They have reached their design lifespans and they are falling apart. We've already lost 40% of them in accidents. The shuttle is bloody expensive compared to simple rockets, always has been. It never delivered the efficiencies that were anticipated. We will for the rest of the aging international space station effort, Russia will do it because they already have an even more ancient design vehicle to do it and they still make them. But the US plan is to let the burgeoning private space industry take over now that NASA has perfected the breakthrough technologies. Competition will result in innovation to stay ahead of the other countries. Dude, this is privatization at its biggest! It is getting rid of a bloated and money-losing government program and letting free enterprise take over. It's right out of the GOP playbook and Obama did it. And still you blame Obama. Sad. :dis:
Obama could raise taxes on the poor, cure aids, and change the national anthem to a tear in my beer and southern republicans would still hate him.... I bet if Obama came out and said he wanted to put an end to Medicare/Social Security that the GOP would champion those programs.
Get over yourself amigo. You are taking things way too seriously these days. It may be time to call up one of those hippie chics you talk about from time to time, get one of them to throw you some leg so you can chill out a bit.
How big a hint to I have to give you to start looking for attractive new space start-ups on NASDAQ. What kind of Republican are you?
Bush called for the retirement of the shuttle fleet about 6 years ago, saying it was time to go back to the moon. Obama said no, let's target an asteroid or even Mars instead. If we do one of those, you can give him credit for it.
Sadly, one that doesn't have any $$ tied up in the stock market. I keep telling myself to get on one of those do it yourself stock trader gizmo's. Instead I just bet on a bunch of college football games.
the shuttle program was only for earth orbit, not to go to the moon and beyond. we have the International Space Station in earth orbit now, and that replaces the space shuttles as a human-occupied research lab in the earth's orbit regarding the future of manned space-flight for the US, we're going back to the rocket-with-a-manned-spacecraft-on-top concept that we used to get to the moon. this is the same concept that Russia and China have always used to put humans in space. the rocket-with-a-payload-on-top concept is also the concept that every major space power, including the US, uses to put satellites in space, including our military satellites even when it comes to just getting to the earth's orbit, the rocket-with-a-payload-on-top is cheaper and more efficient than the space shuttles. in fact, a huge criticism of the space shuttle program was that it was a huge waste of money and resources, when we could have been perfecting the rocket-with-a-payload-on-top concept (to the moon and beyond) instead of wasting time and resources with the more expensive and less efficient space shuttle program (which was only designed to make it to the earth's orbit) this is why Bush announced to the public back in 2004 that the space shuttle program would be cancelled and replaced with the manned-spacecraft-on-top-of-a-rocket concept. he wanted us to have a new top-of-a-rocket-spacecraft finished by 2014. his primary goal was for us to go back to the moon. President Bush Announces New Vision for Space Exploration Program Obama adopted the same plan, except with a primary goal for us to go to Mars (so instead of focusing on building a new lunar-lander for the moon, the focus will be on developing the technology to support a manned space flight all the way to Mars). i assume the reason Bush wanted the moon to be the first priority is because he knew that up-and-coming superpower China is probably focusing on getting to the moon (just a guess on my part) anyway, the way it stands now is the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent and passed the House 304-118 (64 Democrats voted against it and 54 Republicans voted against it), and was signed into law by Obama according to that, we gave NASA an extra $58 billion through 2013, and demanded that they have the manned-spacecraft-on-top-of-a-rocket ready to go by 2016, to at least get us into the earth orbit, but "ultimately leading to Mars"
1) apples to oranges. Spektr-R is a radio telescope (just like that big array of radio telescopes we have in New Mexico). it can only detect and produce images based on radio waves. the Hubble, on the other hand, is like a traditional telescope, it's used to see the visible spectrum that we can see with the naked eye. the Spektr-R doesn't do that. again, it is a radio telescope. for more into, go here and look at the chart of all the different telescopes and what wavelengths they are built to detect [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_observatory"]Space observatory[/ame] 2) it's a waste of time to build a space-based radio telescope because the earth's atmosphere provides 0% blockage of radio waves, so any radio telescope you build on earth is going to be just as great as any one that you put in space. the Spektr-R is worthless by itself, the whole point of it is to combine it with radio telescopes on the ground to basically create a huge radio dish (one side being the Spektr-R, the other side being the radio telescopes on earth). to see a diagram and read more about it, go here: Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Russian satellite on mission to peer inside black holes as for those ground-based telescopes that are necessary for the Spektr-R to work, like 20 nations are providing them, including the US 3) the Spektr-R wasn't just built by Russia, it was built with the assistance of many nations, including the US 4) the Hubble came out back in 1990. since then NASA has launched three other great telescopes (one broke and we built a 4th one to replace it that is already in space). in addition, NASA has three next-generation telescopes that we are planning to launch from 2015-2017. that Spektr-R was just one of Russia's first three telescopes that all came out at the same time. they are way behind 5) space research is a global effort, and we are all united in this. that's why we have the International Space Station. unless it's classified military stuff, every nation is sharing everything they learn in space research with each other
