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Essential as in the first and so far only permanent manned orbital station with countless research projects ongoing & likely tens of thousand of people supporti

Essential as in the first and so far only permanent manned orbital station with countless research projects ongoing & likely tens of thousand of people supporting the project directly and indirectly by their jobs ? ISS is not really designed to operate unmanned for any length of time & you could easily loose it due to some simple failure that the crew on board can easily address.

cm2187 7y ago
Well, tell that to the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are going out of business, that your toy up there is more important than their livelihood.
- ThisIsTheWay 7y ago
  This is a really weird line of thought. Why do you think small business and government space programs are comparable?
- dplavery92 7y ago
  Our "toy" up there is marvel of global technological cooperation, the subject of an international treaty only a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, maintained by engineers, scientists, and spacefarers from fifteen different countries. It's a beacon of non-violent collaboration and humanist hope, and a continued platform for science that helps us understand not just how to continue to explore, but also the nature of our own planet and our own biology. And its total $150B cost, between all those fifteen nations since the start of its component developments thirty five years ago, is about 40% of the sum total of SBA loans our government doled out in the last four weeks. Once you pack the tremendous cost of our bailouts to large corporations and financial institutions plus the personal checks being disbursed now, it's less than eight percent the size of the $2T stimulus package the US just passed. I think your perspective needs some adjustment.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    > continued platform for science No, the ISS is not. Hubble and WMAP dwarf the ISS in terms of scientific papers and citations. The ISS should be deorbited immediately and the money used for real science.

cm2187 7y ago

Well, tell that to the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that are going out of business, that your toy up there is more important than their livelihood.

ThisIsTheWay 7y ago
This is a really weird line of thought. Why do you think small business and government space programs are comparable?
dplavery92 7y ago
Our "toy" up there is marvel of global technological cooperation, the subject of an international treaty only a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, maintained by engineers, scientists, and spacefarers from fifteen different countries. It's a beacon of non-violent collaboration and humanist hope, and a continued platform for science that helps us understand not just how to continue to explore, but also the nature of our own planet and our own biology. And its total $150B cost, between all those fifteen nations since the start of its component developments thirty five years ago, is about 40% of the sum total of SBA loans our government doled out in the last four weeks. Once you pack the tremendous cost of our bailouts to large corporations and financial institutions plus the personal checks being disbursed now, it's less than eight percent the size of the $2T stimulus package the US just passed. I think your perspective needs some adjustment.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  > continued platform for science No, the ISS is not. Hubble and WMAP dwarf the ISS in terms of scientific papers and citations. The ISS should be deorbited immediately and the money used for real science.