Our manufacturing made us great, unfortunately we are losing that. Have you ever toured the public works programs that help get us out of the great depression?....which happened when capitalism got out of control. I will not mention what the unchecked system got us into currently. The money-makers are sure money-takers now. The public benefits greatly from the locks and dams along the Mississippi River. Hoover Dam. NASA and Space Exploration never would have happened without the government. Space Exploration is a long way away from profitability. The Internet was born from government funded research (the super colliders), which we got for free. I suspect if we privatized the military it would much different, and costlier. We sure would have to pay the soldiers in the Army and Marines more. Need I go on. Please, forgive the politics. --- jchorley@gmail.com wrote: From: "Julie Chorley" <jchorley@gmail.com> To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] NASA Lost the Right Stuff? Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 16:20:42 -0600 Capitalism is what made our country great -- not programs run by the government (like NASA). When space travel and exploration becomes a money-maker and not a money-taker it will start attracting private industry. Once that happens, I'd wager we'll see huge advances in the field. On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:52 PM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com>wrote:

On 30 Sep 2008, at 19:01, Robert Taylor wrote:

...

The Hubble is down, the Shuttles are due to retire and we'll be hitching rides from the Russians to get to the IIS that the US taxpayer has had to primarily pick up the tab for...

In case misery loves company, here's something that appears in the current issue of "Planetary Report":

+++++ The problems with the NASA budget pale in comparison with those being experienced in Russia. Despite similar scope and some recent increases to the Russian space program, its annual budget is less than 10 percent of that of the United States: $1.3 billion compared with about $17 billion.

An article in Pravda bitterly commented, "Russia, the world's first space power, lags behind not only the USA, but such newcomers to the industry as the European SPace Agency, China, Japan, and France. The space agencies of these countries spend about $3.5 billion a year on space exploration. India currently invests a little less than $1 billion in its space programs. It is not ruled out that the Asian country will outstrip Russia soon." +++++

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-- Julie Chorley _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com