It's Just Like I Said, Only Worse

Back on March 13, 2009, I wrote a blog about NASA's big plans to replace the space shuttle.

Well, I was right on target. I had predicted complete and total disaster. Today, the shuttle is gone, and its planned "replacement", The Orion, is history. We have no way to send our astronauts back into space... unless we pay the Russians millions and millions of dollars to buy a ride in one of their obsolete, but still functional, Soyuz bottle rockets. Even our space station is under threat of abandonment as the aging Soyuz fleet starts to fail.

The most expensive, most highly trained and most under-utilized group of men and woman on planet earth, our astronaut corps, are now - for all practical purposes - seat warmers. We will no doubt send a few men back into space with a seat purchased on that Russian Soyuz because, well, you know, just because, and perhaps we will send one last woman back into space as a tribute to the tremendous success of feminism in America.

What I didn't see back in March 2009 is that our multi-billion-dollar space station would be a candidate for shut down and re-entry burnup just months after it was finally completed. I figured they would keep manning and womanning it for at least a few years, or until all that fancy test equipment wore out, but when push comes to shove, I guess its just not that useful.

Hell, even the Chinese don't want it... they are working on their own space station even as NASA's boys and girls work away at keeping those seats warm.

NASA got way too politically correct, forgot what their real mission was, and now are discovering the cost of their dalliance.

I will be quite surprised if NASA survives the next presidency and the next Congress.

But don't despair. We Americans will be able to watch the continued exploration of space and our neighboring planets through the eyes and ears of other nations... once we translate their reports into English.