"Screw those commie bastards, and screw their little wussy space station."
Posted on 04/30/2013 6:31:11 PM PDT by Nachum
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense.
NASA announced its latest contract with the Russian Space Agency on Tuesday. The $424 million represents flights to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as well as training, for six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017.
That's $70.6 million per seat -- well above the previous price tag of about $65 million.
Russia currently provides the only means of getting people to and from the space station, and its ticket prices have soared with each new contract.
Several U.S. companies are working on rockets and spacecraft to launch Americans from U.S. soil. But that's still a few years away. The ability to launch crews into orbit from America ended with NASA's shuttle program in 2011. Even before the shuttles retired, the U.S. had been relying on Russia to transport long-term residents to the space station.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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The Russians are just being good capitalists.
And 85 Mil. in sequester funds are (is?) bringing down the US economy?
I believe the space shuttle launches were actually costing us more
SS was a waste anyway but NASA had to develop new ship before getting rid of it, sure.
It’ll keep going up. count on it. Why wouldn’t it? What choice do we have? Did you think the Russians were our friends? we bankrupted them! Now it’s their turn.
Just wait till China wants all payments in gold or oil.
The fiat money isn’t going to work forever.
70 million is not “significantly larger” than 65 million, when it comes to the huge costs of space flight.
The Russians could start charging us $100M and there wouldn’t be a damn thing we could do about it.
I think increasing from $65 to $70M is reasonable for a new contract...and it looks like they’re still pricing the seats in dollars, which is VERY RISKY for them.
The space shuttle would cost far more per year.
Let the Russians have the Space Station. It’s worthless, anyway.
What was wrong with the space shuttle? It was more advanced than the Russian counterpart.
"Screw those commie bastards, and screw their little wussy space station."
Surprised the Russians aren’t charging 3 times that much.
Are the damn Muzzies feeling better about themselves yet?
“Surprised the Russians aren’t charging 3 times that much.”
Don’t give them ideas :(
>>What was wrong with the space shuttle? It was more advanced than the Russian counterpart.<<
Everything was wrong with SS. The entire conception is flawed. SS went into service only because it looks sexy - just like a sci&first spacecraft from Star Wars movie.
Conventional capsules are as or more effective at a fraction of cost.
An idea of reusable spacecraft doesn’t pay off as soon as these things still can’t get into space on their own without huge rockets.
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