Russia's Role in the ISS in Trouble

Uhh_Duh writes "cnn.com is reporting that the Russian space program has fallen on hard times and is no longer capable of launching independent missions due to budget problems. The article touches on the fact that their annual funding is about 309 million versus the U.S. budget of 15 billion. They've also announced that they will not be meeting most of their future deliverables for the international space station." (corrected, the title originally said "IIS" instead of "ISS)

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Time to dump the space station anyway

[Mothra the III]

The space program has become ridiculous, between failed attempts to launch boy bands into space and new projects like virtual planets http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=96&ncid =96&e=1&u=/space/20021210/sc_space/cyber_planets__ building_virtual_worlds_to_explore_signs_of_real_l ife it seems to have drifted far from actual space exploration. If they ever want public support for government dollars, they need to start looking at sending someone to Mars, or at least back to the moon,

Problems from the Beginning

[WatertonMan]

The whole way that NASA has run the Space Station program and the Mars program have been dismall. On the one hand the public doesn't really give a damn about science, so if NASA pursued fairly cheap science projects with a good return, they'd dry up quickly. At the same time though the space station is a solution in search of a problem - and one that is VERY expensive.

To a degree all of this was just to help keep Soviet scientists around in Russia and not heading to the mid-east to develop nasty weapons. Further the military clearly had motives in keeping the Space Shuttle running. However now the Russians can't do much and haven't been able to move into commercial projects. Even in NASA the shuttles are wearing out with no replacements on the horizon.

The big question is whether all of these problems are a good thing or a bad thing. When you consider the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars spent on all this, one can ask what the return has been. (Say it in a Carl Sagan voice) There are plenty of good scientific projects. Further R&D on making space flight cheaper is a big deal. But space research itself needs to be seriously rethought.

The ISS is simply a WPA project

[Jafafa Hots]

I'm a former NASA nut, used to research the Soviet space program, etc., and so was very forgiving...
This ISS program is a turkey, though, and we should cut our losses.

The problem is simply that the ONLY reason for the existence of the ISS is to KEEP PEOPLE EMPLOYED. First of all, NASA itself as a beaurocracy has pushed and pushed for the only mega-project that it could keep getting funding for because a beaurocracy wants to EAT. They couldn't get funding for more sensible programs like a shuttle replacement, or other more mundane but necessary things, so they push for funding for the incredibly wasteful ISS because $15 billion a year wasted is $15 billion a year they WANT, no matter what it's for.
If they can't have $15 billion a year for sensible things, they'll take $15 billion for non-sensible things, just so long as no one loses their job.

As far as the Russian's involvement, it was actually the PLAN to get them involved simply to keep them employed! The Clinton administration changed the ISS from a US program, space station Freedom, to the ISS, almost exclusively to keep former soviet rocket scientists at their jobs instead of following money to other, more threatening sources. That was almost the sole reason for it.
That, actually, made a least a LITTLE bit of sense. Sort of.
Anyway, you could argue that with the Russian's participation the ISS has been more successful that it would have been otherwise, even WITH them dragging the program down - because with billions thrown down a rathole in either case, at least this way it was a bit more interesting, and did at least give the US and Russia something to strengthen our ties.