Cancellation of the Space Shuttle Program - Shameful !!

[T.Neo]

Just to look at it a little closer; The war in Iraq has cost roughly (at the time of posting) 785 214 000 000 USD.

With that money, you could likely fund two Mars programs at least, and still have billions left over for things like healthcare and poverty assistance, etc...

 

[deltawing777]

So spending money on poverty assistance and insuring that every American has health care=a waste of your tax dollars, but spending money to put a human on a rocket so they can plant a flag and take some rock samples is important enough that if we don't do it it's a sad time for America?

Your idea of wastefull spending and mine are 2 different things,especially now only after the fact we don't have the money thanks to Obama and the dems. My idea of spending money along with our partners to better mankind in all kinds of ways (mankind means everybody in every country) to me isn't a waste of money. And we don't want your socialist healthcare plan. And if we don't buy this so called health insurance we will be threatned with jail. Why don't we focus on jobs and get the gas prices down so companies will start hiring again and get everybody off the poverty assistance in the first place. And I am sorry since when did planting a american flag on a distant world become not worth it? Where is your pride man? Geeez :facepalm:

 

[Eli13]

If only we had someone who knew what he was doing with our country.

 

[diogom]

However, I fear the above opinions are dying out. Most kids these days seem to be perfectly contented with shopping being the primary purpose of their lives.

Amen to that. At least here, half want to be football players (nothing against it, but there's just no diversity in their life dreams), and half spend their time doing stuff described with a word I can't use in this forum, and don't even get past 5th grade.

 

[Donamy]

Let's not get personal, or this thread will be closing.:nono:

 

[FADEC]

Just to look at it a little closer; The war in Iraq has cost roughly (at the time of posting) 785 214 000 000 USD.

Awful. I think this is about 5 times the cost of the apollo program (in todays money of course). One could have spend it for projects in Africa.

 

[Urwumpe]

With that money, you could likely fund two Mars programs at least, and still have billions left over for things like healthcare and poverty assistance, etc...

And bringing democracy to Mars would also be much simpler. :lol:

 

[Ark]

Your idea of wastefull spending and mine are 2 different things,especially now only after the fact we don't have the money thanks to Obama and the dems. My idea of spending money along with our partners to better mankind in all kinds of ways (mankind means everybody in every country) to me isn't a waste of money. And we don't want your socialist healthcare plan. And if we don't buy this so called health insurance we will be threatned with jail. Why don't we focus on jobs and get the gas prices down so companies will start hiring again and get everybody off the poverty assistance in the first place. And I am sorry since when did planting a american flag on a distant world become not worth it? Where is your pride man? Geeez :facepalm:

I'm too lazy to type out a massive response, so cliffnotes:

-Bush took our best surplus in history and turned it into our worst deficit, along with starting two wars we couldn't pay for and cutting rich people's taxes enough to make sure nobody that followed him could pay for them either. Don't act like all this just came out of nowhere.

-A socialist healthcare plan would be where the government actually provides healthcare for everyone, instead of just giving us coupons and asking the insurance companies to play nice. If only.

-You go to jail for not paying taxes, not for lack of insurance.

-Wait, so it's the government's job to dictate what companies can charge for gas? The only way they could control that is to, perhaps, take over and nationalize the oil business.

None of that crap even has anything to do with the topic at hand, you're just using it as an excuse for a canned Sean Hannity "I hate Obama" rant.

 

[Urwumpe]

One could have spend it for projects in Africa.

Better not... such kind of aid doesn't make Africa better, it just indirectly buys weapons.

Better remove all trade barriers between Africa and the rest of the world, that would really help the people, at least if the barriers would work in the right direction.

 

[Mantis]

So spending money on poverty assistance and insuring that every American has health care=a waste of your tax dollars, but spending money to put a human on a rocket so they can plant a flag and take some rock samples is important enough that if we don't do it it's a sad time for America?

But where do those tax dollars come from? They come from hard working successful people. What did the shuttle program provide? Tens of thousands of high-paying, highly skilled technical jobs. The money spent on the space program is not loaded into a rocket and shot off into space. It's spent right here on earth - most of it spent on salaries for some very technically skilled people. Those directly employed by the program are just the tip of the iceberg. There are probably tens of thousands of other jobs in other industries that depend indirectly on the space program and the salaries paid to it's employees.

The shuttle was a magnificient piece of equipment that could have and should have been able to continue operating for as long as it took to develop a replacement. Instead, not only is the shuttle being retired, but Obama has cancelled it's replacement. He has reduced the US manned space program to thumbing rides with the Russians with no domestic manned launch capability on the horizon and no prospect of getting beyond Earth orbit - even with the handful of possible commercial ventures.

This focus of commercial rather than governmental programs doens't wash either. Space travel always employed private industry. It was private industry that built the Apollo spacecraft, the mighty Saturn V and the shuttle itself. Private industry was to build the now-cancelled replacement for the shuttle. It's not like it was huge government run factories building that stuff.

 

[Ark]

Better not... such kind of aid doesn't make Africa better, it just indirectly buys weapons.

Better remove all trade barriers between Africa and the rest of the world, that would really help the people, at least if the barriers would work in the right direction.

Frankly I don't think any amount of aid or favorable policies will change Africa. It's up to them to decide when they want to mobilize and elect leadership that goes beyond the warlord-of-the-moment. The West has been dumping money into Africa for decades and nothing has changed.

It's a cold attitude, yeah, but when has Western intervention really resulted in permanent, positive change?

 

[T.Neo]

Yeah, or we could have spent on Africa... so it could get mismanaged, embezzled, and the results withheld from disadvantaged people by warlords, dictators and corrupt politicians...

The addage that one must always remember when dealing with mass-scale charity, is: If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

Pouring money into poverty is not going to fix it, the money is going to run out and disappear, and you'll be back at square one.

Only Africans can fix African problems. The people need to learn how to manage their nations properly, and there need to be proper, just leaders installed into power rather than ineffective fatcats and dictators. It will happen. If it does not happen in the next 10 years, it will happen in the next 25... if it does not happen in the next 25, it will happen in the next 50. And if it somehow does not happen by then, it will surely happen within 100 years time.

Do people need to pour money and food aid into Africa? No, that is a waste of time- you need to teach disadvantaged people to take charge of their own prosperity, you can't give them temporary prosperity in a paper bag.

And we don't want your socialist healthcare plan.

All this talk about healthcare plans confuses me... can someone please explain, without sparking a political debate why there is so much opposition to government-funded healthcare in the US?

 

[Ark]

But where do those tax dollars come from? They come from hard working successful people. What did the shuttle program provide? Tens of thousands of high-paying, highly skilled technical jobs. The money spent on the space program is not loaded into a rocket and shot off into space. It's spent right here on earth - most of it spent on salaries for some very technically skilled people. Those directly employed by the program are just the tip of the iceberg. There are probably tens of thousands of other jobs in other industries that depend indirectly on the space program and the salaries paid to it's employees.

The shuttle was a magnificient piece of equipment that could have and should have been able to continue operating for as long as it took to develop a replacement. Instead, not only is the shuttle being retired, but Obama has cancelled it's replacement. He has reduced the US manned space program to thumbing rides with the Russians with no domestic manned launch capability on the horizon and no prospect of getting beyond Earth orbit - even with the handful of possible commercial ventures.

This focus of commercial rather than governmental programs doens't wash either. Space travel always employed private industry. It was private industry that built the Apollo spacecraft, the mighty Saturn V and the shuttle itself. Private industry was to build the now-cancelled replacement for the shuttle. It's not like it was huge government run factories building that stuff.

All of that is the reason the Shuttle ended up so outrageously expensive. Launch costs will never go down while you're paying an empire of people's worth of salaries. It sucks, but the manpower required to run the STS system ensured that it would never make space access affordable. All of that baggage, for lack of better term, needs to be jettisoned and replaced with something cheaper, more efficient, and more capable. We have the opportunity to do that now, if certain people could just make a decision.

 

[RisingFury]

The Shuttle fleet has been working hard for almost 40 years. They've earned their retirement and a good pension, no?

 

[Donamy]

I need a truck to get my supplies and tools to the jobsight. It costs alot more moneyfor gas and upkeep, but a more efficient cheaper car, won't get the job done, then my workers don't get paid and thier families will suffer.

 

[Ark]

All this talk about healthcare plans confuses me... can someone please explain, without sparking a political debate why there is so much opposition to government-funded healthcare in the US?

In a word? Misinformation. The health insurance lobby funded large-scale astroturf operations at the height of the healthcare debate to convince everyone that you would go to jail for not having insurance, or that the government would kill old people, and a hundred other blatant lies. Once the stories were made up, they just loudly repeated them all year long until people eventually took them as truth. I'd be in the streets protesting too, if any of that stuff were actually true. Misinformation fueled by corporate money is, IMO, one of the most critical problems with our political landscape. Nobody can make a proper, informed decision when everything they hear is fabricated.

 

[FADEC]

I don't talk about spending money for African politicians. Spending money for some African governments would be the most stupid thing. I am talking about projects in Africa. Like medical programs, building schools, teaching people agrarian economy for example, etc. It does work well if one is willing to help.

 

[Urwumpe]

All this talk about healthcare plans confuses me... can someone please explain, without sparking a political debate why there is so much opposition to government-funded healthcare in the US?

It is pretty simply said: It upsets people that they should pay money for the health of other people. It is sure their good right to be upset. But it is also stupid.

In reality these people already paid more money for the lack of healthcare for the other people in the past. But that requires also a lot of historic knowledge, because the damage of no healthcare is today less easily visible as in the old slums in Europe around 1900. When public healthcare was invented because public health turned into a public problem.

---------- Post added at 12:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:31 AM ----------

I don't talk about spending money for African politicians. Spending money for some African governments would be the most stupid thing. I am talking about projects in Africa. Like medical programs, building schools, teaching people agrarian economy for example, etc. It does work well if one is willing to help.

If you help them in Africa for example building a school, this means that the local tyrant does not spend the money for this and can buy weapons. The same for wells, farmer schooling or mobile phone networks.

That kind of nonsense has failed so often, that you need to be religious to keep doing it again.

 

[Linguofreak]

I voted for Obama hoping he was the one that would bring about change in this country.
I am deeply dissapointed in his accomplishments over the last few years an the general lack of a spine he has shown to have.

The shuttle is going out on top of it's abilities with many usefull years left in it....... what a crying shame !!!
What a waste; our government should be ashamed of their actions (or rather in-actions )

It's hard for me to imagine that no longer will it be easy for our kids (including mine) to dream of becoming astronauts since our country lacks the balls to commit to a manned space program in favor of 2 wars that nobody needs, have no purpose and suck the life out of our economy.

We have our priorities screwed up so bad we can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore.

Now we have to "ride bitch" with the russians ????
Wtf........
No offense but that an outrage for a country that had the most advanced space program and was able to send people to the moon.

It turns my stomach even thinking about seeing these wonderfull vehicle's packed away in a museum somewhere as a reminder of what we once were capabel of as a nation.......

Shame on our government and our great leader, shame on NASA !!

I voted against Obama, and still don't like him, but while I'd certainly like to see us have a bit more of a space program than we do, getting mad at Obama for letting the Shuttle program end is insane.

For one thing, the Shuttle was a mistake: We have the technology to make it work, but we're still far short of the technology to make it work well. And we made it into our primary manned booster for 30 years. It probably did more harm than good to the space program. The money spent on the Shuttle ought to have been spent on making an inexpensive capsule and stack followon to Apollo/Saturn.

For another, as cool as it is, a space program is a luxury. We don't need it. I'd like to have one, but the candidates positions on the space program are going to be the last thing on my mind on election day. If that's not the case for you, you really need to get your priorities straight.

 

[Urwumpe]

I need a truck to get my supplies and tools to the jobsight. It costs alot more moneyfor gas and upkeep, but a more efficient cheaper car, won't get the job done, then my workers don't get paid and thier families will suffer.

Then you just need a more efficient truck. Efficiency is relative.