[Jaysun]

You don't care to see your tax dollars spent on innovations in aerospace technology? You'd prefer some other nation to take the lead? Perhaps we should defer to France or the U.K.? Or maybe encourage the U.N. to take over our space program? We'll continue to fund it, just let them run things.

It means something to be a leader and sometimes we have to spend tax dollars on something bigger than ourselves instead of just making improvments on your comfort zone.

Is it necessary to spend tax dollars at a rate of more than 1.3 billion per month in order for us to lead the world in aerospace technology? Is that how the airplane, the telephone, the light bulb, or the computer came to be? My beef is that they waste a hell of a lot of money, as is typical with government bureaucracies. Why can't we trust private enterprise to do some of the things that NASA does?

NASA has a role to play, but so does private enterprise. The guys that recently flew to space and back in a craft that they designed and built themselves, spent $25 million dollars on the project. NASA goes through $25 million dollars in a matter of days. How much would a similar achievement have cost if it were brought about by NASA? That's my gripe.

[Tallguy]

NASA did a good job through the Apollo program because it acted more as an agenda setter and a clearing house for technology. The aerospace companies of the day did most of the heavy-lifting. Now NASA is like an old-fashioned, government-run arsenal. Inefficient to say the least. Of course, we have far fewer aerospace companies to turn to than in the 50's and 60's.