Who thought it was a good idea for the U.S. to be dependent on the Russians to get to space?!

[regexcellent]

Oh my god Oerdin, literally everything that happens in this country is the fault of evil republicans isn't it

[Imran Siddiqui]

To be fair, he's countering that Ben Kenobi "Everything is Obama's Fault" non-sense. But being as good as Ben isn't exactly a compliment.

[Hauldren Collider]

It's particularly amusing since it was the Obama administration that dramatically cut the space program. Bush actually expanded it.

Honestly, it was time for the shuttle to go. We should have started designing a newer heavy lifter two decades ago. You really can't criticize Bush for terminating the shuttle. You can criticize the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, and the Obama administration for not designing a new vehicle sooner.

[Patroklos]

There were several attempts to design replacements starting in the 90s, all horribly mismanaged by NASA with the willing meddling of politicians from every part of the spectrum.

[Pax]

Pax likes your statement? Is he aware it happened during Obama's term?

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-05o.html

This is above politics. this is about the economy, national security and defense. A blind follower is a fool.

[Patroklos]

I am hoping for news about the X-37C to come out relatively soon. There really hasn't been much said about it since 2011 but that was the same for the X-37B and then all,of a sudden it was operational.

There will be multiple manned vehicles available by decades end, commercial and government. I am actually happy to see the private sector and military take this away from NASA's after their multiple failures. They have several large scale and expensive science missions that are languishing right now and I want them to focus on fixing those, the James Webb telescope being at the top of my list.

[Ben Kenobi]

he's countering that Ben Kenobi "Everything is Obama's Fault" non-sense. But being as good as Ben isn't exactly a compliment.

In this case, yes, it is Obama's fault. And it's good to see that Pax agrees with that.

Give me an example of something that I blamed on Obama which didn't occur during his administration.

[Ben Kenobi]

You're an idiot, as always. The Republicans pushed through the law killing the space shuttles back during the Bush years and I can't even say it was a bad law because it opened the way for private companies. There are numerous private companies with launch systems and the best is with Space X plus their dragon capsule is ready to go and has been tested in the configuration which can carry people, moron. They launch from Vandenberg AFB in Santa Barbara county, CA.

I may not be an American but honestly, launching American payloads with American taxpayer funds in Russia while shutting down the shuttle doesn't seem to me as a quite kosher application of NASA.

[Pax]

[kentonio]

That looks pretty cool.

[Sava]

Who thought it was a good idea for the U.S. to be dependent on the Russians to get to space?!

All the idiot free marketeer private space dolts.

[Patroklos]

That's funny given the success of the private sector here and the failure of NASA. Hell, the X-37 had to be rescued from NASA by DARPA. The civilian government had its chance and bungled it. Why not look somewhere else?

[Sava]

Yeah NASA failed. They got to the moon.

[Felch]

They got to the moon over half a century ago. More recently, the Space Shuttle program was an abject failure.

[Sava]

Given that amount of time since landing on the moon and the enormous expense it took for NASA, I'm sure the private space industry has long since surpassed that achievement.

The private space industry wouldn't even exist without NASA... so in that sense, I'd call NASA a failure.