forget percentages. For the cost of 16 months of defense spending in 2008 dollars, we went to the moon six times, launched men and machines into orbit scores of times, sent probes to other planets and out of our solar system, and launched space shuttles over 130 times. Enormous amounts of research, knowledge and of course commercial development have come from it. Even without that third one, it's worth it because of the value of furthering human knowledge, but things like Velcro and digital cameras are nice, too.
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Originally Posted by genuinegirly
I'm wondering how involved NASA was with this project. A few of the images in the article above mention NASA in some form, and it seems to be based on an original NASA design, the Boeing X-37. Looks like I'm not the only one who is a bit confused about its purpose. I've heard this described as primarily an Air Force project, but Wikipedia claims NASA put more money into its development. Here's a link to the wikipedia article about it: Boeing X-37 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
NASA started development, abandoned it, and the Air Force picked it up. I can't say for sure what its purpose is, but it can be launched and orbit for 7 months with a payload on board, and the Air Force is in charge of it. I'll bet we find out what that classified mission and payload are when the Iran situation goes south and their nuclear facilities go up in smoke without a foreign plane or missile within hundreds of miles.
Frankly, with the way it's going, I'm worried by the fact that our next generation of astronauts are likely to wear USAF patches instead of NASA. Peaceful civilian exploration of space grew out of the race to [strikethrough]develop the first ICBM[/strikethrough] put the first satellite in orbit, I had hoped that the end of the cold war would keep it in civilian hands, but the X-37 brings it full circle.