Poor NASA

ruszka writes: "NASA is getting tossed further down the list again, it seems.. Now they're being hounded for the expenses of the space station.. CNN has the article."

Re:What does NASA want?

[Constellation]

Before we get too critical of NASA on the buget overruns, let's keep a few things in mind:

1. The source of many of the overruns is the two year delay in the launch of the service module (NASA had to keep its entire workforce for that whole time, which they didn't orignally buget for)

2. Many of the components of the space station are already bult and are sitting in a hanger in Florida waiting to be launched (maintaining them in this state costs a lot of money)

3. ISS since its inception has been the victim of the whims of many polititions.

While I'm not saying that NASA is a pisine organization with out inefficentcies, we should keep in mind that the buget overruns on ISS are not entirely NASA's fault.

Space expolration should be preformed by robots.

[CheezWizFire]

At least for the time being, I think that NASA should be concentrating on exploring space by robots. I think that NASA may think that every americans dream is going to space. Because of that, and a lack of concrete motives for NASA, programs like the ISS happen. Sending humans to space is much more expensive than sending robots, and with todays robotic technology, I think that a lot more discovery could be made with robotic explorers. This may lead to sending humans to space, but the robots should go first. -CheezWizFire