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Russia Doubles Price For Launching US Astronauts
Third Position writes "NASA on Tuesday signed a contract to pay $55.8 million per astronaut for six Americans to fly into space on Russian Soyuz capsules in 2013 and 2014. NASA needs to get rides on Russian rockets to the International Space Station because it plans to retire the space shuttle fleet later this year. NASA now pays half as much, about $26.3 million per astronaut, when it uses Russian ships."
What does it cost with Shuttle?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
How much did they pay with the shuttle, per astonaut?
Its just another round of outsourcing.
Soon the USA will be lacking cutting edge skills and capacity in hi-tech manufacturing, and won't be able to compete with India.
The UK dropped all that sort of stuff in the mid-60s and look at us now. We welcome the US to the third-rate Nations club!
If USA hadn't canceled the constellation program, the perception of exclusivity for Russia would be diminished, and USA would have a big shiny carrot to barter some short term help with.
"It's a doughnut stuffed with M&M's. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don't have to eat any M&M's."
We lead the space race, put men on the moon, landers on Mars, explored the furthest reaches of our system, made huge technological breakthroughs via the space race and now we're reduced to begging for rides from the commies?
What the hell is going on with our country?!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The Russians tried that once. They ended up paying NASA about $2 million per astronaut. It turns out NASA hired Hollywood accountants.
That is the point everyone forgets. China has only one advantage over the USA. Cheap labor. China doesn't have any other resources that the usa also has. Tapping thoseresources isjust too expensive due to labor. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of tons of resources sitting in our landfills.
The USA may collapse financially however inside of 20years we have the tools,tech, and resources to rebuild. All it will take is deflation to lower labor costs, or a total war on the scales of WW II.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
First in space, first satellite, first man in space, first orbit, first woman in space, first probes on Venus and Mars, first space station--not bad for a bunch of thugs, eh comrade?
That was communism, not the new thugarchy. I don't see the Russian space industry innovating quite as much lately. The US neither, by the way.
The X-15 design doesn't scale up too well. Getting one person to Mach 8 and 30 km altitude took a B-52 launching craft. Add enough fuel to reach orbit and your space plane is too large to be launched by aircraft, and you're back to a rocket design, ie exactly what Nasa ended up developing. X-15 was interesting, but let's not get too sentimental about it.
First things first, bond != shares. You can own 100% of the bonds issued by a company and it won't buy you any controlling interest as long as the company is solvent.
Now, on to the real discussion. The problem we have is that free trade (without a common market) artificially imports the lower regulatory standards from the exporting country. Even in the EU, you have issues like where Danish pork producers are utilising rearing technique which are discouraged or banned in other EU countries (and getting away with it).
Of course, a part of the price differential is because of the discrepancy in the cost of production, but a big component of that is how the legal and regulatory framework is established (or not) in the exporting country. How much of the social cost of production (ie. environmental damage) is internalized through taxes and fines? How much protection is offered to workforce producing the goods?
To make free trade work, there must be a common standard of not only the products themselves, but also how they are produced.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Several unrelated points here..
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First...
It's funny that you think all other countries only care about making money.
Money only serves the goal.
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China's manufacturing capacity is now about the same size as the US-- it's economy is about the size of california's.
The USA as of a couple years ago was still the largest manufacturer in the world. That can't be sustaintable- things do have to even out.
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China is going to lose a ton of money on this play to keep the Yuan up. At some point, inflation is going to kick in and make their investments pretty worthless. Trying to sell the bonds early only means they destroy the value of their investment earlier. China is willing to lose a ton of money.
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The chinese people have a very strong racial superiority / inferiority complex going. They are a bit like the americans with manifest destiny ( "everyone who looks like a chinese person really is chinese...and we want "one china".. and the chinese people are better than the rest of the world... and we are still damn pissed about foriegn intervention last century "). The only thing that will fix that is interbreeding. So we need lots of non-chinese immigrant females to head on over there and suck up that extra 80 million bachelors (who are there because the chinese are terminating female pregnancies and in at least some documented cases, killing female children at birth ).
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Inflation in china and india is high- 20% a year to 100% a year for wages. Things will even out-- maybe 6 more years a lot of the professional salaries will even out.
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They are in the middle of an unbelievable housing bubble. In America, we couldn't even comprehend it. Essentially with wages of $5000-$10000, housing is going for 40 years to 20 years salary. That's like a normal house (non-mcmansion) in the US going for 1.6 million dollars.
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I always think none of this really matters because we are overdue for a major war and most of the world systems are too fragile to handle it when it comes. So it's going to be extremely ugly when it does.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The fact that the Russians raised the price only makes it that much easier for our own private industry to compete. I think that they are just going for one last money grab while they have the opportunity to do so. They know that we will have our one manned launch capability again very soon, and we won't be buying any more launches from them.
The US is no longer the largest market for a lot of things, from cell phones (China has more cell phone users than the entire American population) to cars (China is #1 in new car sales worldwide).
They can now pick and choose the markets the enter. It's why they refused to buy the Hummer, and why China/Walmart Refuses To Bid On NASA Contract. They're simply not that desperate for business any more, not with their economy still growing at almost 10% per year.
China has a monopoly on rare earth metals - required for producing wind turbines and hybrid cars. So they are not completely resourceless.