between the US, Russia, Europe and Japan. And there will be American rockets going back soon.
Exactly.
The spacecraft itself is a heavy thing and a waste of expensive payload in SS program. I bet it was choosen only for it’s Star Wars look at the time.
It has to be killed.
This ‘giving a space away’ cry is a bit hysteric to me.
US will return as soon as a new effective spaceraft ready.
Rumor has it that Russia/Pan Slavic Union, China, and Brazil want to build a joint space station by 2020.
The key word is WILL, vs has already many time successfully sent heavy cargo into space.
That would be great when SpaceX demonstrates that it can successfully do it at $20 million a seat.
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