The answer to the question you posed is: There is just to much money involved with the entire NASA Bureaucracy. The size of NASA alone should tell anyone that huge amounts of waste are involved. Tell me what Government Bureaucracy does not waste money like a bunch of drunken sailors. A few years ago, I had the occasion to speak with some NASA engineers who were looking to go into other arenas of the aerospace industry when NASA was going to let some people go. All of those I talked had the same method of looking at things. The two that stood out were,

1. We have all the time in the world to look at and solve a problem. And,

2 Money is no object.

Needless to say, none of them that I know of made it in the Airline Industry.

Like I have said before, NASA is nothing more than a giant welfare agency.

If Congress and The President had any sense about them, They would hire Burt Rutan to take on the missions of space.

The problem is with NASA's implimentation of the reusable manned spacecraft, not with the concept itself. We need manned flight if we're to ever get our butts off of this rock. If we don't, then extinction for our race is just a matter of time. (Sun will run out of hydrogen eventually...)

I agree NASA is a bloated bureaucracy but the reason the shuttle still needs to fly is because it is the only method of deploying and retrieving for repair, some of the large NRO payloads (i.e. spy satellites).

The space shuttle program actually dates back to the NIXON administration. http://history.nasa.gov/stsnixon.htm

I believe the DoD told NASA it was no longer going to support the shuttle program a few years back. 20 something years ago they had planned on using the shuttle to retrieve satellites but probably came to the realization they didn't need that capability any longer. The sole purpose of the shuttle now is to build the International Space Station. NRO payloads can be and are lifted by the large unmanned rockets such as the Titan IV.

It begs the question, however, as why we continue to spend billions trying to salvage the concept of reusable, manned vehicles when most observers think single user, unmanned platforms are the most efficient way of handling most of the shuttle's missions.

Enough of the Bush bashing. His plan is to retire the Shuttle by 2010 and then replace them with another manned spacecraft--the Crew Exploration Vehicle which will start flying next decade.

Then we will go back to the moon.. and after that---Mars.

Bush has staked his presidency on reviving the space program. We will succeed. Money should be no object. Bush said it best: "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey."

All of you liberals who are critical of space policy should hold the cynicism in check for a while. We need to get into space before the terrorists do.

Enough of the Bush bashing.

What's the emoticon for "rolling my eyes"?

No one was bashing Bush, after all NASA goes back a long way before Bush. The point was, That NASA is nothing more than a bottomless pit that the taxpayer dumps money into, Johnson, Kennedy, and all the Presidents after them let this Money Monster grow and grow and grow,
Like I said, NASA is a giant welfare program for many many of the people who "work" (Put their time in) there.

Love Herb, don't Hate

herb is a typical christian conservative ---
he hates everything different from him!

all i can say is thank God that the conservatives
did not run WW 11 - in their present form or we would have lost.
sadly- they run the government the same way they run NASA

herb is a typical christian conservative -- he hates everything different from him!

Unlike you, whose love for all of us is so consistently expressed in your many comments on this site.

Hypocrisy becomes you, LT.

Crap. Depending on how you count, I missed World Wars 5-10 at the very least. Can I retroactively declare my opposition to each of them?