As a French craft prepares to take off to reach the 100 billion dollar international space station (largely funded with American dollars) NASA now acknowleges that in three short years the United States will have no means of using its own craft to reach the station. This will leave us entirely dependent on Russia for manned flights to space. From MSNBC;
In 2 1/2 years, just as the station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to the station, in which roughly $100 billion is being invested. The three space shuttles will be retired by then, because of their high cost and questionable safety, and NASA will have nothing ready to replace them until 2015 at the earliest.
For five years or more, the United States will be dependent on the technology of others to reach the station, which American taxpayers largely paid for. To complicate things further, the only nation now capable of flying humans to the station is Russia, giving it a strong bargaining position to decide what it wants to charge for the flights at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are becoming increasingly testy.
What does NASA say about this gap?
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin calls the situation his “greatest regret and greatest concern.” For most of the five-year gap, he said, “we will be largely dependent on the Russians, and that is terrible place for the United States to be. I’m worried, and many others are worried.”
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA, went further. “This is a very serious betrayal of American interests,” he said. “This will be the first time since Sputnik when the United States will not have a significant space superiority. I remain dumbfounded that we’ve allowed this serious threat to our national security to develop.”
Will the Russians do this for nothing? Think again.
NASA’s budget calls for spending $2.6 billion for transportation to the space station between fiscal 2009 and 2013. As it stands now, much of that would go to the Russians.
We must admit that this administration is consistent. They are even outsourcing our astronaut jobs to foreign countries.
Bill Manzi.com 
Here’s an idea: abandon the station. We’re having trouble getting enough money for new cruisers and a high school but they dump money into this lovely white elephant that basically doesn’t do anything useful. NASA is all about the flashy stuff like this station, a trio to the moon, and the biggest waste of all, the trip to Mars. How about more climate satellites and asteroid watching ones? Relatively cheap and useful, but not flashy, so they won’t happen anytime soon. NASA’s time has passed, it’s time for private companies to take over, they can do it better, faster, and cheaper.
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Your Honor,
You are right, next to Bill Clinton’s NAFTA designed treaty, this is the worst out sourcing yet.
Idea: Do as Derek suggests and shutter the place (don’t abandon it) until we can return in 2015.
Meanwhile, when Hillary or Obama win the office of President they can propose their concept of space exploration as they enact universal, single payer, healthcare. Actually the NASA buget will seem like chump change compared to the cost of their new healthcare behemouth.
I understand your chiding of George Bush for this dissapointment, but have Hillary or Obama had anything to say about space reseach in their enless debates? Has the Democratic controlled house and senate submitted any budgets to resolve Bushes failures?
Actually, I believe America has lost its pioneering spirit. For this our children will pay dearly.
Onward and Upward.
Jules
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Derek,
Speaking of the elephant in the room, š I also wonder how much good the $3 trillion dollar Iraq ‘investment’ could have been put to use in this country…
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Derek,
That money could built several bridegs to nowhere.
Your not under the impression that it would have gone to good causes (like property tax relief) do you?
Jules
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