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NASA Considering Early Retirement of Shuttle Program
Rei writes "While publicly assuring the public that it has no plans to do so, leaks have indicated that NASA has been quietly investigating plans to get rid of the Space Shuttle as soon as possible, and finish the International Space Station with disposable rockets, even as NASA works on achieving Return to Flight in 2005."
duh, bush needs war $ :)
They should have got rid of it as soon as it got off the assembly line. The Shuttle Programme was supposed to create an inexpensive, safe, and reusable rocket. Unfortunatly, they got ripped off. Not only that it is not safe, but it is also highly expensive. And if it explodes/implodes, it is not reusable.
The Chinese will take over space exploration, America's in too much of a mess, I mean how stupid to cancel X Plane development projects in the early 1990's. Everyone knew the Shuttles would eventually fall apart!
Bush has destroyed the country the keep SUVs full of gas. SUV drivers are nothing but gluttons who have ruined America!
You're all just a bunch of anonymous cowards!
More englightened leadership would have started working to ensure the developmnent of a more up-to-date alternative.
But it may be too late now, the aerospatial talent is either retired or scattered thanks to the aerospatial industry post 9/11 debacle, and there is definitely no replacements for those lost talent, as the bourgeois shortsightedness send bright students into law school rather than engineering.
Sorry, but astronaut outsourcing is already here. An Indian woman, Kalpana Chawla, is one of the seven killed in the Columbia breakup.
* I demand to be modded up as Funny!! (I will accept Troll also, as I will burn in Hell. (Or be reincarnated in the lowest caste level.))
Everytime some shuttle explode is because some management guy hid some engineering specs so he can get a bigger paycheck when his engineers deliver the projects faster. Fire the management team! Outsource them to Mars!
If the shuttle wasn't the only ride around, they wouldn't get ANYONE to ride on it. Damn things a deathtrap...
Howsabout we just say... "Build it like your kids gonna ride it, cause we're gonna send em on the first flight for a little field trip..."
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
India has the neccesary "intellectual" labour and which it doesn't, the US can easily transfer the skills; and technology .
And then the U.S. would be doing what in space exploration? Calling tech support and asking how it's going?