U.S. to rely on Russia for manned spaceflight

Source: the International Herald Tribune

STAR CITY, Russia: This place was once no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow that did not show up on maps. The Soviet Union trained its astronauts here to fight on the highest battlefield of the Cold War: space.

Yet these days, Star City is the place for America's hard-won orbital partnership with Russia, where astronauts train to fly aboard Soyuz spacecraft. And in two years, according to the Bush administration's plans, Star City will be the only place for sending astronauts from any nation to the International Space Station.

The gap is coming: Between 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shuts down the space shuttle program, and 2015, when the next generation of U.S. spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, NASA expects to have no human flight capacity and will depend on Russia to get to the $100 billion station, buying seats on Soyuz craft as space tourists do. ...

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/05/america/gap.php

He was hoping that his space technology would intimidate us. Today, we cooperate peacefully with Russian space scientists, and each side learns from the other. I feel much more comfortable with rockets with benign payloads on them, than I did as a kid in the 1960's learning how to hide under my desk.

and in the end will contribute to the decline in our relevancy in the world.

We should be pushing forward with space exploration, not shuttering it.

Rockets, fuels, batteries, flight guidance, satellite delivery and placement, etc. all funded under the NASA budget. NASA is directed by industrialists, not scientists. How much environmental and oil alternative technology has come pouring out of NASA? The older scientists at NASA, Doctor Hanson comes to mind, have been gagged and misquoted their entire careers by a corporate owned government. We will never know how much they could have improved our lives and the health of the planet with their work while they watched the technology being used for profit and dominion.

And were about to fall off the same cliff that the USSR did.