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US to Pay to go to ISS
forgotten_my_nick writes "According to BBC News, Russia has announced that it will no longer ferry US astronauts to space for free (It has been doing so for two years). From 2006 the US will be expected to pay."
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They aren't trying to profit they are trying to break even. If Russia had the budget NASA has I would be willing to bet they could create a reusable shuttle. How the hell does Bush think we can get to Mars when we need to borrow Russia's space fleet to get to ISS? What a joke.
Sigh.
As usual we get the slew of high moderated posts about how the americans built everything, and how the russians are now gouging them.
Some people blame the americans, others the russians. All didn't read the article.
Fact: The russians are currently ferrying everything to the station.
Fact: NASA is grounded.
Fact: The russians are very low on funds, and can't afford to keep doing this.
They've stated that they'll wait to see if NASA meets its May deadline to get their shuttles going again.
They've stated that they want to negotiate something to ease the burden (such as bartering for the man hours they currently owe for other work).
America's response hasn't been made clear yet.
Is this gouging? No. They haven't even entered negotiations yet.
Should they gouge? Some of you "capitalist or die" affictionados may think so, but that kind of thinking is what drives the CEOs who only look to the next quarter's earnings, and what they can get out of it before the thing collapses.
This doesn't work in world politics, as can be seen from the fallout of Iraq.
My wife still shudders at the Perrier embargo of '03 when all things French were evil and products weren't making it to our local grocery.
Basically, the U.S. is a brain, heart and soul dead shell with a lot of weapons. Even at our local metropolitan Mensa gathering we have to avoid the "Rush Limbaugh is God" table. This has all been analyzed and put on the bookshelves already. Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Berman's Twilight of American Culture.
Personally, I've decided I don't care. A purposeful Nazi or a pig-ignorant Nazi, they are both repugnant and I'm ashamed of my countrymen. But you have to realize that the American people are pig-ignorant. Forget quality public education, we don't even have free media. I gave up on so-called "liberal" public radio after the drumbeat to war in March of '03 when one of their shows headlined some guy from a military college on "Socrates, the soldiering years!" Talk about pseudo-intellectual target market warmongering taken to the ridiculous. If it weren't for the meager checks and balances of the internet, Clear Channel would probably be telling the U.S. heartland that most of the world has been taken over by aliens, so to speak.
And they'd believe it.