[PersonalLiberties]

"I don't know what is going on with this country; when Sputnik first flew, we went into a frenzy to teach a new generation of scientists and engineers. We resolved to put a man on the moon in 10 years. Our response to the current explosion of new technological progress abroad is not even tepid, it is completely apathetic." Snowislander

Thanks for that interesting post. The difference is in the 50's we still valued ourselves as a country and wanted our country as a whole to do well in the world. We placed promoted and helped pay for the prograns that would ensure we could compete. (On a side note, the new private competition in spacecrafts looks like a positive move).

[A. Pole]

The difference is in the 50's we still valued ourselves as a country and wanted our country as a whole to do well in the world. We placed promoted and helped pay for the prograns that would ensure we could compete.

Now the main objective is to increase profits for the reform minded oligarchs and to reduce the cost of American labor.

[snowsislander]

Yes, I think it's fantastic that we have private firms that are working on space flight. I hope that it continues, but private firms are usually interested in the bottom line. Flying to an asteroid to retrieve samples probably is hard to justify on the p-and-l, but it is good science.

From what figures that I have seen on what Japan is spending on this project, the direct costs aren't even that high. I seem to remember that the official direct costs are roughly 200 million dollars, and JAXA's total annual budget appears to be around $2 billion. ( Here is a very neat pamphlet about JAXA, but it's large (3 megabytes) ).