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NASA Considers Abandoning ISS
mbstone writes "MSNBC is reporting that NASA is threatening to mothball the International Space Station unless Russia coughs up its share of the money for maintenance and support missions. NASA is now making "contingency plans" to leave the station unoccupied for as long as a year. What I want to know is, why a contingency plan? Didn't NASA already have a plan in place? Are U.S. taxpayers going to pay millions extra to develop new mothballing equipment and procedures that could have been designed-in at far less cost?? Also, I would be glad to house-sit, I use very little oxygen."
If NASA is serious then some of us are going to get very tired hearing about how the Russians are sending every boy band member into space.
Wouldn't this be a good time to allow the private sector in on this? Why should the governments get all the fun up there? I can't help but think tourism and a private sector push into space will do for space industries and the like what the governments of the worlds could not: enable living in space- make it a reality.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Russia seems to be more concerned with sending tourists to space than contributing funds to the further the space station. I guess NASA was just helping them construct a Motel 6.
I recently watched the IMAX Space Station 3D move and not only did it convice me that the entire space program is a hoax, but that this so-called "Russia" place is too.
It would be a great shame to lose the manned presence in space, even if the amount of research they have been able to do is heavily restricted by having a very small crew up there at any one time. The crew is limited by the size of the escape module - currently a Soyuz. It looks like it'll be 2012 by the time the planned NASA replacement escape craft is ready, so they're going to have to come up with something different in the meantime, or the ISS isn't going to fulfil anywhere near it's potential for research.
Paul.
"What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
Is this really a bad thing. Considering that the astronauts on board spend 85% of the time doing station upkeep. The science value of the mission is questionable. If NASA got the proper funding to go with the original plan of 7 astronauts, I could see the value of maintaining the station as valuable science could be preformed.
Shut it down for now, until more money gets passed to make the ISS valuable. Perhaps NASA should redirect more of its money from the ISS to new propulsion technologies (nuclear etc) to reduce lift costs (yes I know you probably wouldnt want to do a launch from the ground to LEO with nuclear rockets, but perhaps other avenues could be approached).
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I attended a meeting of one of the ISS partner nations. In exchange for their contribution they are allotted space in "lockers" to run their experiments. They had a hard time finding any research institution or private interest who wanted to use the locker (the price was around $10,000 per pound). Apparently there is not much current scientific need for a zero gravity environment.
They were willing to let you fly merchandise if you wanted to, so you could buy a space pen, or perhaps fly your uncle's ashes to outer space.
I left the meeting thinking that the ISS should never have been built, and this comes from somebody who is enthralled about space exploration.
Think of it this way: would you ever leave your workstation, your baby, to be used by your computer illiterate aunt while you were going on a summer vacation?
I'm personally happy they don't lease it out.
As for mothballing, moth ball away... given the current economic trend of the world, the space program makes little sense anyways. Things have to be fixed down here before they can be sent up, IMHO.
Sure, Russia owes us money...but why can't we just finance them for a while? Someday, perhaps, they'll be able to pay.
Another concern: How are the people going to feel who have put a lot of time and effort into this project? The shuttle launch was delayed twice, causing our astronaut on board to miss Thanksgiving. Shall we reward her by telling her that the last 6+ months she spent up there was all for naught?
My suggestion: Keep at it until it is finished. We should have known from the get-go that Russia is a broke country and we should have foreseen the fact that we will need to support them until circumstances change.
"This food is problematic."
Evict the Russians if they are not willing or able to pay,
Unfortunately, it's the Russians that provide the Soyuz spacecraft (the only means for escape if soemthing goes wrong) and the unmanned Progress spacecraft. The ISS could not operate without either of these (especially the Soyuz).
Yet Another Web Site
As many people have commented the space station has been a huge black hole of money.
For each win we've had there we've suffered many setbacks.
85% of their time is required for maintenance.
Very little hard science has been done due to construction delays and retrofitting many of the parts.
Even the science they have done hasn't been much.
Russia may be a joke about contributing, but they have the right idea on raising money. Send people who can afford to millions up there to fund further development.
Two guys are sitting in a bar, and one says "you know, I kind of like the smell of mothballs."
The other guy replies "How to you get their little legs apart?"
I hate when nouns are turned into verbs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
(this is not a troll)
I think (1) for the space station is costing us, and (2) what it is costing us to put their asses in space, and (3) for the potential benefits of a larger crew, it would be more than worthwhile to station a larger crew there, even if there is no way for them to escape in case of catastrophe. I mean, look at Mir - all the shit in the world happened to them and they never had a fatality.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It really is a shame that the governments of the world just don't take space seriously. The future of humanitry rests in the stars, and unimaginable amounts of research can be conducted in space. If only governments would realize that spending money on the future (space), is so much smarter than on the present (military).
NASA is a great program, the best space program in the world. This is something the U.S. should be proud of. But continuous system failures and project cutbacks are tarnishing the image of NASA. NASA needs more funding, its running as on a diet of death, and soon, if the trend continues, our kids might not ever know of a U.S. space program. Send a letter to your senators/representatives today, tell them that NASA is not only the best space program in the world that needs more funding, but the best hope humanity has towards working for the future, instead of worrying about the present.
PlatinumCursor - "Blinded by the bling..."
Before looking at high taxes, it might be worthy to look at how much of taxes goes towards massive military expenditures as opposed to the others you listed in your post. The space program costs start to look like a drop in the bucket then.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
If it was not for the Soyuz that's attached there now, the ISS would not be inhabited at this time. What do they want now, have the Russians cough up a second Soyuz, so at least a crew of six could stay, because they are not up to their part of the CRV?
And by the way, this is no treat at all for the Russians, they were the first to suggest this, when NASA started complaining about the CRV.
The Space Station's Cost
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.
Scrap the Shuttle Program
documents how the USA slipped to just 29% of the world's launch market share in the year 2000, even though we had 48% of it in 1996, and apparently all of it the decade before.
How did this happen if NASA has a larger space budget than all other civilian space agencies combined, as well as its Congressional mandate to: "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"? How did some countries evolve from non-players in space two decades ago into dominant commercial players today?
Perhaps NASA should build a "Sea Station" 1000 feet below the sea and use submarines to take foreigners and other salaried government tourists on "missions" to conduct "experiments" and set "endurance records" while "improving international relations". This idea may seem crazy, but it would be much cheaper than the shuttle program and accomplish just as much.
Imagine what could happen if the $4 billion a year and 30,000 shuttle experts were diverted to R&D?
I just can't help but feel the whole ISS and Shuttle Programs are a waste of money. I'm much rather see NASA's time and money spent researching other ways of getting into space.
I suspect that this is not so much a Space Policy move as it is a step in the dance of international diplomacy. The administration wants Russia to bear more of the costs, so they are floating out the idea of shutting down ISS as a negotiating tactic. I would not be surprised if they "settle" for Russia agreeing to extend their obligation to supply the station lifeboat for a few more years until NASA's orbital space plane is ready.
Shutting down the ISS is probably not likely. If it comes to that, however, I would not mind sacrificing a couple of years of 3 man station occupation in order to spend that money on getting a 6 or 7 man crew onboard sooner. Twice as large a crew should yield a lot more than twice the science.
The way such byzantine things work they may actually be after something completely different, like Russian support for a particular postwar Iraqi governmental structure.
I did a quick websearch -- Nasa had a page up (which has since disappeared), but there are copies floating around out there. Interesting reading though.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Sorry. I usually avoid cliches like the plague. :)
(i.e., do you asphyxiate before you freeze to death?).
Considering that vacuum acts like an insulator, you'll long be dead before you freeze to death.
Yet Another Web Site
The space shuttle was originally supposed to be good for 100 missions per copy, at about $100 million turn-around cost. Now it's 25 missions per copy (unless they blow up earlier) at $500 million and up turn-around cost.
The whole space program - from Mercury to Apollo - cost only $25 billion, and it did REAL science.
1) What's wrong with mothballing ISS for a year or two? Well, if it's anything like Mir, and by which I mean it has people on board, it will, if not properly maintained, fill up with fun things like fungus and mold. Mir had problems where a computer would short out, and they'd open up panel to fix it and find that all of the circuit boards were covered in a sticky, stinky blue-green mold. Or they couldn't see out of the windows because of the layer of film growing on them. Not fun. No wonder the crew spends so much time cleaning.
2) Wonder why only 3 people are on board a station designed for at least 7? How abour the fact that congress ccut the budget for a new 7-man escape module, so all they've got is an old 3-man Soyuz capsule lashed to the side of the station to get them out of trouble. And unlike the proposed and now cancelled escape craft, which would have been automated, the Soyuz needs a cosmonaut to bring it down, so the station must have a Russian pilot on board at all times doing housework, as opposed to someone useful like an ESA scientist would would have been on board anyways if they had a big enough escape pod.
3) Ever wonder why a station build and finance almost entirely by America has two Russians on board compared to one American. Is it because of their years of experience fighting mold and electrical fires on Mir, or is it because the State Department ordered NASA to through the Russians a bone. You be the judge!
4) Speaking of throwing the Russians a bone, the entire history of this station has been littered with decisions made solely to appease the Russians. Remember, the station is years behind schedule because some of the corecomponent modules had been assigned to the Russians. And the Russians were taking their sweet time putting said modules up. they kept claiming that money was a factor, but the fact of the matter is all of the Russian modules were paid for almost entirely with American funds. Sometimes a module would be on the pad ready to be launched and the Russians would hold on putting them up until they got even more money. the worst part is this was a State Department decision, not a NASA one. In fact, NASA at the time had a duplicate of every Russian module built and ready to go up 2-3 years before the Russians actually put them up, but were ordered by the American government to not use those modules and instead had to wait on the Russians.
5) What about money from space tourists being used to help save the station? Well, that might work if NASA allowed space tourists on their end, but they don't. It might also work if any of the money from spce tourism actually made it to the Russian space agency, but that doesn't happen either. I don't know the breakdown on where the money went from the two space tourists Russia has already sent up, but I do know that when the Russians put a giant Pizza Hut ad on the side of one of their rockets, the fee for the placement agency was 90%, and most of the rest of the money went staight into the pockets of the space agency heads. (BTW, a standard placement fee for advertising like that is around 10%).
The moral of this story: modern day Russian is full of corruption and graft, and is nowhere close to the technological creativity they displayed in the 1950's. They do still have, however, many nuclear weapons, so the United States gives them a reach around at every opportunity. I wish the Americans would evict the Russians from the station and replace them with the Europeans and the Japanese. Then we might actually see the station be good for something other than video clips on the news. Or news stories buried on page A72 of the paper describing how two male cosmonauts spent 6 months sexually harrasing a female American astronaut, and how NASA told her to shut up about the whole matter. YEAH RUSSIA! Make rocket go now!
James gets angry as Kara's juice is always floating towards him due to his large gravitational effect. Rick and Julio's ongoing power struggle leads to the inevitable...taking it outside.
NASA could stop sending up identical copies of the gyros and oxygen scrubbers that break every week, and start sending up experimental items to find one with a better failure ratio (while of course keeping spares handy to avert disaster, I'm sure).
Maybe this way, when a cheaper space vehicle or space station comes about, they'll know how to keep it working.
the pressure difference your body (14 lb/sqr inch) and space (~0) would cause you to explode almost instantly.
Your flesh has enough cohesion to hold itself together, even in a vacuum. When people climb Mt. Everest, where the pressure drops about 40%, they do not explode.
IIRC, the US Air Force has some data on it (too lazy to search right now). The results would be a lot like "the bends" that divers get. Although your blood would not instantly boil, many of the gasses would come out of solution and cause bubbles to form in your blood vessels. This gas would increase the pressure in your blood vessels, damaging the more delicate ones exposed to the vacuum (such as lungs and eyes). As the gas comes out of solution, your internal pressure rises and the process reaches equilibrium. However, you have bubbles in your blood and torn capillaries in various critical regions. This combined with the lack of oxygen is ultimately what would kill you in a vacuum.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
It was clear when the Bush administration nominated a bean counter to run NASA that science and exploration were no longer matters of public policy. I'm just surprised it's taken them this long to find an excuse to end it.
How much do you want to bet that the next NASA budget will severely curtail manned spaceflight activities? They'll use the excuse that the shuttles are too old, and that they're waiting for the X-37 to come out.
Wouldn't this be a good time to allow the private sector in on this?
I really can't believe that somebody is seriously suggesting the commercialism of Space, you clearly have not considered the consequences of even this first apparently small step. There is good reason that the commercialisation is illegal under international law and treaty. You only have to look at the actions of the old Colonial Charter Companies to see the dangers. They ran riot over large parts of the globe and where only constrained by finite space of the Colonies.
New Space based commercial entities are a genie that once out of the bottle are never likely to be every constrained again, they would grow unchecked by earth bound morality, law, or nation, any unchecked at all by an essentially infinite space. They exhibit exponential growth and would quickly become more powerful than you could ever imagine, driven by one overwhelming factor; the accumulation of resources on an near infinite scale, an accumulation that would redefine the term greed.
The resulting 'Companies' would make the Commerical enties of SCI-FI look like cartoon kittens.
Five shuttles? Don't count Enterprise -- she can't fly in space. There are four: Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.
Discovery is down for maintenance and upgrades right now, which leaves three. Columbia is too heavy to fly to the space station with any amount of useful payload on board, so she flies research missions that don't dock with the station -- the next flight will be a research mission, actually.
That leaves two: Endeavour, in orbit now, and Atlantis, which is being processed right now to carry the next bit of the station up. When Atlantis is up, Endeavour will be in processing.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Thing is, there's lots of thing which we learn of 'up there' that tell us how things are 'down here' and help us fix them. Green house effect was first discovered on Mars and paved the way for the discovery of what is going on here. Polution, weather, crumbling/shrinking icecaps, depleted fishery and other environmental effects are all best seen from space. We still desperately need the info we're getting from there, so much so that the minor economic twitters here on earth are not secondary or even tertiary concerns compared to what we get from spacebased imaging. Let alone the communication aspect....face it, the economic aspects in the US, EU et al are trivial, seasonal lulls.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
for a very special episode of Junkyard Wars, when an American and a Russian team will be tasked with converting disused space stations, space debris , and old computers into nuclear powered mopeds.
Sigs are bad for your health.
long term... is that two quarters or three?
So here's my personal best possible outcome of this:
$$$ saved:
1. ISS scrapped or mothballed long term.
2. Shuttle upgrade program scrapped - expires at end of current lifetime.
$$$ spent:
1. Money allocated up-front to be spent on fast-track development of low cost, manned, VTVL reusable launcher (a la Roton, DC-Y, ISAS RVT, PHOENIX, etc.) with incremental build-and-fly development. Orbital 2-man demonstration vehicle to be flight ready by end of 2006.
2. VTVL design licensed to multiple commercial implementers (Boeing, MD, ArianeSpace, ISAS, etc.) Commitment to buy cargo space from cheapest bidder, starting 2008.
3. Award commercial, fixed price contracts for operating local spaceports (Mojave, Utah, etc.) If your state has a pro-space senator, then they can set up local jobs in space!
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
It stays in orbit.
> The potential benefits are that we would be saving both American and Russian space program dollars that could be used on other projects. I'm sure we could still send up missions to add additional modules to the ISS, just leave the station uninhabited for a few years.
"It stays in orbit" is the worst-case scenario, because it means "...and we continue to waste money on it, get zero science out of it, and because we know that someday we'll have to bring it back online, we can't do any real science in the interim".
Which is essentially the status quo. Money-leeching zero-science space station (ISS) in orbit, extraordinarily-high-cost launch vehicle program (Shuttle) burning the rest of the budget to keep it there.
The best thing that could happen to the ISS is that it deorbits, and a chunk of debris takes out half the Shuttle fleet while it's still on the ground.
Then, we have no space station. Big budget savings, and no real loss - we weren't doing any science or satellite construction or interplanetary-probe-fueling in low earth orbit anyways.
And we have no Shuttle programme. Huge budget savings, and no real loss - for a while, NASA goes back to unmanned boosters, like Atlas, Delta, Ariane, and yes, even Energia, like anyone doing real work in space is doing.
With all the money you save, you develop a new cheap heavy-lift vehicle, while working on next-generation propulsion systems like nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space activities.
You test these technologies out on faster, better, and not cheaper space probes. Europa orbiters/landers. Semi-autonomous Mars rovers. Lunar soil/ice probes. Insanely-Long-Baseline-Interferometry radio and optical telescopes to look for atmospheric signatures of planets around other stars. A Pluto/Charon flyby before the damn atmosphere freezes over, and with an ion or nuclear engine, maybe a flyby of another Kuiper Belt Object on your way to the heliopause.
ISS was the politically-correct renaming of "Space Station Freedom" once we realized the Cold War was mostly over, and we couldn't afford to build "Freedom" ourselves. Just like the race to the moon, "Freedom" (ca. 1986) was a space station that we had to have, not to do any science, but simply because the Russkies had just launched one named "Peace", and it was kinda embarassing for them to have a space station and us not to have one.
But hey, let's keep it in orbit. If you're a NASA administrator, and Congress has been giving you billions of dollars every year for 17+ years not to do science, isn't the perpetual continuation of ISS/Shuttle - and now you don't even have to build the frickin' ISS to keep the dollars flowing, so you're being paid to do neither science nor flashy PR projects - the kind of thing you have wet dreams about every night?
It must suck ass if you're a scientist, though.
America is not suffering from a lack of vision; it is suffering from a lack of results, a plague of soured "return on investments". It's one thing to have lofty goals, but it is quite another to spend without purpose.
... this time around, it's not government that's going to have to lead the way.
Why was the ISS built? Was it so NASA scientists could perform all of these hi-tech crystal expieriments & gravity tests? NASA lists a set of reasons here. Some goals are noble... "To create a permanent orbiting science institute in space capable of performing long-duration research in the materials and life sciences areas in a nearly gravity-free environment", "To conduct medical research in space", "To develop new materials and processes in collaboration with industry"
No, why was it really built? Two more "reasons" are more ominous (and really, the only goals that suceeded). "To forge new partnerships with the nations of the world." and "To sustain and strengthen the United States' strongest export sector-aerospace technology-which in 1995 exceeded $33 billion." In retrospect, we now know that that "export sector" was selling long range rocket diagrams & targeting systems to the Chinese, some of the more ethically dubious actions of the Clinton administration. ISS was a shortcut for the US government to funnel money out to other First World nations, which bloated the national budget and artifically increased our Gross Domestic Product... a surprising correlation to Wall Street's activities over the same time period.
So, where is America's spirit of exporation today? In my opinion, it's not outward to the stars, but inward... the Internet. We're working to build a world of interconnected services, where a doctor can telemeter themselves accross the country to perform operations, or have digital paper, or communicate in virtual worlds (EverQuest & now the Sims Online). Each new network discovery has the same effect as throwing another satelite in space, for a much smaller cost.
What will it take to rekindle the spirit to go to space? Money. Show me where I can make a profit, when the transportation costs are negligible, or maybe asteroid mining to find pure crystals of metal, or terraforming
As for mothballing, moth ball away... given the current economic trend of the world, the space program makes little sense anyways. Things have to be fixed down here before they can be sent up, IMHO.
Yeah... Israel needs more US taxpayer money. They are much more important than any space program.
Sigh...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Vacuum only acts as an insulator as far as conduction of heat is concerned. You will still radiate away all of your heat, and pretty quickly too, though probably not as quickly as you would asphyxiate.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
While the "Progress" resupply ship is critical to keep the station stocked with food and fuel, I've long questioned the whole concept of the "Soyuz" escape capsule.
It may sound heartless, but do we have nobody in this country (or any other) willing to explore like they did 100 years ago? Lewis and Clark didn't have an emergency return system... but that didn't keep them from exploring the Mississippi (though there aren't any alien guides this time around).
Another example. In the 1700s, Captain James Cook lost several men each time he journeyed to unknown lands -- sometimes to hostile natives, often to disease, and not infrequently to accident. In fact, his journeys blow NASA's whole idea of long-voyage "I love you, you love me" compatibility to pieces: Cook was a fair captain, but did not hesitate to use the whip when it was needed.
Another interesting note in Cook's explorations: Free (as in beer) Beer! According to an interview with Cook biographer Tony Horwitz on the local PBS station, the rotten conditions on board ship were made tolerable by the large quantities of strong beer in the hold. This led, of course, to some of the death-by-accident statistics (such as sailors falling off the "comfort seat" -- the gangplank with a hole in it for use as a toilet).
I don't mean to paint too drab a picture of future exploration, and I wouldn't want to see the whip making a return on board ship... but until we're willing to lose more than a half-dozen explorers in 40 years, we're not going to get anywhere.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You will not explode in a vacuum, provided you exhale before depressurization. In space, you would remain concious for about 10 seconds (this happened to one person who was accidentally depresurized during training.) and you would live for about 2 minutes. It takes a long time for the blood in all of your tiny little capillaries to boil off and cause swelling, long enough for you to die of asphyxiation before you have to worry about that.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Hmmm - Lance Bass was willing to pay $20 million just for a couple weeks on it. Imagine how much rent they could charge all of N'Sync for an entire year!!
Just think - Earth could be N'Sync free for a whole year and NASA would have somebody to water the plants.
The problem is with the Russian space program and NASA. Back when both organizations started out, it was an extension of the cold war. Both were formed as branches of each country's military forces, and were funded as their research also influenced the nuclear war that in the end never happened. They were in competition with each other for the upper hand, with national pride as the prize. As such, they recieved a massive amount of funding (to the point of bankrupcy on the Russian side). With that threat diminished, if not dispensed with entirely, both programs have been largely gutted. Add to that, a growing public apathy for a program that is largely still dedicated to science, porkbarrelling and what has become, for the most part, a military country club.
For example, even though the Hubble telescope has proven invaluable as a research tool, in it's original deployment, it was a national joke. Even today, it's historical scope pales in comparison to the lunar landings.
What I propose, is an international effort between private and public corporations and civilian space enthusiasts. Currently, what exists is a massively disorganized scattering of individuals and individual groups trying their own thing, truly only sharing two things: A massive interest in space, and a large amount of enthusiasm. What is needed, however, is a common ground to operate on, and the organization to build with.
We need a largely centralized system to incorporate the best of the best concepts in space technology, independant from any government organizations or interferance. Governments beget beaurocracy, and beaurocracy begets stagnation.
As for financing, it isn't THAT difficult. If we could just get 1/10th of the world's population to contribute $10, then that would be sufficient to get the first manned launch vehicle off the ground, complete with launch facilities, administration et al. It wouldn't be a space plane per se, but a manned two or three person capsule. Perhaps one could even sell a seat on the capsule with a raffle system, which would make an incredible incentive for large donations.
Pilots and experienced space veterans are, frankly, a dime a dozen, I'm certain some of them would love the opportunity to be directly involved in a pioneering space program once more, one that'll influence it far more than any government controlled system today.
Experienced scientists are a dime a dozen as well, first off, there's many in aerospace who, while they exceed many requirements of the space programs, aren't taken in due to budget constraints, or because they simply don't know the right people. Additionally, grab as many whistle blowers as you can. Why? Because they not only knew what was wrong with the current system, but they *acted* on it. That is what we need. Instead, NASA and the Russian space administration would fire them or kick them out, resulting in the continuing backslide both organizations have been experiencing. And that, in fact, would give us an edge.
This is what needs to be done. Stop hoping and wishing for "space welfare" to come to the rescue, join forces and start your own space program! At the least, there's 2-3 million people around the world who want to go to space, and want to build rockets so they can do so, at least 1/4-1/3 of which are capable of doing so.
All that NASA and Russia have, is a couple hundred thousand who're hobbled by beaurocracy and ineptitude in the very same government, that, for the ol' Slashdot tie in, consider file swapping as theft and viewing your DVD on another operating system as hacking (and subsequently a major felony deserving of a life sentance, thanks to one of the new riders on the Homeland Security Act). How can anyone in their right mind expect these same people to see any scientific viability in space programs?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!