Re: OT: A bit of a long shot, but

On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:42:10 GMT, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian
<null@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:19:25 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:06:03 GMT, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:49:05 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:59:07 +0200, martin griffith

Nice pic here, of the ISS white elephant

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070628.html

and it was taken from the ground

I wonder how many hundred billion dollars more, and how many more
lives, we will lose before we abandon that idiotic idea. Return on
investment so far has been zero.

Do you think the waste and loss of life will ever approach the horror of
the Iraq disaster?

The manned space program has certainly been more expensive. And it's
demonstrably useless, whereas the jury is still out on Iraq.

"Demonstrably useless" to you, sure. But it's just about the one thing
I'd be willing to pay a tax for - call it a membership fee for the Space
Age. ;-)

When the Mars rovers were landing, there was a call-in show on some cable
channel, where they were having a discussion about them - they cost about
$300,000,000.00 each. Bush spends that in two days in Iraq.

Anyway, I called in and asked, "Is it not true that if the government
refrained from purchasing only one aircraft carrier or nuclear-missile-
carrying submarine, that the savings would cover the entire cost of NASA
since its inception?"

The answer was, "Yes."


Just a couple minutes googling will show how absurd that is. NASA is
running about $16 billion per year. A Nimitz class nuclear-powered
carrier costs about $4.5 billion, and has an estimated service life of
50 years.

John


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: A bit of a long shot, but
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