Help Me, I am an addict..

[Avi]

The shuttle is the biggest load of crap ever sold to us.

I have to disagree here, Wil.

It was sold as this great thing that was 'reusable' what good is reusable if it costs so much more to fly than conventional. The shuttle cost nearly a half a million dollars to refit for another launch...

I am a harsh critic of NASA for their mistakes, and they have made some whoppers. But on balance, NASA is the best example we have of a government success. And it has been a huge success.

First of all, most of our technology today came from the Apollo program. Todays computers came out of this this program. Advances like this have helped virtually every industry.

The shuttle is expensive. Cars have been around for a hundred years and we are still improving them. Space ships only since after WWII, we are in the embryonic stages.

How well has private industry been at building space craft ?

What did the russians charge us for using theirs?? 10,000 a flight??

Of course, they would let us ride for free. They know that whoever leads space technology will be leaders here on earth. It is simple.

We spend a million to build a pen that writes in space, they use a pencil??

So what ? If we develop technologies that cure cancer and others it will be worth every dollar.

NASA is a huge marketing machine that has most of us hoodwinked...including you.

You are being duped by the anti-tech crowd. Think it through yourself.

Bill Gates, Buffet...two wealthiest men in the world, two biggest free market capitalists in the world...and a couple of the largest hearts in the world, give me a break. I'll listen when you contribute a couple billion.

I actually like Gates, not a fan of Buffet, he is really just a market manipulator, but at least he was smart enough to donate to the Gates Foundation.

Gates on the other hand really is a new type of business leader. He is visionary, without him we might not have PCs today. To this day when you see him speak, he is quite humble. A highly competetive individual. That is why he was so successful. His foundation, although giving away just peanuts, is doing good things. He will leave a mark in history.

Madoff wasn't a capitalist, he was a thief, a criminal, stealing money with a ponzi scheme...

Right.

absolutely nothing to do with free market capitalism (oh and he was closely watched by your gov't regulators)

I disagree here, he is a product of what poorly practiced free market leads to. Greed, self serving, unethical.

Enron, do you really think a secretary had earned 300 million in stocks?? Come on, who falls for these stories??

No, another example of greed, self serving and unethical. Care to discuss others ?

Oh now this is interesting, suddenly you like free market capitalists, make up your mind my brother.

I never said I liked Ted, but Jane Fonda knows how to whack the conservatives .

 

[wil]

Avi, it appears you are addicted to gaming as well.

Do you really think the NASA built those spacecraft or was it capitalistic private industry with gov't funding??

 

[Dream]

NASA got started shortly after WWII, and every American was still hyped about all of the great inventors who migrated over to our country or that were born here. Einstein, Edison, etc. Lots of new plastics and other products appeared during the WWII generation; and we thought that was really cool! Everyone was hoping for a lasting peace, and we thought 'Why shouldn't it start with America?' Everyone was bent on no more world wars, and that is why NASA. We all wanted (though I was just a kid when the first Shuttle was launched) -- we all wanted peace with Russia and all of the other countries around. If there hadn't been NASA we would poured money into tech development some other way, and Pres. Kennedy could not have gotten us going in a space race had the potential not already existed. In a sense the space station and all of the technical momentum of this decade feels like 'Americas' baby. It feels like 'we' contributed something good, and maybe we did. The money we wasted was a pouring out of good will.