Why do the truly stupid rule our world?

Why do the truly stupid rule our world?

 

NASA celebrated its 55th anniversary by shuttering websites and furloughing most of its 18 000 employees as a U.S. government shutdown took effect on 1 October. But future space exploration missions stand to suffer the most from the shutdown's impact.

 

The U.S. space agency will likely halt work on satellites or spacecraft that have yet to launch, according to NASA's shutdown plans ….. the shutdown could delay the upcoming Mars MAVEN mission beyond its scheduled launch on 18 November and possibly push the mission back until 2016—the next time when Mars and the Earth will be aligned in the best positions for the spacecraft to reach the red planet. Reference

Now I’m really upset! And still the Congress are about the only government workers getting paid. Unbelievable!

 

But not to worry. Once again, it’s the private sector that will lead us into the 21st century, not the bungling buffoons in Washington people waste their time and energy supporting.

 

Four decades ago, NASA's Launch Complex 39A was at the center of the Cold War race to the moon.

 

Now the mothballed launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which dispatched Neil Armstrong and his crew on their historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, is the focus of a battle of another sort, between two billionaire techies seeking to dominate a new era of private space flight.

 

A fierce competition for control of the pad by digital entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has led to a government probe and congressional lobbying, delaying NASA's choice of a partner.

 

Musk's 11-year-old Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, already has two U.S. launch sites for its Falcon rockets at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and California's Vandenberg Air Force bases.

 

Musk, the co-founder of Paypal and chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, also plans to build a site, probably in Texas, for commercial launches and wants Pad 39A for Falcon rocket launches to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

 

Blue Origin, the company formed in 2000 by Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos, is working on a suborbital reusable spaceship called New Shepard.

 

SpaceX has a backlog of more than 50 customers for Falcon rocket launches, including 10 more cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA and satellite launches for commercial firms and foreign governments. The company also has two U.S. Air Force launches that are considered trial runs toward potential bigger contracts.

Blue Origin plans to evolve its rockets and spaceships for orbital flight as well and has proposed running Launch Complex 39A for multiple users while it continues to develop its technology. Reference

 

For a related article on SpaceX, please CLICK HERE.

Question: Need I ask? Who will lead us into the 21st century. Governments? Or private industry?