Message posted by Mark Lincoln on July 22, 2011 at 15:53:36 PST:
The decision to terminate the Shuttle Program was not taken by the current administration. It was taken by the previous administration for budgetary reasons. Folks here in Houston are scrambling to get local businesses to create jobs for the people who are being made redundant down at JCS. How successful this will be is conjecture. I remember how there were whole streets of empty houses at the Cape in the mid-1970s. I expect the same for Clear Lake next year. For over thirty years politicians have been telling us that we can have everything we want and don't have to pay for it. Game over. Reality intrudes. What is important is to save as much as we can of the research and development that NASA does because that is the 'no profit for the next few quarters' stuff that business won't fund. Reality is that budgets are going to be restricted and almost certainly cut. BIG cuts. NASA will have to live within it's means and we need to get the most (to use an Eisenhower era 'New Look' slogan) 'the most bang for our bucks.' This means not doing expensive stuff with little return in R&D such as duplicating Apollo. FYI: In NASA's peak funding as percentage of the Federal Budget year of 1966, the top marginal income tax rate ($250,000 and above) was 70%. Now it is only 35% above $373,651. Sic transit gloria mundi.
In Reply to: Re: Look up Florida posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on July 22, 2011 at 9:39:05 PST:
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