"Ed Majden" wrote in message
. ca...

"Xenia Dragon" They are fair questions - should the US government be
allowed
to continue to dominate near earth space? Is space going to be
nothing more than a scientific laboratory and military training
ground for the rest of this century? If yes, then why would the
billions on this planet want to pay the freight for those
government controlled programmes?

Xenia

Burt Rutan had some good points to make. As for U.S. government
domination, this is not entirely true. There are all kind of civilian
satellites up there these days. NASA, ESA, Russian or China launched.
This
is an expensive thing to do. I don't think others are discouraged, they
just don't have the bucks. Industry requires a return on investment or
the
stock holders get annoyed! The government has the "deep pockets" to fund
such endeavours. If they didn't do this, no one would. This goes for
most
"pure" scientific research. It costs money with unpredictable returns on
investment. In the early days, and to some extent now, most astronauts
were
"jet jocks" or test pilots. Some monkeys and dogs too. ;-)

The GAO has found that NASA has far too many astronauts and that they are
taking up engineering slots they are unqualified to fill. Additionally, GAO
found that NASA has failed to attract and retain electrical engineers,
probaly related to the cost of keeping excess astronauts. I expect NASA to
pay attention to the GAO and the Columbia accident investigation board,
while ignoring Rutan and BBC.