The ridiculous amounts and money and engineering talent wasted on a Buck Rogers toy like the space shuttle, the international space station, and now the proposed space plane, have drained funds that could have been used for unmanned exploration of Mars, the moons of Jupiter, Titan, etc. We landed on the moon over 30 years ago, and haven't done anything interesting since. Sending astronauts into orbit around the earth is 1960s technology. It's pathetic that we are just building space toys instead of doing real space exploration. But hey, the shuttle looks cool, and the space plane will probably look even cooler.
I live in Taiwan. Taipei 101 makes me ill everytime I look at it. The building is a government-financed feel-good project to enhance the nation's prestige. Unfortunately, except for the government-owned stockmarket, the office tower has attracted no tennants willing to sign a lease. Backers of the project claim that the seven-storey shopping mall is leased - of course, they don't like to mention that it's in another building. This thing is going to go spectacularly bankrupt soon after it's finished. By the way, nearby Sungshan Airport had to re-route it's flights to avoid danger to the office tower.
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The ridiculous amounts and money and engineering talent wasted on a Buck Rogers toy like the space shuttle, the international space station, and now the proposed space plane, have drained funds that could have been used for unmanned exploration of Mars, the moons of Jupiter, Titan, etc. We landed on the moon over 30 years ago, and haven't done anything interesting since. Sending astronauts into orbit around the earth is 1960s technology. It's pathetic that we are just building space toys instead of doing real space exploration. But hey, the shuttle looks cool, and the space plane will probably look even cooler.
I live in Taiwan. Taipei 101 makes me ill everytime I look at it. The building is a government-financed feel-good project to enhance the nation's prestige. Unfortunately, except for the government-owned stockmarket, the office tower has attracted no tennants willing to sign a lease. Backers of the project claim that the seven-storey shopping mall is leased - of course, they don't like to mention that it's in another building. This thing is going to go spectacularly bankrupt soon after it's finished. By the way, nearby Sungshan Airport had to re-route it's flights to avoid danger to the office tower.