In an undecided letter of the alphabet to Congress today , ex - astronaut and current NASA straits honcho Charles F. Bolden Jr. shared some alternative Son : Quit waste money , and start sending US astronauts to space aboard US spacecraft .
The letter , bring out at Wired , does n’t desolate a moment catch to the point . “ Congress , Do n’t Make Us Hitch Rides with Russia . Love , NASA ” is the title . It detail a big grievance that ’s emerged since America stopped launching ballistic capsule over four year ago : presently , we ante up Russia a crap ton of money to send Americans to the International Space Station . Bolden says that NASA had to recently pay the Russian Federal Space Agency $ 490 million to send Americans to space aboard Russian ballistic capsule .
“ It ’s as if we keep ordering expensive takeout food because we have n’t yet set up our own kitchen — only , in this slip , the takeout meal are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars , ” he write .
He urges Congress to put more in President Obama ’s Commercial Crew architectural plan , which called for NASA to sour with American company who ’d build new commercial-grade technology for low - worldly concern reach , thus allowing NASA to focalize on cryptic space geographic expedition .
“ On a per - seat basis , it costs approximately $ 81 million to send an American astronaut to the Space Station on the Russian Soyuz space vehicle , ” Bolden writes . “ By comparison , it will cost $ 58 million per seat to send our astronauts to the Space Station on Boeing ’s and SpaceX ’s space vehicle , once they are certified . ”
The double whammy here , of course , is that in accession to NASA needing to drop its money in unsustainable ways , the agency is famously underfunded . accord toreports in 2011 , the government spent less money on NASA than it did on air conditioning for the armed services . Looking onwards , man foreign mission to Mars will be outrageously expensive , closing in on $ 100 billion , study say . Bolden says NASA just wind up sending the same $ 1 billion to Russia that it take properly here in the United States .
Bolden evokes recent NASA home runs , likeCuriosityandNew Horizons , to remind Congress what the blank agency is capable of . When you consider NASA ’s influence and achiever , Bolden says , the least the US can do is send its own people to blank space .
Read the full letterhere .
[ Wired ]
Image via Shutterstock
GovernmentNASARussiaSpace
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