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Top 10 Reasons for a Space Program
Its_My_Hair writes "Space.com has an article on the top ten reasons for a space program. Most of the reasons seem to say that our space programs are here for our safety." The only necessary reason is "because it's there".
.. but I don't think we should be reaching to the stars until we've got ourselves sorted out here. Maybe when we've done something about our problems here on earth we can take to space. But a race as messed up as ours taking to the stars to spread to other planets doesn't strike me as something we should encourage yet.
The polotics surronding Nasa and any American ventures prevent them from bieng truly scientific exploration. A good example bieng the crisis that plague the shuttle program (Challenger 1988, and the recent explosion) The toilet's (The one on the space shuttle cost 20 Million, instdead of using the one from SkyLab due to Diffrences in contracting companies). The 2 Million Dollar ball point pen (Russians used pencils which are cheap and abundunt). And not to mention the problem where when they decide to come up with a program It ends up being 10x over budget due to the american commercial market gougeing Nasa because they know is a government organization. China will captiolize on the Moon and they already have mentioned that they will be the first on mars, and the Chinese are an Industrious, Economically Internalized people whom have the ability to cover-up any mistakes they make (so we never hear about thier failures). China and India will hopefully re-vitalize the Space race over the stagnant US/Russia state that it is currently in. Russia cannot afford one, and the U.S. Seems inept. Yes you've managed to kill more astronouts than any other country and you've put more people in space than anyone else but on the other side the projects that are funded by nasa have more to do with political standing than science, as a result the "Internatonal Space Station" takes 2.5 people to man (just to run) and allows for only .5 of a person to do resarch, where as the shuttle has a better standing for resarch, not to mention that it's already just a hunk of floating metal that is about 3x overbudget. Yes You can go google all the above for yourself, why Because I'm a lazy critic.