US Not Getting Money's Worth From ISS

greysky writes "On the 45th anniversary of his first trip into space, astronaut John Glenn says the U.S. is not getting it's money's worth out of the International Space Station. From the article: "Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to President Bush's goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station"."

Comments

Boeing, Lockheed, mod parent up!

[Tmack]

Supporting the parent here, go and google "Space Shuttle Lockheed" and "Space Shuttle Boeing" and see what comes up.... The results show the history here. Boeing built the shuttles under contract from NASA. Lockheed was/is looking to get that contract to build the replacement. NASA works with them to set criteria and organize the projects. If NASA advanced at the rate Scaled composites and other X-Prize competitors have, we would already be on mars. In the past, NASA advanced by leaps and bounds, it only took only 8 years to go from man in space to man on the moon, but then the Space race and cold war ended, the funding dried up, and the idiots in the president's seat started expensive wars that further dried up funding while also stifling other research. And now he wants us to go back to the moon and even onward to mars, but still cuts the budget?! /rant

tm

Re:Time to reevaluate the whole program

[0123456]

"Yes, it's on the drawing board. So is JIMO. So is Medusa. So are tens if not hundreds of thousands of other spacecraft."

And how many of those 'hundreds of thousands' are on the drawing board of companies who've put people into space (even if only suborbital) and with a company interested in funding them if their next step is successful?

I believe you'll find that will reduce your list to one... or, at most, a tiny handful.