Leave The American Space Shuttles in Space!

Leave the American Space Shuttles in Space! (My message # 20 on this blog. I also have written more than 20 messages on my other blog "Our Spaceship Earth"
http://colonizespace.blogspot.com )
July 19, 2006 by Goodspaceguy

* The Fleet of American Space Shuttles was and is a bad idea, a wasteful idea, an injury to the American tax payers, especially when space colonization should be the objective.

* Principle: Because it is so expensive to put material into orbit, whatever makes it into orbit, should stay in orbit.

* It cost a lot of tax payer money to put an American Space Shuttle into orbit. The payload of a launching rocket system pushing things up into orbital space should be considered to be whatever makes it into orbit. The Space Shuttle is therefore the payload and should stay in orbital space. It does not make sense to spend so much money to put Space Shuttles into orbit and then turn around and bring them down to Earth. We then have so little to show for the money spent. For the colonization of our solar system, we need many space crafts in orbit.

* For example, in orbit, the space shuttles could have been sold to the highest bidders. Some of the new owners might have used them for providing transportation between the Earth and the orbit of the Moon. Perhaps an owner, might even had tried going to the orbit of Mars and the moons of Mars.

* Other new owners of space shuttles in orbit might simply have used them as habitats from which to experiment with living and working in orbit.

* NASA's research should be concentrating on learning how people can live well and work well in orbital space. (I and some other people already have some good ideas in this area. Some people think NASA is brain dead.)

* It was wrong to bring our space shuttles and other material down from orbit. If we had joined the spacecrafts and and other items together with docking spheres and nets and connectors, we would already be a great space colonizing civilization with several spinning outposts in our solar system.

* Again (and this is important) each space shuttle launch could instead have been a launch of a space habitat. We would have so much more to show for the money we have already spent.

* If we had launched space habitats instead of space shuttles, we would be so much further ahead of where we are now. We would already have much experience with beginning orbital colonization around the Earth, around the Moon, and around the moons of Mars.

* In the 49 years of the Space Age that Nikita Khrushchev began when he led the backward Soviet Union in launching Sputnik in 1957, we have accomplished so little of our potential in space colonization. We have thrown away so, so many possible space habitats by abandonning our successful heavy lift rocket for the wasteful Space Shuttle. Our leaders simply did not and apparantly do not understand space colonization.

*Progress through knowledge, Michael Goodspaceguy Nelson, candidate US Senate