I want to know what we're getting for $18B a year as it is.
A bunch of effete space-snobbery pussyfooting around with weightless mice, and a "space jeep" that can barely tow a satellite to orbit AND deliver pizza at the same time to the aforementioned effete pussyfooters in the ISS.
$18B buys no
progress. Merely maintenance of status quo. Which has been the mission ever since the inception of the space shuttle. While the ISS may be semi-new, we had skylab before that, I think the ESA also has a temporary space lab, the russians had Mir and some other one that fell out of orbit...
Orbital manned zero-g modules are nothing new.
To top it all off... there's nothing that you can do from the ISS that you can't do from the Space Shuttle itself. They're identical environments, and increasing shuttle flights or flight longevity could accomplish the same thing as the ISS does for us.
Be kinda nice to see something similar to the space station from
2001 maybe 20 years late. :rolleyes: An installation with a central docking collar and near-weightless workspace at its core, but rings that generated false gravity via centripetal force for long term healthy habitation and routine work. It might have been possible to build the ISS in this fashion rather than the glorified prairie dog tunnel system that it is.
As far as what you "get" from it as a taxpayer? I dunno. That's a good question.
One obvious benefit is military superiority. The Chinese/Indians/Russians/Japanese are trying to draw closer to our capabilities. We control less and less of the proverbial high ground. Pushing our space limitations outwards enhances our control of the high ground. The moon makes a lot of sense from a military perspective, but less sense from an exploration perspective (though still not a dead end by any means).