"Yeah, you could pay me $30M, but I'd never ride a damned capsule!

"Dude, I suggest you read my reply to RMartian because it already covers that in detail. "

And if I ever meet her, I want to know what she was mumbling during that scene. The only thing I could make out was; 'Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky...'

Entire space program? The only thing being retired is the Shuttle. It wasn't the first US manned spacecraft, won't be the last, by any stretch...

Sigh. Kids.

"Maybe NASA and the government should have let companies put their names and logos on the shuttles and rockets so that they could pay their bills."

"So yes, they do have regulations and rules. Otherwise, even more people would die. "

"Yeah, like stuff that saves lives and prevents tragedies. "

"This may annoy some but I'm actually glad the shuttle is almost gone. It was poorly conceived and executed from the start and, and in several key ways..."

No, that might be 'The China Syndrome.' (during Three Mile Island)

For what?

Because people do many things sooner, faster for their own reasons, without an international bureaucracy (on top of whatever national bureaucracy they already have to deal with)?

You miss the point. NASA (and others, this isn't just about NASA) will buy flights to LEO for its people and stuff, instead of having contractors build systems for itself...and go on and do its exploration from there.

"An additional point, why does it have to be the United States? Why can the ESA, Russia, China or India do the space wow for a while?"

"He hated the idea of astronauts becoming delivery boys in space, thought it was too stagnant a goal and wouldn't push us further into space exploration. "

First, 'The Space Program' is a fuzzy term that means what people want it to mean. There's no line item in the US budget called 'The Space Program.'

I surrender...!

Yep, I often wondered what might've come of that, too...

"Isaac Asmiov approves."

For a planet orbiting the yellow G-class Alpha Centauri A at an Earth-comfortable distance (which would be pretty much the same as our distance from the Sun), Alpha Centauri B (a cooler, smaller orange K-class star) is also orbiting A at about a Sun-Saturn distance, and contributing little to the nighttime sky.