Wow, how inspiring more billions of dollars spent on some useless government bureaucracy that produces nothing...
It's time to get rid of NASA...
NASA has a history of running expensive boondoggle programs, from the man on the moon program of the 1960's–mid-1970's (three men lost their lives early in that program), to the colossal, costly and deadly space shuttle program (13 or 14 astronauts have lost their lives and the shuttle cannot put satellites into orbit for less than the Europeans or the Chinese), to the wasted billions on the international space station, the soon to be shut-down Hubble telescope, and other failed satellite missions. In fact, NASA is essentially nothing more than a lobbying arm for the public funding of expensive science projects and subsidies to the aerospace industry.
NASA supporters will vigorously challenge the characterization of their programs as boondoggles, often piping up about all the wonderful spinoffs from various space programs that have occurred and the invaluable scientific data obtained from such projects. These supporters cite such inventions as the hand-held calculator, the miniaturization of electronic circuits, advances in medical techniques, telecommunications satellites, improved weather forecasting, and other examples.
Commercial Applications Depend on Private Demand But NASA technology, like any technology developed in government-funded research and development programs, is generally not useful to the private sector in bringing new goods and services to the consumer. Over the years, in response to prodding by members of Congress and various administrations, federal laboratories – those operated by the military and civilian arms of the government – have repeatedly been put under pressure to transfer technologies developed with public funds to the private sector. While a few examples of success exist, the general rule is that the private sector wants nothing to do with technologies developed in federal labs. And this is true for several reasons. The technologies – while sounding promising – are often not tailored to bringing specific goods and services to consumers. To make new technologies into new products attractive to consumers, private firms would probably have to spend additional funds on research and development – possibly huge amounts, and even then most firms prefer to use proprietary or patented techniques or technologies in order to earn a better profit. In other words, why use some technology available to every other business, unless you can couple it with some proprietary technique to give you an edge over the competition? And then there are historical examples of advanced technologies being developed and fielded by the private sector before the federal government, or anyone in a federal laboratory, even thought of them. For instance, anyone old enough to remember knows that the old AT&T – in its Bell Laboratory subsidiary – paid for the launch of the world’s first telecommunications satellite, Telstar, in 1962, and that proved to be such a commercial success that Ma Bell launched others like it. It was only many years later that the Defense Department decided it needed its own set of communications satellites for running a U.S. military deployed around the world. I would concede that government-developed rockets were used in launching Telstar, but that same scientific and engineering talent – had it not been monopolized by the government – might well have developed commercial launch vehicles to meet private sector demands at around the same time. In other words, commercial demand was the real spur to the development of useful and economical satellite launch vehicles.
Read the rest here:www.lewrockwell.com...
[edit on 13-8-2008 by Gateway]
Wow! That's the first time I've actually agreed with you 100%.
And also could not have said it better myself. 
