"We dropped the ball on this," Jones said. "If we just went from 0.5 percent of the federal budget to 0.6 percent, this would all be a non-issue."

Sorry NASA. Our government would rather spend the money on porkulus, subsidies, foreign aid, global military deployment, and welfare handouts. Not to mention we've got a hell of a tab to pay on the debt we've already created. Being a leader in innovation as a nation is no longer a priority.

Well due to Importation that the U S allows and all the outsourcing that the US allowed your space program had to be scraped. Your money went out of the country so no money for the once great space program. It makes me sick.

I think the current approach is totally wrong. The Moon is just sitting there waiting for someone with patience and a real desire to reach for the stars. Mounting a mission to Mars from Earth is just all wrong. We need to get our space legs in our own neighborhood before we send a suicide mission to Mars. The Moon is the ideal place to develop the technologies that a return trip from Mars will require and it can be done in a way that doesn't lead to the senseless loss of life. Whoever sets up the first base on the Moon will get the best spot. When the other pole is occupied, it's over. Going two weeks without solar energy just isn't going to be very productive. We need to get together with all the other countries with ambitions in space that we can and get there first. I think the current plans are just a senseless distraction. Getting to Mars first is a death wish.

Your money went out of the country so no money for the once great space program.

Yep, there it is.

Before the shuttle program was canceled, I used to complain to my friends that the USA didn't make anything anymore, except for spacecraft and weapons. And now...we don't even make spacecraft.

Heck, we might as well move weapons manufacturing offshore too. Then we can at least claim the moral high ground. /s/

I tend to see it from an rts game point of view. Every rts has a build up capability first then a shifting to producing forces. If you switch to building those forces to soon, they won't be capable enough to accomplish their objectives. If you wait to long, your enemy will get the drop on you and you won't be able to catch up.

It is a bit of a stretch comparison, but we successfully reached the moon with technology that was just barely able to accomplish the task by means of extraordinary effort and expense.

With the shuttles, however, we wanted cost effectiveness, rapid turn around, safety, reliability, and flexible capability. Unfortunately, for various political and bureaucratic reasons, the program could not deliver that. Not even close. And a lot of it was also we just didn't have the technology. But because of political promises regarding the ISS, instead of realizing it was premature, we pushed forward with a dreadful hacked down design to something that could get the pieces of the ISS. And NASA did a lot of promoting of the shuttle to get the public interested in space. Understandable.

In hind sight, the general design of the shuttle was inappropriate for it's goals. And a lot of people and commissions said as much. My favorite quote from the Roger Commission was from Richard Feynmann,

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Its surprising to me that nobody seems to remember that NASA was not allowed or funded to build the shuttle they wanted due to your mentioned "various political and bureaucratic reasons" and keeping it cash starved over the decades only compounded the issue.

How any person that lives in our current society cannot see that technology is the only thing keeping us alive is beyond me. Hopefully the farsighted can still manage to make progress and Space X and their ken can keep not only the dream alive but the reality as well.

Missions to Mars and space missions in general aside- we need to get our affairs on earth together a bit better before we make too much of a priority out of the space program

The Space Shuttle and ISS both suffered greatly from Cold War ambitions of the military. When the two were commissioned, there was very strong military pressure to make them both low-earth-orbit vehicles.

Scientists wanted a "big dumb lifter" that could loft the largest payload the most reliable into geo-synchronous orbit (26,000 miles up.) This where most of the action is for earth resources, communications, and many other types of satellites. The military wanted a quick-turnaround craft that could carry "drop-in" payloads and KH surveillance satellites into low earth orbits. The drop-in payloads were to be anything from surveillance satellites to battlefield secure communications to multi-warhead nuclear weapons. So the scientists got hind teat.

When the ISS was conceived the scientists wanted it to be at the Earth/Moon LaGrange Point (L1) about 1.5 milion km up. A space station there would be outside of the space junk field, would be outside of the Earth's magnetoshere and gravity, and would require minimum maneuvering to stay in a precise location. This would make it ideal as a transfer point for further Lunar exploration and manned missions to Mars. The military wanted it in low earth orbit so it could conduct surveillance missions and serve as a possible weapons platform. The military got what it wanted --- a very low earth orbit platform that yields almost no possibility of science because it is within the earth's gravity and magnetosphere and requires constant orbital adjustment to dodge space junk and to avoud re-entry. People forget that the ISS is not "weightless" in technical terms required for gravity-free science. If you drop your pen in the ISS, it will fall, albeit slowly, toward to side towards earth.

If we had gone with the BDL we would not have to hire other countries to launch our satellites for us. And if we had put the space station at L1, we would have gained some of the biometric knowledge necessary to support long manned space missions.

But unfortunately, the military believed that scientists were dweebs and that only fighter jocks had the "right stuff." Nothing could have been more wrong. The military crapped all over NASA then took its billions and went home with the space shuttle and ISS turned out to be nothing more than white elephants.

The Russians built a space shuttle, the Boran, which would have been capable of launching geo-synchronous satellites and reaching L1, but quickly decided that the idea was both military and stupid and dumped the program after one flight. A few yeard ago when snow collapsed a roof over the Boran and destroyed it, the head of Russian space flight was asked about it. He replied, "Good snow. Bad vehicle."

Both the space shuttle and ISS served to hurt the space program immensely. They were sexy and looked very advanced, but actually drained many billions from NASAs tiny budget (in 2009 more money was spent on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than on NASA) preventing much science that NASA was capable of.

And, just as the future of air warfare is headed inexorably toward unmanned aircraft, space exploration needs to ditch the manned part of space exploration until they can get it safe enough to be reasonable. Right now we do NOT have the knowledge and systems to get a man to Mars and retrieve him without life-thjreatening muscle/bone atrophy and DNA damage from cosmic radiation. By sending robotic explorers, we not only get much more bang for the buck than sending a fighter jock, but when one dies, we don't have to run around re-naming all those junior high schools.

truesaid

Missions to Mars and space missions in general aside- we need to get our affairs on earth together a bit better before we make too much of a priority out of the space program. Post 1.7

Then there would never be a space program. In myriad ways the space program vastly benefited society. Compare the medical knowledge, materials knowledge, and technical knowledge of, say, 1965 to that of today.

Does anybody even know what research we're doing up there besides seeing how flies breed?

Does anybody even know what research we're doing up there besides seeing how flies breed?

yeah, they are researching how many people can be made to make stupid comments about things that they are completely ignorant about.

found one...

The way Grunsfeld sees it, keeping the shuttles flying might have led to another disaster like the 1986 Challenger explosion — or the loss of Columbia and its seven STS-107 crew members in 2003.

Of course the russian shuttles are certainly safer then the american shuttles, a disaster is virtually impossible ...

And as other mentioned, we send tons of money to foreign aid and so on, including $4 billion to the afghan army (which we will continue to send after NATO leaves, unless they changed their mind about that, which I doubt). Personally I would prefer if that $4 billion went to NASA, and other things in the U.S.

Chris wrote:

in 2009 more money was spent on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than on NASA

Oft-quoted but wrong. The original source was a general with an ax to grind. And its been referenced and re-referenced a zillion times since. The fact that NPR reported it does not add credibility. The same accounting methods could make it appear that a sheet of paper cost the SSA $6.50. Bogus #.

Sure, shut down the illegal wars..... but not to save money on air-conditioning.

As long as they have satellites so their cellphones work the youngsters of the united states could care less about space exploration, And sad as it is most probably don't even know that much about space saying its a waste of money, Without realising how much of what they enjoy comes from that space exploration.

I love this post. But it's not just our next generation that wants to feel the benefits of our hard work. Other countries don't want to do the hard work for themselves so they hack all of our computer networks. Trade secrets, manufacturing secrets, training secrets and so on. My country hsa become an underground bootleg heaven for these crooked countries that do not dare to dream and have their own ambitions. They don't dare do the hard work, fail, and learn from their mistakes. These spineless countries even abuse their own people.

It will be difficult for older US citizens to accept, but our best years are probably behind us.

The dumbing down of America is directly attributable to media. It started with television. Social media has accelerated the process exponentially. Our children are moronic slaves to Facebook/Twitter/Texting/Games/etc. We have been on the decline and will continue.

Let's face it, we are not the brightest of people. All we really had going for us was democracy and freedom. Now that the rest of civilization is catching up to us, we will be left behind.

Mark S in post 2 wrote in part:

"...we choose to do these things because they are hard. I enthusiastically followed the last ferry flight of Discovery, but my teenagers scarcely even noted that I was up at 6:45am watching the events unfold on the NASA channel. I am beginning to wonder if our next generation is so pampered by the success of the previous generation's hard won accomplishments, that they just expect exploration of Mars to magically happen? Or are they so entertained by their video games and iPod fantasies that they don't even care?"

You might ask them that question. I suspect an answer is multi-faceted and would ask what relevance does the space program hold for them? For a time, people who went west in covered wagons, as infants, were flying in airplanes over the same route later. I see the fascination as the awareness of the fantastic progress stemming from when it didn't exist to any point in the future (as long as one lives-of course). For my generation air travel was routine and even less exciting for today's children.

For younger folks the space program has always existed. Its 'old hat'. There's not the drama which existed in earlier days with mercury, gemini or apollo-with the exception of challenger and the other. The shuttle was termed a space pick-up truck-which it was. Yes, they were supplying parts and supplies to a building site. Yes, the site was outside of earth's atmosphere and was for a space station. Still, there's nothing dramatic about a pick-up truck delivering supplies-including lunch. What's worse was NASA's casual announcements further dampening things. "Look, child NASA's sending another materials and lunch wagon to the international space station". Child: ZZzzzzzzzzzzz.

I think it will be worse for a manned Mars mission. After launch it'll be another couple of years before they establish orbit, much less landing. In this case, routine is good. Anything not routine could be fatal, and no one wants excitement.

I've seen the Rice 'hard' segment from time to time. Kennedy would have learned a lot from his WWII experiences. I've always wondered how much was actually aimed at the Russians. If the USA could land a man on the moon, landing a bunch of nukes on the Kremlin's a casual action. Making a potential adversary think very very hard is the least costly way to go.

NASA's budget peaked in 1966 at 4.41% of the federal budget at the time. The amount was 5.933 billion in 1966 dollars or 32.106 billion in 2007 dollars. If NASA's budget had kept pace with the overall federal government, its current budget would be around $160 billion. And we'd have footprints on Mars and a base on the Moon.

Astronauts were lost on two Shuttle flights, but I wouldn't say the Shuttles were responsible for the fatalities. Questionable managerial decisions overrode engineering data that lead to the loss of Challenger and Columbia. The "O" rings on Challenger's solid rocket boosters were not designed to function in sub-freezing weather. This was known but ignored by those who decided to launch her anyway. In Columbia's case, the risk of foreign object damage (or FOD), is known by every new student pilot. It's hard to understand why NASA continued to launch with a known and obvious problem like insulation impacting Shuttle's wing.

krumdriller, we stopped making Saturn rockets, because we stopped doing the things that required them, not the other way around. The fact that we didn't even use up all the Saturn v rockets that we had, tends to prove this. (Apollo 18-20 were cancelled, even though the hardware already existed. One of those Saturn Vs launched Skylab, the other two are now lawn ornaments at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers)

And Constellation (and SLS) are based on Shuttle hardware. Without it, another heavy-lift launcher (and for what purpose? There was very little post-Apollo public interest in going back to the Moon, or to Mars. Again, the last three missions were cancelled. It was felt that the 'Race To The Moon' was over, and the Soviets simply denied at that point that they were ever interested in going. A lie, but people were quite willing to buy it.) would indeed have been something different.

Yes, all of these things would have happened anyway--though something else would have propelled them and perhaps we would not have gotten them as quickly. All these ideas were floating around anyway.

Perhaps they would have been propelled by deep sea exploration, perhaps they would have been propelled by robotic exploration, but there would have been something else. In any case--I kind of missed that whole "national self-confidence" thing. I would actually call it "American exceptionalism"--something that seriously costs us here in our own country as well as on the world stage.

I do think that exploration is a good idea--but not human exploration. We can get just as much out of exploring the cosmos without having to worry with cushioning frail little humans so that they can enjoy the ride. Virtually anything a human can do can also be done robotically--it just isn't necessary to waste energy on trying to design equipment around humans.

Go and look at the photos from that little robot--way past its expiration date--still tooling around on Mars. We don't need to send humans into space--we can explore just fine from where we are, and that too will push technology forward.

These people--especially Glenn--are hung up on having humans go to space because they had such a good time. Sorry--but that's too many billions for the amusement of the very few. Robotic exploration is cool until we do manage to figure out how to get humans up there without all the additional rigmorole of food, water, waste, oxygen, scrubbing carbon dioxide, etc. We do not need to "go to" the moon or Mars. We can explore just fine with robots--explore, exploit, and mechanically colonize. One does not need to send humans.

You do realize that unless we don't send humans into the rigors of space, we're doomed to fail. Sure, robots can survive the harshness of space much better, but without sending man into space farther than the moon, the additional "rigmorole of food, water, waste, oxygen, scrubbing carbon dioxide, etc." will never be experienced, and never overcome. Astronauts were pioneers in their age when the space program started. To expand beyond the planet and out attendant moon, a new breed of pioneers will be needed, some paying the ultimate sacrifice for advancement in technology that you deem unnecessary. Human growth into space depends on it.

If we keep all our eggs in the earth nest and don't go on to colonize other worlds We had better hope no world tragedy happens that destroys all mankind and life on earth.

I guess I could send my camera skydiving, and watch the video safely from my couch? Maybe I'll just keep the kids at home and we could just watch nature shows on TV instead of going camping. My family would be safe and sound at home and they could gain all the knowledge they need from life without actually having to experience anything.

I see your point, but the great thing about being human is the desire to explore. There are intangible aspects of travel and exploration that further our knowledge of our home planet and the universe that are impossible to discover without human senses.

bug, and I see your point, but you talk of foregoing your own and your children's personal experiences, not the mere vicarious thrill of watching someone else do something cool.

The truth is that there simply isn't that much for humans to do in space at this time.... except to go there and try to stay alive. Someday things will be different. What's the hurry?

We folks who are interested in space and astronomy are used to seeing things on long time scales. There will come a time....

Possiblilus, the future design you are describing sounds a lot like Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft. It takes off on top of an Atlas V rocket, can maneuver to the ISS (and other LEO destinations), and lands on runways using it's wings. And it's reusable and carries up to seven people (same as the Shuttle normally carried).

The Dream Chaser is currently being funded as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCDev and CCiCap), but Congress needs to allocate more funding so it can be ready to take over from the Russian Soyuz in 2017. If you like it, tell Congress to fully fund the program.

I have to agree to a large extent. The Shuttle served its purpose, but we failed to develop a replacement for it's primary role. The Russians get back and forth to the ISS pretty cheaply with relatively old school technology. To some degree, the Shuttle became a lot like using a fancy monster pick up truck for a work commute. With the ISS in its present state, all you need to do is commute and you can launch big payloads on an unmanned rocket to automatically rendezvous with it. Don't really need a Shuttle for that today. It made sense early on, but it has outlived its real usefulness. The problem is that we don't have a vehicle today to do what the Russians have been doing for so long.

Constellation was supposed to take over Shuttle duty and move far beyond, but it floundered. Debate over lift vehicles slowed it down and there is no ready to fly crew capsule. I believe this was due to too much diversity in the development working on too many different aspects at the same time. Also a lack of clear direction. Unless they were going to get far more funding years ago, they needed to take it one step at a time. If they had, we would have already had the low earth orbit crew vehicle and an appropriate lift vehicle for it. It was clear quite awhile back that the first need was the ability to get people into low earth orbit and moderately sized payloads there on an unmanned platform. Both roles could very well have been done with the same lift vehicle. But Constellation was working on multiple lift vehicles at the same time with different roles and different crew vehicles. They needed to take one step at a time or secure a whole lot more money if they were going to take parallel paths. So now it has used up a lot of money with no working vehicle to show for it.

I'm not a big fan of privatizing space exploration, but maybe for the ISS "commute" role, it might be cost effective. I don't think privatization works if they are advancing on new ground with no clear cut goal or profit model. NASA needs to develop the major programs and the potentially turn over the routine parts to commercial enterprises if it can be done cost effectively. But the private sector won't take the next step on its own because there is no money in doing it and only risk. Private enterprise can play a role, but if people think they are going to advance space exploration, they are kidding themselves. That will only happen with government resources.

The ball was dropped on the Shuttle ten years ago. They knew where the future was going, but didn't create a clear successor that could later be built on for the next step in advancement. It would have made more sense to develop a basically new updated version of what the Russians do and potentially hand that over to the private sector to run, if they could prove to do it efficiently. Then we could be devoting NASA efforts right now to the next step. We lost a decade at least and spent a lot of money on concepts that aren't even close to flying.

Coastal Ron, thanks for the info. on the Dream Chaser...it sounds like an approach that evolves rather than reacts and goes backwards. My only hope is that they rethink the name before they go too far...Dream Chaser doesn't exactly inspire pragmatic confidence. It seems like if a company or mission needed the heavy lift capacity like the shuttle, it could be a cargo cylinder mounted on the final ascent stage of the Dream Chaser, so that the crew vehicle could accompany the cargo to its destination, and from there either go on to the ISS or another assignment. If we don't develop some sort of means of routinizing access to space, it will remain exotic rather than everyday...which is ultimately how we will grow.

craig, if you remember, there was a large gap between the end of the Apollo program and the shuttle program.

Johno79,see there's this one big obstacle.Humans as of this point in time ARE Earth inhabitants,we have a tough time living w/o our planet;Earth intends to keep it's occupants where they are...on Earth.Robots do a far better job of exploring than humans do,we can make them with as many eyes as we want,humans only have two.I can see one great big advantage would be to have UN meetings and peace negotiations in space with the Earth hanging over them for all to see so that they can open their closed eyes and closed minds to what it is that they are fighting and dying about

I see it clearly.... but I don't see the hurry.

@John S-400329

Figures you'd blame the military and the rich while speaking nothing of the failed trillion dollar porkulus package. Partisan finger pointers like you are only going to ensure that things take that much longer to get done.

At least he blamed both parties as he should. Republicans/Democrats are equally responsible for running this country into the ground. Our founding fathers would turn in their grave if they knew the type of crap that our politicians are up to.

@thisguy-3398482

Where do you see him blaming democrats? All those issues are liberal talking points.

Where do you see him blaming republiCONS? I think thou doth protest too much. And using the term "porkulus package" isn't a RW talking point?

I guess so, apparently the demoRATs don't have a problem throwing a trillion dollars down the drain while NASA falls behind.

there goes dunkinh, partisan blame and deflect is the name of the right-wingers. for a bunch of people that go on about "personal responsibility" they sure do a hell of a lot of blaming and finger pointing. no wonder the rights biggest cheerleaders have such a reputation for mindless hypocrisy

@danwill

Read my post up top. I am quick to call out both Republican and Democrat backed spending failures. I have yet to see one left-wing moonbat do the same. As expected, the greedy liberals want their cake and eat it too. This is working perfectly, you are all proving my point.

Look,we made poor voting choices in the last election cycle,pray tell we wont make the same poor choices next time???

@DunkinH

Figures you'd blame the military and the rich while speaking nothing of the failed trillion dollar porkulus package.

The current military spending (NOT the "defense budget") exceeds our annual deficits. What does that mean? It means that 100% of your annual income tax doesn't cover your portion of our military spending. Call it a "talking point" if you want, but it is a fact that shouldn't be overlooked.

We could cut our military spending by 95% and still have the most expensive military on Earth.

It was Obama who let that happen...he signed the papers to cancel Constellation. These guys are right, he SHOULD have been signing papers to increase NASA's budget to 0.1 percent more of the federal budget (hardly a drop in the bucket and not even noticeable when taken from military spending) in order to amp up the program.

FIRE HIM!!!

Bush killed the shuttle program and it was one of the few things he got right.

What kind of engineering student are you? And how did you get into any college with that horrific sentence structure, hideous spelling and outright poor grammar? This is our future people, led by Evan!

This is why we have no Space Program anymore. It's called the dumbing down of America.

Could not agree more Steven..I do not use spell checker and used to be scrutinized at every point of grammar I wrote...too bad thats not the case anymore

THat's crap and you know it. The US Government is nothing more than self-centered, self-serving, narrow-minded, short-sighted, and vision-less money-grubbing organization of thugs. No president had the vision Kennedy had. Each one since him has rivet-by-rivet dismantled the Space Program which made this country what it was. I'm just being a realist and not living in a dream world like you.

John F Kennedy was one of the greatest presidents this country ever had. We came very close to being annihilated by nuclear war between the US and Russia in 1962 and he took a stand (against his own advisors) and prevented that from happening. I don't think that's why he wanted us to lead in space, but I bet if he were alive today, he would be in favor of manned colonization in space in order to save our species from the possibility of that not going so well next time.

April, Kennedy's action might well have precipitated that nuclear war.... which does not mean that he was wrong. He gambled with our lives.... and won. And everybody likes a winner.

Don't misunderstand, when I'm forced to think back to the last time we had a decent president, I stop at Kennedy.

Bush ordered the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2004, not Obama. Congress defunded the shuttles replacement a few years ago. Do some basic research about a topic before opening your mouth.

You obviously haven't been paying attention. The Shuttle died long before President Obama. As for Constellation, it has floundered for a long time without anything really clear developed. The concept sounds good and I was enthusiastic about it, but in reality, no real progress had been made on it since its inception. The reality is that with the Shuttle mission being history, the NASA budget now has more money for other things. Constellation would have taken a lot more money to really move forward. If you think that President Obama was going to get Republicans to buy into increased spending for NASA to do this, you obviously haven't been paying attention. I don't care if Constellation was a Republican generated concept, they would have opposed it if Obama wanted it.

GW Bush committed the retirement of the Shuttle for 2010, and started Constellation. In theory Constellation was going to take over some Shuttle roles before heading to the Moon. In case you haven't noticed, there was no vehicle ready to take over for the Shuttle when it retired, actually a little later than planned. Constellation was already projected to cost far more than originally planned, yet no vehicle was even close to being ready. I was sorry to see it ended, but actually it might have been a smart move based on its lack of any progress except burning up the NASA budget. It lacked any clear direction and was going nowhere. Blame Obama if you want, but the fact that when he walked in, the program was already stalled and functioning as a money pit. Debate and changes in the main heavy lift rocket meant nothing was ready to go or even clear on the direction. Obama's approach calls for some continued work in this regard with a plan to have a firm direction on the heavy lift platform by 2015. We should have already been there before the Shuttle retired, but you can't balme that on Obama.

Russia services the ISS effectively with relatively old school technology. All we had to do was develop a better version of what they've been doing for a long time, but we didn't even do that because Constellation had no clear direction. Think that's Obama's fault? Maybe you need to do a little research.

I think manned spaceflight is pointless at this time.... and expensive, but I am not particularly upset that there are great risks. Minimize those risks and let willing people take them.

I urge you to look at what the US is doing as I write. There are spacecraft in orbit around Mercury, Mars, and Saturn. New Horizons is on its way to Pluto and, possibly, other Kuiper Belt objects. Hubble still amazes. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is.... over budget and late.... but happening. Kepler is discovering literally hundreds of planets about other suns. The Dawn mission, now at Vesta, will set sail for Ceres this year. A very capable rover is on its way to a Mars landing. It's an exciting time to be alive.

Bush cancelled the shuttle program, not Obama. Congress defunded its replacement. Each shuttle launch was roughly $1,000,000,000 all said and done. $66,000,000 is chump change.

Your hatred makes your reasons sound silly.

It was indeed Bush who killed the shuttle. It was one of the few things he got right.

Good lord you're short-sighted. There would be NO private space industry unless NASA pulled them kicking and screaming along with 60 years of advancement to the point that it becomes profitable to a private company. Sorta like the interstate system, another MASSIVE government boondoggle in it's day.

The private sector would never gotten into space travel to begin with, because of the start up costs involved and no real return on their investment.

While I laud the private sector for their efforts, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and the like are struggling to develop now what NASA developed over 50 years ago. They have a gargantuan game of catch-up to do. NASA needs to continue to be the leader in this field. Even the current plan calls for the private sector to do no more than reach low Earth orbit and become ferries to the ISS. NASA still has the responsibility of developing heavy-lift technology to get to Mars.

Yes, but dumping the whole program like that is not the way to go. Besides, I don't see many companies making a huge effort. They need the backing which the government just isn't going to do. They are more interested in hiring their hookers and going on long vacations. This country has lost it's nerve. We need to stand united and tell Washington like it is, WE are in charge, NOT them! Space was the best thing the government had going. Now it's just worthless.