Postpone shuttle’s retirement?
That’s what one politician wants, saying NASA should keep flying the shuttle to avoid depending on Russia to fly astronauts up.
That could be a disaster, much better to take that average cost of $450 million per shuttle launch and offer $450 billion to the first private company to launch someone to the space station by, say 2011.
Or better yet, for eye-catchiness, take the cost of 2 shuttle launches and round up slightly. $1 billion ought to turn heads, don’t you think?
December 19th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I suspect the main problem is that there’s so much infrastructure in place to build and service the shuttles in every state in the US. The politicians are starting to realize that making changes will put lots of people out of work, so they’re getting pressure to keep things going… for just a few more years.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:52 am
The US is finished as a political entity. It’s falling apart as we speak.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Hejsa!
Did you mean offer 450 million to the private company? (It says 450 billion.)
Lise
December 20th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Time to retire that sucker and put all those people to work building and monitoring fleets of microprobes. Stuff a bunch of ‘em into a rocket, chuck ‘em into space, and do some serious exploratory science. The romance of manned space flight isn’t worth the blood or treasure any more.