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Atlantis Lands, Ending the Shuttle Era
Early this morning Atlantis landed at KSC in Florida. I've been following the trip intently ever since my trip to Florida to see the launch of the very last Shuttle. This really is the end of an era. Thanks go out to the thousands of NASA employees who made this happen, many of whom have been laid off. A number of them emailed me directly showing me pictures and sharing stories. I wish you all the best. As for America, here's hoping that we return to space soon.
Near SF bridge, no?
Hivemind harvest in progress..
...and thanks for all the fish.
Just outside San Francisco Bay, after destroying the hive ship?
While the Shuttle program has ended (and its been a spectacular run), I guess the only things to look forward to are the MPCV, CTS-100, Dragon, DreamChaser, and the New Sheppard.
I think the future is looking pretty bright.
The US manned spaceflight program comes to an ignominious end at the same time the Texas school board votes on whether to teach evolution in science class. And people wonder why we've lost our leadership in science and manufacturing.
The fact that the Shuttle was still flying in 2011 isn't just a testament to its longevity. It's a sad reminder that, at least for now, human spaceflight is at the mercy of the schizophrenia that is the American political process.
NASA has consistently brought together some of the finest minds in the world to do what the preceding finest minds thought was impossible. Then, because this is America, we take a bunch of mouth-breathers who probably got Cs and Ds in basic high school science courses and make them the bosses and the gatekeepers, the people who decide that it's more important to systematize the abuse of human rights at airports and buy the jokers at the Pentagon their newest murder toy than it is to push the frontiers of knowledge and ingenuity.
I'm putting my hope for the future of space exploration in private hands. Not because I fetishize the free market, or because I think government is evil, but because human spaceflight is way too important to be put in the hands of the American electorate, which is probably the stupidest and most poorly-informed decision-making body since the Athenian ekklesia.
While having immense respect for those who worked on the Shuttle program, and certainly honouring those who lost their lives in its operations, I feel that this is the end of a huge diversion. It turned out that the Shuttle was never as good an idea as it was originally made out to be. It certainly never lived up to its name. I feel, but I don't know, that this could have been recognised earlier and the U-turn being made now could have been made twenty years ago. Unfortunately, the "Concorde effect" cut in - nobody would take responsibility for axing a program on which tens of billions had been spend - so hundreds of billions more had to be spend on a flawed, albeit marvellous - project.
And look ahead: not may years ahead, America may have multiple launchers, some man-rated, some not, to give a broad spectrum capability at much lower cost. Sometimes, backtracking is the wisest thing to do.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
... At roughly $60 per capita annually, I think the cost of the space program is justified by its entertainment value alone.
they moved it to the moon and that why we can't go back to the moon.
Geez kids, get a grip! We haven't 'left space'. We have active missions out there right now (Vesta? ring a bell?), and we'll continue to send people to the ISS on Russian ships. Within 10 years we'll likely have manned capability again, but humans in space return far less than the robotic missions.
We need better robotics to take the next step, which is picking a resource (like a large mostly-metal asteroid), bringing it into orbit and exploiting the shit out of it.
Equating the U.S. space program solely to dicks and tits in space is stupid, childish, and shortsighted. But then no one thinks of Americans as especially visionary these days.
I was a student at FIT when the first shuttle launched and had the honor of watching the live launch from a small boat about a mile and a half from the launch pad. It was a memorable experience of raw power.
This morning I was woken by the sonic boom as the last shuttle was still supersonic on approach. Somehow fitting personal bookends to a wonderful program.
...walking (booted) out the door. In 5 years NASA couldn't launch a shuttle even if they took Atlantis, mothballed it and all the facilities because no one will know how to do it anymore.
When they started working on Ares they had to send engineers out to look at the Saturn 5 rocket in Houston to try to rediscover its technology because all of the institutional knowledge was gone. And even after that, they killed it.
Imagine what it must be like to be an engineer at NASA...”work on this, no, work on that. Wait, forget that and do this. Never mind, do this instead”. You've all been there in IT probably.
If there ever was a time to establish clear, long term goals and technology focus, now is it. But they will drift aimlessly, buffeted by the whims of the Administration and Congress.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
CmdrTaco, thank you for the coverage of the launch. I was there and following your, NASA and weather tweets all morning up until the launch. 'Tis quite a memorable experience indeed, I'm just glad they made it back safe and sound and off into history they go. Just wish America could get its act together so something this awesome doesn't have to end due to financial concerns.
Atlantis flew a magnificent mission, capping a great career. She, and her sisters, have been great ships and deserve to retire with honour.
Yeah, they were expensive. Yeah, people think robots are cooler. Yeah, they couldn't go to the moon or Mars. And yeah, in hindsight hanging a somewhat fragile spaceship on the side of a booster probably wasn't the best idea.
But Atlantis and her sisters' record of achievement is magnificent, and will probably never be matched. They launched space probes, they conducted research into materials, life sciences, earth sciences, astronomy, and countless other fields. They serviced satellites and space stations, and brought tonnes of equipment back to earth for study and reflight. They provided a convenient platform for experiments and payloads that would otherwise have had to construct their own complete satellites. They did all this 133 times successfully, with only two losses, and in the space business you'd take that success rate any day of the week.
Although written years earlier, Billy Bragg's "The Space Race is Over" seems appropriate.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Those engineers can now work at Google to make office software. Sigh.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Look, it WAS a great achievement. But like most things in the USA, for the last 30-40 years we never move on to something better. I believe with the space shuttle still flying we would never get a new program moving. The shuttle a great technical achievement, but an inherently flawed design for efficiency and frankly BORING at low earth orbit capability. Furthermore, at 0.5 BILLION per launch, it was just a waste of money repeating the same thing (essentially) again and again and again. We could launch two vehicles -- one for humans and one for the cargo for far less than this single shuttle bus.
Now lets see if we can get more practical MODERN vehicles moving forward now that this 1960/1970 vehicle is finally put out to pasture where it belonged 15 years ago.
I just heard the sad news on the radio, the United States manned space program was found dead on it's runway in Cape Canaveral this morning. Foul play is suspected.
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it -- even if they didn't enjoy it's work, there's no denying it's contributions to the advancement the distribution of federal pork. Truly an American icon.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And since nobody died, we can celebrate!
...
Some things have longer horizons than our 2/4/6-year election cycles. Like our financial institutions, our leaders and focused way too much on the short term.
The Pres & the Congress should set goals, NASA should submit an honest budget per project, and Congress should approve them or not as a whole. No more of this micromanagement crap -- "We'll give you 7 billion this year, but you've got to use solid rocket boosters made in the congressional district from Utah. Next term, we're going to cut your budget to make cheap points with the teabaggers."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And look ahead: not may years ahead, America may have multiple launchers, some man-rated, some not, to give a broad spectrum capability at much lower cost. Sometimes, backtracking is the wisest thing to do.
As long as our Congress and the worthless fucking presidents we've elected over the past 20+ years are in control of NASA's budget we're not going to see anything worth-while out of them.
But Mr. President, we must not allow a space gap!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Emperor, our golden age as ended. (Click to end turn)
This is a sad day because I see no realistic plans to replace the shuttle's capability of putting a human in space, even if it's only LEO. It looks like pretty much everything to replace it has been canceled.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I have seen this comment so many times lately ... Anyone who was there in 1975 when the last Apollo-Saturn launched could have said the same thing. From 1975 to 1981, between Apollo and the Shuttle, we went into a period where the US had no operational manned space capability and I don't recall near the wailing then about how the US had given up on manned space flight. Now we are probably looking at a similar time period until the US again regains the ability to provide its own manned launch capability. In many ways the 1975-81 period was grimmer than it is now. We still have Americans in space on the ISS, we still have a robust (American and international) unmanned program, we have promising private ventures to provide space launch services -- none of which we had in the late 70's, and we had similar talk then about how in general "America was in decline". The emblematic event of the late 70's in space exploration was Skylab falling uncontrolled out of orbit because was the Shuttle was so late becoming operational. We came through that time OK, though it took a while. The Shuttle != US space exploration, not even close; it's time to move on.
and he was right. Just one shuttle launch needed how many thousands of people and billions of dollars? And for the price of 1 shuttle mission, how many Falcon launchers can you buy?
But then that was irrelevant, since the primary purpose of the program was to generate jobs and keep the esteemed senator from Utah happy.
21 July 2011 - NASA ends manned space flight program. And that's your talking point... There are so many sarcastic things to say about this and so little time.
NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2008 amounts to $471.23 billion dollars—an average of $9.06 billion per year. "Medicare & Medicaid ($793B or 23%), Social Security ($701B or 20%), Defense Department ($689B or 20%), non-defense discretionary ($660B or 19%), other ($416B or 12%) and interest ($197B or 6%)."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget")
The $18.69B spent by NASA in 2010 is a far cry from the $1.5 trillion in social programs we are wasting money on.
Please keep your misguided mathematics to yourself. NASA isn't what is making America broke.
The impact NASA has is like a stick of gum in a grocery bag full of caviar, lobster tails and prime rib.
wrong!
We need to fix our budget starting by reducing spending on the biggest parts of the budget first:
1. medicaid & medicare, 23%- get rid of the inefficiencies of a for-profit insurance and medical system. (I admit, this requires further study on my part),
2. social security, 20% - adjust the eligibility age to properly reflect changing demographics. Make it so it automatically adjusts in the future. It's supposed to be a safety net to avoid poverty in old age, quit selling it as part of your retirement planning.
3. military spending, 20% - try being a good neighbor instead of a raging drunken dickhead. Maybe promote Democracy, transparency and accountability instead of propping up the tin-horn dictator de jure just because he hates the guys we hate and can keep the oil flowing. Like NASA, spend the money on what we actually need, don't use this budget as a means to dispense pork.
4. discretionary spending, 19% - once we get those first three bigger portions straightened out, then we can start looking at the piddling little stuff. With NASA getting like 0.6% of the budget, there's a lot of other things that should be looked at first.
Anybody that doesn't tackle those items first is just pandering and re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Fix it before it corrects itself.
no, I am not available to run for office. I will however consider calls for me to be made dictator.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You seem to think that all the shuttle did was go back and forth to LEO. The shuttle was the scene for a great deal of study in microgravity; from biological reactions to materials science. None of which could have been done with unmanned probes and rovers.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Televised Robot Rover Battles on Mars. Their scientific missions complete, their batteries running low....Fight Fight Fight!
No! Wait! NASA Mars Rover NASCAR! I'd only watch it to see the crashes! On MARS!
Now that is what the US tax payers want! Top notch science entertainment.
America's next top model-In-low-earth-orbit. Americas got talent-in-the-vomit-comet. This stuff writes itself.
Someone else said it originally, but if you play NASA's history backwards, they start out with no manned space flight capability, develop shuttles, and eventually land on the moon.
Althoguh I am british, I grew up in the 80's, and the spaceshuttle is one of those defining items of that era. I was saddended when chanllenger exploded, and even more upset when Colmbia exploded. I deep down expected it to finish its working life and end up in a Museum. Also to see some "anti-west" groups in the middle east "celebrate" the explosion really upset me.
Jeremy Clarkson wrote a book once, called "You've got soul". IT describes "machines" that are more than just a hunk of metal/plastic/etc, but have an affect on human psyche that incites adoration, and the impression of "soul". He described Concorde as one such machine. I would say the Shuttle is also one of such machine.
Congratulations to all involved, and remmber those who lost their lives.
Have a nice day!
A good quote from Bolden sent to NASA employees:
Yes, they're just words. But to quote Jim Kirk's son in ST II:
"But good words. That’s where ideas begin."
All I can say is that I hope he's right.
>2. social security, 20% WRONG. Social Security is Debt neutral. Or should be. The "Fiscal Conservatives" keep robbing it to hide their irresponsible spending habits. It certainly does need a tweak or two, but it is not part of the federal debt. (its just owed a lot of money by Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, Bush(43), and Obama.
Oh where is Al Gore and his lockbox when we need him?
While there are a couple of factual errors with this interview (I'll forgive somebody in their 70's who otherwise was actively involved in the development efforts of a great many spacecraft programs) this interview by Jerry Pournelle covers many of the problems that happened with the Shuttle development:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5745
It could have worked, but too many compromises were made on the Shuttle where those compromises compounded on each other to create many of the problems involved, including what ended up killing 14 astronauts.
I personally think there should have been a Shuttle II program that would have taken the lessons learned and built a new version of the basic design. Sadly, that never happened. What I hope does not get learned from the Shuttle is that reusable lifting bodies should never be used for spaceflight. The real problem with the Shuttle was trading development costs for operational costs, and expecting a government bureaucracy devoted to keeping jobs is going to help lower costs.
What you just describe is exactly the situation that we have had.
With NASA pushing private space to take this on, we will move the knowledge into MULTIPLE companies that will keep moving forward. In fact, what is now going to happen is that SpaceX has massively one-uped ALL OF THE COMPANIES AND NATIONS in the world. What is going to happen is that UAL will be forced to create a new rocket, or lose possible launches. Even now, they have started work on a rocket idea for taking on the Ares V, now SLS as well as Falcon X. The SLS will be dead on the vine within 2 years when SpaceX announces that they are building Falcon X.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Given the realities of our insane political systems. (Lets all change our reality instead of living in this crappy one please)
But.. given: The only mission that seems viable is sending probes, rovers, satellites to every heavenly body we can see. All the planets, all the moons, all the stars that we can reach.
Space telescopes
I need new computer wallpaper from my big new monitor.
Good points, thanks.
Part of being debt neutral is not paying out more than you have coming in. Hence, adjusting the eligibility age to properly reflect demographic changes.
And yes, SS, originally, in theory, was supposed to be a separate item from the budget as a whole. But as you've pointed out, in reality, everybody's had their hand in that cookie jar to temporarily cover up their budget problems in other areas.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just for a short time. America will have 2-4 launchers for Human in just 3 short years, or less.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://inhabitat.com/obama-gives-nasa-2-4-billion-to-study-climate-change/
Only now, we will have not only the CHEAPEST launchers, but 3-4 human rated. In addition,we will not have to worry about CONgress messing things up once Bigelow has its first space station in orbit.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Only because the American government didn't want to set the precedence. The first satellites, the first people in space, and other "firsts" could all have been American, but the Eisenhower administration deliberately killed American efforts at going into space before Russia/the Soviet Union because doing so would have potentially changed the recognition of various international law philosophies of flying over the territory of another country.
By having the Soviet spacecraft fly first over America in space, it was easy for Americans to justify doing the same thing over the Soviet Union. In the end it likely helped out America better by being 2nd in all of those areas. For stuff that really counts, America was first. It was American astronauts who performed the first EVA (aka "spacewalk"), performed the first in-orbit rendezvous (something the Chinese have yet to do), and the first in-space repair of a spacecraft.
BTW, while NASA "can't" go into space with their own astronauts on their own vehicles right now, it isn't correct to say "America can't go into space". SpaceX just announced that they are going to dock to the ISS with a Dragon capsule in November of this year. This same vehicle will soon be carrying astronauts and already has completed a flight to and from space even if it was unmanned for that flight. The "gap" is going to be rather small. SpaceX is just one of many companies going into space, so even if they fail there will be others.
Sadly, Congress wants to cut funding for commercial efforts like the Dragon and other similar spacecraft in favor of a big rocket that won't even be able to fly astronauts until 2020. Yeah, that is real progress there and a concern about keeping Americans in space. Still, these private companies will be going into space in spite of congressional efforts to kill funding for activities in space.
Eh? We could have done 5 shuttle launches with that money.
Actually shutting down three "wars", altering the national defense strategy for the modern world, and expanding the space/science strategy is the sensible thing to do. We spent/spend more money on three wars in two months then the entire NASA budget for a year. The RIO for our war effort, dead soldiers, pissed off people, and continued unbalance in countries we are "helping". However, since it is political hacks and soulless CEOs that are making decisions these days, sensible only applies to their ego, not society.
Yes, I'm a little jaded.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Climate change is far more important that space travel, I'm glad we have our priorities in order. http://sweetness-light.com/archive/nasa-boosts-climate-change-budget-62
ASA Boosts Climate Change Budget 62% This is probably for the best, climate change is a far larger problem than space exploration.
But he offers nothing intelligent or even accurate, so a mod down was the correct thing to do. In fact, the original poster and the 2 coward postings were all inaccurate.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The biggest difference between that period of time in the 70s and this, is that they already had plans on the table for the Shuttle and were moving towards implementing. There originally wasn't going to be a gap between Saturn launches and the Shuttle, but the Apollo program got shelved early, thus creating the gap and resulting in no ability to boost Skylab. In fact the Shuttle was being proposed back in the late 60's and one of the initial designs included the Nerva engine as its main engine, instead of what it ended up being, the Hydroxide/Oxygen Engine we ended up with. Now NASA has no plans moving forward other than private industry and they have no budgets for anything other than robotics. It's kind of sad to go to the Kennedy Space Center, look at the launch complex, and hear what the tour guides have to say as you drive by the Constellation Launch pad. It's ready to be used and yet, due to change of direction and political will, won't be. I think we'll see the Dragon capsule replace a large part of NASA's functionality though. As much as I have lived my life loving what NASA has done, I think they're future may be very grim.
There is at least one company that shares your Shuttle II program vision.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I'd like to know what accounts you were reading. Seriously. I've read many of those same "insider accounts" as well as what the staff and policy makers in the Eisenhower administration were saying at the time.
Wernher von Braun had a rocket that had been completely built and ready to do flight testing before Sputnik was launched. Instead, the government essentially cancelled his project in favor of another that was being built by the U.S. Navy (von Braun was working for the army ordinance directorate). Since he had done numerous sub-orbital flights previously, I don't doubt that he could have beaten the Russians to orbit.
Yes, there were problems, but the American leadership wasn't nearly as shocked as you indicate, at least at the top. Members of congress were mostly clueless about the issue, and just like they are shocked that the Shuttle program is over now like they were surprised back in the 1950's over Sputnik.
President Eisenhower certainly didn't show any surprise that the Russians made it into space, but then again he was arguing for an extensive involvement in space well before Sputnik too. What he was most interested in was reconnaissance satellites to replace or substantially supplement the high altitude aerial flights then being done. There were other policy documents to indicate that spaceflight certainly was under active consideration.
This isn't a fantasy. Please read up on this stuff before you start to knock yourself out.
Hellova ride NASA. I watched Young and Crippen climb into the first one on TV, not know if they'd live to tell about it. There was no unmanned test flight, they were it. Huge conjones those two. The landing looking like a DC-9 coming in from Cleveland. A proud moment for everyone. I was a young machinist in LA, just about to transition into the Quality job, and the last thing I did was these weird chunks of stainless steel. I didn't know what they were for, but I found out they were supposed to fly. On the first satellite rescue mission, the first time something from orbit was salvaged and brought back to earth, there were my chunks, the attach points for the cradle for the satellite. I was never prouder. I watched Challenger's fireball driving down Semoran Blvd. in Orlando. I went home to 4 little girls who asked why the teacher died. Daddy didn't have any answers that day. I spent 6 months afterwords working on Strut Parts as an inspector. I was assigned a part that had it flown, they would have lost another shuttle. They guy from the Cape had to be helped back to his car after we showed him. They got a lot more serious about safety after that. I was gaming on line with a bunch of guys in Teamspeak when the guy from Dallas shouted 'WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!!'. He described a sonic boom. We put 2+2 together and figured out another shuttle was in trouble, it should have been 40 miles up over Dallas that day, it was less than 10. 10 minutes later, NBC announced. Still a magnificent achievement NASA.
BS. It's not popular to talk about it, but due to age demographics social security is fucked.
Oh yeah, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Don't see anything about climate in that.
I have an idea, let's assign responsibility for the next space mission to the EPA. Then maybe DOT can take over nuclear research for the DOE.
we'd be traveling amongst the stars by now.
Damn, I'm pissed off.
According to the CBO, the ACA (Obamacare) goes most of the way toward solving the medicare problem. If you revise Part-D to allow negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, that would put Medicare in the black for... well basically forever. It you remove the "Social Security Cap" that would do the same for SS. (Currently, you only pay FICA deductions -- "payroll" taxes -- on your first $100k or so of income. So the hedge-fund manager who makes $20m pays the same FICA as a guy who makes $100k.) Eliminate or raise that cap, and SS is rock solid as far as the eye can see.
Heck, just rolling back the "Bush Tax Cuts" on people making more than $500k/yr would wipe out nearly 2/3rds of the deficit. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would come close to matching that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Whew. For just a second I read it as 'lands at KFC'.
some of the first astronomers were priests, in ancient India. the purpose of their work, like Aryabhata's sine table, was partly to ensure the religious ceremonies happened at the correct times.
Anyone who says "we have to address X bad spending FIRST before we address Y bad spending" is wrong. The only time to address (cut, eliminate, end) X, Y or Z bad spending is now. Waiting serves no purpose.
And if the shuttle program had worked out as planned, it might actually have turned out that way (absent Kennedy's race-to-the-moon challenge of course). But the shuttle ended up being many times as expensive at promised, and due to "Congressional lock-in" we were stuck with it for 30 years.
Yeah, it's a bummer that we don't have any man-rated launchers for a couple of years, but it's high time we took space flight out of the hands of politicians.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
First man in space. First space station, the Salyut 1. Although, if my memory serves me correctly, the USSR did launch a 'manned spy satellite' that predates even this.
Have gnu, will travel.
But if you're sending unmanned probes and rovers, it leads me to ask why do we even do that? We can probably get a lot more bang for buck focussing on science on the planet.
"Science" is not a fungible entity, where you can just try to optimize the units of science you produce for a given cost and use those science-units to get the next tech upgrade.
There are things about the universe, and even our own planet, that we cannot learn without studying other bodies in space. And our view from earth -- even in earth orbit -- is limited. We need to send probes to study them more closely, and rovers to the surface to conduct experiments.
The enemies of Democracy are
...once China and India start competing in earnest with the United States for dominance of space. The only question is whether the United States will be a competitor .. or the pace car.
Finding God in a Dog
....the Portugal of the 21st Century. Thank you so very much, BO.
I look forward to the day when the Red Chinese visit the Apollo XI landing site, roll up the American flag, and mail it to the White House. Postage Due, of course.
Regards;
studying the earth is studying space science, isnt it?
isn't the best example of a climate-out-of-control the planet venus?
But all of those baby boomers paid into the system their whole lives up until now. That is why Social Security used to have money worth taking for other projects, and why Al Gore wanted a "lock box." Everyone saw this coming, but only a handful of politicians actually cared about it enough to try to prevent it.
because they believed there was no way they could compete using conventional military forces, and the rocket program was much cheaper than continuing down the mass-army road
"It's a sad reminder that, at least for now, human spaceflight is at the mercy of the schizophrenia that is the American political process"
I think human spaceflight will continue whatever happens in America, I don't think human spaceflight is directly at the mercy of the American political process. The Russians and Chinese have human rated space vehicles, other countries are likely to strive towards them. they will carry on regardless of what happens in America. They might be affected to a degree, but not completely influenced.
I think you just confused 'humanity' with 'America'?
According to the CBO, the ACA (Obamacare) goes most of the way toward solving the medicare problem. If you revise Part-D to allow negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, that would put Medicare in the black for... well basically forever.
And instead, Congress is trying to get inserted into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that (other) countries are outright forbidden from doing this.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
So now that we finally got rid of the shuttle, how about giving that other big orbiting bottomless sink of of money a good dunking in the Pacific, and then get on with actual science?