The Space Station Budget Boondoggle

The NASA Budget is very disappointing, not so much in the total amount - about 16 billion, but in how its allocated. Almost 2 billion is being directly wasted on building the Space Station, and 4.5 billion on the Space Shuttle. However according to the budget document

[The Space Shuttle] is currently the only vehicle that can support assembly of the ISS. NASA will phase-out the Space Shuttle in 2010 when its role in ISS assembly is complete.

In other words, the Shuttle is being maintained purely to support the Space Station. In total, the ISS is absorbing almost half of NASA's budget - 6.5 billion just this year.

What's galling, is that this necessitates cuts to other, much more exciting projects: keeping Hubble in action and developing the nuclear propulsion mission to Jupiters moons in search of life. Unlike the Space Station, these projects are both scientifically rewarding and arouse public enthusiasm. Keeping an invisible chunk of metal floating in space is merely lame.

Moreover, the financial burden of the 'International' Space Station is nowhere near equally shared. The total European contribution has been less than 3 billion Euros in the last 10 years - about half what the US will spend this year alone. Ditto the Japanese. Russia is putting in about $130 million a year, and only managing to raise that much by selling trips to wealthy businessmen - an outrageous way for the rich to leverage US government funds.

The Space Station should be made either truely international, with costs shared fairly - or scrapped. $6.5 billion could be much better spent for real research and bold exploration.