The argument that there are other things more wasteful than NASA is a straw man argument; the question is not whether there is additional waste but whether the space program is a luxury that needs to be cut in supposedly lean times. If you believe that times are tough and we need to make difficult budget choices, adios Buck Rogers.
Frankly, the responses in this thread are indicative as well of the schizophrenia evident in so much of the political discourse today. Government is inefficient and wasteful and taxes need to be cut...except for the programs we like--keep your stinkin government hands off our farm subsidies, military industrial complex and space programs! I would think that if it is more efficient, leaner and cheaper, to send up our people using the Russian space infrastructure--who aren't our enemy any more, BTW--the shrink-government-lower-taxes cadres would be all over than as an example of good management. I also find it ironic that the same politicians who vociferously guard the private sector's mass outsourcing of the American economy and its manipulation of the tax codes to hold profits outside the USA to avoid corporate taxation are screaming about losing a few thousand NASA jobs. Why doesn't the same standard apply to government programs as to private sector industries? Why not outsource the spaceman delivery program and as much else as we can? Who needs local government offices when a phone bank in Mumbai can handle the calls from rubes asking where their Social Security checks are at a fraction of the cost? Because we're American, damnit, and we have the right to be illogical, inconsistent and childish!
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