Recently, Americans commemorated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. With computers less powerful than today’s pocket calculators, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin piloted and landed their fragile spacecraft on the lunar surface. What most Americans don’t know is that we will soon be without a manned space program. Plagued with engineering flaws and suffering the effects of age, NASA’s shuttle program will end operations sometime within the next two years. Until the new Constellation program – a scaled-up version of Apollo – is ready for use, the United States will have no direct method for sending American astronauts to the International Space Station. This means that soon Russian Soyuz spacecraft will be essential to U.S. manned spaceflight.
And how have our fine Russian friends been conducting themselves regarding the joint operation of the International Space Station? It’s a tourist destination for those willing to pony up the $20 to $34 million fee to experience 7 to 12-days of weightless fun aboard the American/Russian orbital boondoggle. Six wealthy tourists paid handsomely for the privilege of claiming the title space cadet. It was announced that Guy Laliberte, 49, of Canada will join the list of billionaires to vacation in space. Appropriately, he is the founder of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil – the popular circus troupe of contortionist acrobats and mimes, with franchises around the world. Soon, the duties of an American astronaut may include offering complementary peanuts, headphones and pillow to the paying customer strapped in the seat next to him.
Public support for the Apollo program was never very high. As NASA sent Apollo 11 to the moon, only 40% of the American pubic thought the expense was worth the cost. NASA attempted to bolster support for the space program by telling Americans of the benefits space technology made in their daily lives – such as advances in medical technology. Now, after billions wasted assembling a manned orbital platform, the payoff is the vacation benefits the flying tube offers billionaires with money to burn.
In 1975, the last Apollo mission did not go to the moon, but docked with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. Little did we taxpayers know it would all culminate in a joint venture to create the world’s most expensive bed ‘n breakfast.
