Alphecca

Russia To The Rescue

From the AP:

A Russian-U.S.-Dutch crew returned to Earth from the international space station on Friday in "an almost bull's-eye landing" in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

NASA hailed the successful mission as another sign of American-Russian cooperation more than a year after the U.S. shuttle program was grounded because of the Columbia disaster.

The Soyuz TMA-3 capsule carried American astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who spent some six months on the ISS. European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands was returning after a nine-day stint.

But I just think it's pathetic that the US, once-upon-a-time the leader in space, is now virtually dependent on others to complete these missions. How sad that NASA is still trying to figure out the "shuttle problems" and currently hasn't the means to do any of this themselves. And it's not just the transfer of scientists to the station, it's also resulted in our abandoning our Hubble Telescope because we can't bring up new batteries to it.

For want of a tiny fraction of our annual budget, for loss of the vision, the urge to explore space, we could very well see some other country land men on Mars first. Yes, the Rovers are nice, as is President Bush's call to explore Mars, but without the will of the people to support such efforts, I can see the EU or China being the first ones there "in person."

Kind of sad really, when you consider that scientist/author Robert Zubrin had the whole thing economically taped out for us in books such as The Case For Mars and On To Mars.