NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space

MattSparkes writes "Budget cuts could leave NASA without a Space Shuttle replacement, and leave it reliant on private firms to get payloads into space. A similar scenario happened between 1975 and 1981 when NASA made the transition from Apollo to the Space Shuttle. It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

Comments

We would be able to buy all new shuttles

[Weaselmancer]

And a whole lot of other useful things like teachers, public housing, additional health care and other benefits to our country if we weren't spending our money somewhere else at the moment.

Re:Private trips to space

[massivefoot]

NASA is a government agency, the purpose of which is to advance science in the fields of astrophysics, spaceflight and aeronautics. It does not exist to offer a commercial service to members of the public who wish to travel into space for recreation. To do so would be to give unfair privilege to the wealthy, and would take up time and payload capacity which could be better used for other purposes. If NASA is having trouble funding its operations, that would suggest that its budget is insufficent, and needs increasing. Were the Bush administration not to have gone tax-cut-happy the moment it came to power, NASA might have slightly more resources at its disposal.

However, the problem here seems to be partly developmental as well as funding based. If I recall correctly, a gap between the shuttle's retirement and the CEV's first launch was expected, just not of this duration.

Re:Sorry, but I had to

[Paladin128]

The military, at least, is a function of the government. Whether or not you agree with the justifications of war in Iraq (I certainly don't), a reasonable person must agree that a government has a right to maintain a military and defend a nation as it sees fit.

I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.

NASA is a huge, wasteful organization that should be dismantled. If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.

Take the hit now

[Jivecat]

IMO, NASA should mothball the Shuttle immediately and put all its effort into developing the Ares system. They would have to re-manifest some crews and hardware aboard Soyuz and Proton rockets for the next few years, but that would allow their current engineering talent to focus exclusively on the new system, avoid the brain drain that Administrator Griffin fears, and save a bunch of money in the process. I bet with focus they could have flight-worthy hardware by 2010.