Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Outsourcing?.........It seems Obama has outsourced our space program.
Thread: Outsourcing?.........It seems Obama has outsourced our space program.
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Old 07-17-2012, 07:42 PM
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Originally Posted by blueash View Post
The sorry state of our manned space program is not the result of any decision made in the last 8 years. George W. terminated the Shuttle program in 2004 and then encouraged private industry to develop a space program. After all, the private sector can always do it better and cheaper. It may yet happen, but while we wait the Russians are using their technology which is nearly unchanged from the 60's to get the job done. In the meantime NASA is trying to meet the challenge of unmanned exploration and the dream of an eventual Mars mission without a moon stopover.
The cost per person to fly to the International Space Station on a Russian craft is about 63 million USD, which is cheaper than the cost to fly on the retired shuttle.
Just for the sake of being accurate, Bush did not simply cancel the program but with a replacement program that the Obama administration would not fund. I think the replacement program was Constellation Program, but to say he cancelled is not correct.