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The space shuttles have been around for twenty years. And even though NASA has made improvements every year, and each time a orbiter lands it has to be torn down to check for anything amiss, they are still based on the needs of twenty years ago. Those being the �shuttle� of people and cargo to Earth orbit. Reading this sentence, one would assume that the shuttling would be to space stations. But no, America hasn�t had any space stations until just recently. So what exactly have the shuttles been doing, one might ask. In more recent years, they have been putting up commercial satellites, for a price. Yes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been selling cargo space on the shuttle for many years. That is how they claim that the cost of the shuttle has gone down roughly one quarter of a billion dollars annually since 1992. Putting up communications satellites for small developing countries in South East Asia has been one way for those countries to jump from the age of no telephones to the world of wireless connections. The only time people seem to care about the space program these days is when something goes wrong. It was evident with Apollo 13, it was evident with Challenger, it was evident when the �quicker faster cheaper� dual Mars missions both were lost when feet was not converted into meters, and it was evident with the most recent tragedy�Columbia. More people should be interested with what essential IS the future. But the masses do not want to think about what might be, they are too concerned about the here and now to put any serious thought into something they don�t have the time to understand. Therein lies the problem facing the space program, lack of interest. With no interest�budgets do not get increased, programs are cut back, and people laid off. And so, while the space shuttle was a good idea, so was communism, it just hasn�t panned out to what was promised. |
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