NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?

Brian Young writes "Nasa is looking for private companies to take over the business of transporting astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. "'Certainly this is an opportunity for the new space companies,' said Jim Banke, head of Florida operations for The Space Foundation industry trade association. 'They've been lobbying NASA hard for something like this for years.' NASA hopes to supplement, and eventually replace, crew and cargo flights to the space station that had been planned for the shuttle fleet." One has to wonder how much money can be saved by NASA that can be put to use elsewhere, such as trying to figure out how to put together a manned mission to Mars, if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires."

Comments

Re:The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990

[mnmn]

"The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost."

How do you know that?

"The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America."

Thats not true. All the original nations respected a tribal lifestyle and had great respect for nature. There were several waves of settlement, the last three being the arrival of the Inuit (I bet you dont know what that is, its ESKIMO), the Viking visits and the Europeans (white settlers). It was the last group of settlers who had fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America.

"Let's not forget who settled the frontier, how those "immigrants" differed from later immigrants, and what sort of "program" they had to settle the new frontier."

Indeed. Let us NOT forget.