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International Space Station Turns Two

Posted by michael on from the space-is-wide-and-good-friends-are-too-few dept.

RedWolves2 writes "Today is ISS's second anniversary of Operations. Two years ago today NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev first boarded the ISS. In two years the station has grown to more then 200,000 pounds and has had 112 visitors."

1 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yea.. by Paul+Komarek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least at one point in 2001, NASA estimated America's portion of the ISS cost to be US$100bn (i.e. how much America will have spent when the station is completed). Let's suppose nasa is wrong, and that it is actually triple that, US$300bn.

    GW Bush's propsed 2003 military budget is US$378bn, which is something like US$43bn more than last year.

    And what do we have to show for our military spending? We successfully (?) bombed Serbia during peace-time. The Pentagon couldn't even protect itself from relatively slow-moving passenger aircraft, even when given a 30 minute warning. We bombed the hell out of Afghanistan, including first aid warehouses and wedding parties, and it appears that terrorist organizations still have the upper hand.

    At least with the space station there are many nations *talking* and *cooperating* to at least some extent. That is, ISS does much more to make friends than the B2 stealth bomber does.

    Why do we spend so much money to protect ourselves from enemies when making friends is so cheap? I think the ISS is a damn good investment.

    -Paul Komarek