Travel to space station

Phil Swayne (3/14, Letters) brought up America’s lack of transportation to the International Space Station following the retirement of the shuttles in 2010. America is unlikely to have independent access to the station during the climax of its existence.
The same burgeoning commercial spaceflight industry that launched SpaceShipOne in 2004 might come to the rescue. NASA is already pursuing a contract with two of these start-ups, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, to find a commercially viable alternative to launching its own missions to the station. Each of these contractors would launch craft, largely funded by NASA, to re-supply the station, with designs capable of ferrying humans to and from the station.
This would not only save the dignity of our space program; it would also be a boon for commercial spaceflight, giving them a boost into the realm of orbital space and beyond.
Paul Knightly
Space, political blog: www.zeitgeistzephyr.com
Lenexa

Comments

[Dan Beyer]

All we have to do is use the Russian Energia rockets to continue launching our Space Shuttles. They have a fantastic safety record, are very powerful, don't have the problems our launch system has, and can be easily modified to mount U. S. Space Shuttles.
The Energia rockets were going to be used for the Soviet Buran Space Shuttles that were identical to our Space Shuttles with the exception of one thing: they only had one engine because the Energia is so powerful!
By using the Russian Energia Rocket instead of our flawed launch system we could extend the mission of our Shuttle fleet a few more years until a replacement is found and we could get a little more international into this international endeavor.

[kcstar_is_one_sided]

Again, a government agency shows it cannot run a program.

[solomon]

So what you're saying is that the american taxpayer has foot the bill for years, but because we had our priorities out of sync we will not reap the benefits of our investment. Imagine that.