US RETIRES $200 BILLION DUMP TRUCK

Listening this morning to the nostalgia-fest surrounding the landing of the “last” Space Shuttle, I reflected on the 1500 people to be laid off later this month as the program closes down.  Though sad for anyone to lose their jobs, the job loss is a fingernail paring compared to the 142 thousand teachers, firemen and policemen and other workers laid off by state and local governments just this year alone.

Each shuttle launch cost taxpayers $450 million. According to NPR, it cost $10 thousand to send a pound of coffee into orbit on the Space Shuttle. .  The mission of the Shuttle was to support an International Space Station ($100 billion spent so far) whose mission and scientific purpose commentators and policy types have struggled to define, let alone justify to a baffled public.  

We actually have two space programs: a very successful if shadowy military space program and a deeply troubled and expensive civilian space program.  Why, when we’re laying off policemen and firemen, and are in imminent danger of exhausting our international line of credit to pay our $14 trillion in federal debts,  do we need the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at all?  The agency is a cold war relic, whose muddled bureaucracy killed fourteen brave astronauts and wasted taxpayer dollars by the truckload.   It isn’t just the Space Shuttle that should be retired, but the sad agency which created it.