"Scheduled to depart July 8, Atlantis will carry 23,000 pounds of clothing, food and equipment — a year's worth of supplies — for the International Space Station, a partnership of NASA and the space agencies of Europe, Russia, Canada and Japan."
Its too bad the final launch couldn't have been on July 4th! I'll miss the space shuttle, but I guess it is time for the project to end. Very expensive to keep going in these times.
Good luck on the final flight!
Where does the NASA space program go from here?
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
A time-lapse sequence that takes it from the shuttle-prep in one building, to it's installation on the boosters, and then the journey to the launch pad... in just 2-3 minutes...
Is this the end of manned missions outside of low Earth orbit? I hate to say it, but I think so.
Back in the Apollo glory days, NASA got 4% of the total Federal budget, I doubt any new President would be willing to spend the money to send men to Mars. China & Russia hint that they plan to send men back to the Moon but I will believe it when I see it.
Sad to see that it looks like Mankind will likely never escape Earth's gravity.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Hmmmm.... Who is it that is screaming about "budget cuts", and let's "cut to the bone" rather than ask the top 2% to share the sacrifice? We could have expanded to the next projected phase; kept 15,000 engineers and scientists employed, and done great things... Now, what you are going to see is the "brain drain", as all of those engineers and scientists either retire, or look for jobs at McPuke's, flipping burgers... But, by god, the budget got cut...
I hope the folks screaming about "wasteful spending" (on things like a space-program) are happy... And I hope they have the good sense not to scream about the end of our scientific superiority... But isn't it great that the corporate jet-owners still get a subsidy? and the oil companies still get subsidies while making obscene profits? and hedge-fund managers still pay only 15% capital-gains tax-rates on earnings they should be paying 35% on? And the rest of the top 2% get their Bush tax-breaks?!?! You gotta love it...
Insert standard "We're falling behind in the space race" whine here: ____________________________________
Actually, the thing that's hurting the NASA budget the most right now is the Webb Space Telescope project overruns.
I've got a few fun shuttle posts to make in honor of tomorrow (thanks for jumping the gun on that Joe!), let me search my bookmarks...
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
You have to love the class warfare game - it's so much fun to play, isn't it LJ? Allowing a company to depreciate a capital expense against their earnings is not a subsidy my dear. A subsidy is when the person or company in question has a check made out to them from the coffers of the government's treasury. Tax incentives to purchase a new corporate jet (which keeps a whole lot of people employed building them, selling them, maintaining them, flying them and financing them - ask the yacht industry) are not subsidies. What they are instead is an incentive to spend money so that money is spent rather than saved. Allowing a company to depreciate the private jet they purchase keeps more people employed than the alternative, which is hiring a private company to ferry someone privately. I know that giving incentive to purchase something that blue collar American workers put together isn't high on the priority list for Democrats these days, but it is for Republicans. We want to keep people employed and expand employment among our fellow citizens, grow the economy (not the government) and have more money enter the federal coffers as a result of a more vibrant economy instead of the failed draconian method of simply raising taxes and watching more people enter the unemployment lines when the class warfare taxes result in the evil rich people and companies saving instead of spending their money.
Oh, there's still a class warfare going on too...and the government's not helping on that...
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
I'll miss the space shuttle, but I guess it is time for the project to end. Very expensive to keep going in these times.
