US Space Station Cuts Hurts Canada's Space Science

Darwin O'Connor writes: "This article from The Toronto Star says that cutbacks in US Space Station budget reduces the amount of science that can be done on the Space Station to the point that the international partners, like Canada, Japan and the EU will not be given the science time they agreed to in exchange for thier contrabutions to the project."

Comments

At the risk of souding US-centric...

[Dimwit]

...which would be odd, considering I live in Luxembourg...I have the distinct impression everyone kind of expects the US to pay for everything. (For example, everyone's pissed that the US isn't paying what it's supposed to for the UN. That sounds bad, until you realize that the US was supposed to pay 25% of the operating costs by itself, with the other 200 some-odd members paying much, much less.)

The European Union is, if taken as a whole, the largest economy in the world. The European Space Agency could pony up some money for this. I don't see why the US should get suck with an unfair portion of the bills...

Re:The Point is They DIDN'T Pay for Everything

[Dimwit]

The point is that the USA did not pay for everything. However when they cut back their budgets they also denied other parties access to the station that was jointly paid for by the USA and other nations. Canada paid $1.4 Billion for their part of the stations and now they don't get to use it. The changes that USA is proposing are in direct violation of an agreement they had signed.


Only because they lose access to the US space shuttle. They could ask the Russians to fly them up there. There's also the issue that the US had to pay quite a bit more than it originally intended to because the Russians reneged on a lot of their payments. The other signatory parties need to complain to Russia, not the US.