Quote:
Originally Posted by wetibbe
The space shuttles themselves, that is the vehicles, were scheduled for retirement by NASA itself. The vehicles have been obsoleted, too old, too fatigued. Plus the space station is now completed. No more parts to fly up.
However, there was a plan to develop new flying vehicles. But it has a gap of time of a few years. In the interim the USA, NASA intends to fly in Russia's craft paying them millions per trip.
I'm not confident that anything Obama says is dependable. He was going to close Guantanamo - right !
The criticism then should be focused on his apparently cancelling the new development program. And the outsourcing of the flights - to Russians - while Americans sit at home unemployed.
Remember Guys, keep paying out the rope. Let him hang himself. He is giving the GOP plenty of ammunition to ensure that he is a one term President.
Lament at what he is doing to the country but rejoice that he is digging himself in deeper.
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The shuttle was a huge mistake from the beginning. We should never have used the shuttle for anything but what it was designed for which was to bring material in space back down to earth without suffering reentry.
Our basic technical challange for space at this point was to create a reentry system outside of "lifting bodies" which is what the shuttle was. We need something like the Russians have been using since the beginning -- a soft retro-rocket lander for landing on earth, not water like the Apollo system and all US systems previous.
We have had some ideas, mostly bad, that have yet to see fruit.
We should clone the Russian system and arrange for sites for soft landings and keep things rolling.