NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space

MattSparkes writes "Budget cuts could leave NASA without a Space Shuttle replacement, and leave it reliant on private firms to get payloads into space. A similar scenario happened between 1975 and 1981 when NASA made the transition from Apollo to the Space Shuttle. It seems like a strange state of affairs when a magazine can take people to space, but the USA can't."

Obvious solution..

[gentimjs]

Just swallow the pride and buy a few Soyuz .... too bad its built in the wrong congressional district .... :-(

NASA

[MyLongNickName]

This is despicable. We need to ensure that our astronauts are up in space. Down here, they try to kill each other [cnn.com].

Not such a Bad Idea...

[errxn]

...considering that as of this morning, the Shuttle crew has turned into its very own episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

Re:Not the same thing

[pilgrim23]

Indeed. There is not a single zillion dollar toilet seat on board, the average age of employees is somewhat less then 60, and they have a real fiscal agent called a Financial Officer looking at the bucks spent. The Shuttle on the other hand uses 8086 era tech, systems that are so obsolete that the fellow who designed them is not just retired, he is dead, and other such inovations. Yep. a company is not in the same game as NASA....Thank Goodness!

Re:Sorry, but I had to

[kalidasa]

I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.

Seems to me that it fits right in with the commerce clause.

Re:NASA

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is despicable. We need to ensure that our astronauts are up in space. Down here, they try to kill each other [cnn.com].

At least this didn't happen on the way to Mars.