Russia to charge for space trips

Since the Columbia Shuttle crash, the whole fleet of US shuttles remain grounded with Russia the only link to the ISS. Now with Russia's deepening economic problems, they have stated that they will now charge US Astronauts to fly them to the ISS. Russia is also considering more space tourism to boost their cash flow. Full story here news.bbc.co.uk...
So my point is, that one country is single handedly doing all the work here. Isn't it time for NASA to step up and fix the space program?

Well it is called the "International" space station and NASA has already done more then its fair share of work and money on it. Its a 16-nation, $100-billion international space station and Russia is a senoir member and the United States pays most of the space station's costs.

For the longest time Nasa shuttles were doing pretty much all of the work and now someone eles on the team has to do the work oh no.

Yeah, that's pretty janky of Russia. As ShadowXIX said, they should have to help foot the bill just as much as any other country.

This isn't a big deal, less then a week ago a Russian progress ship docked, and it had enough supplies, fixes, water, food, to last them until may when the shuttle launches. So this is no problem at all.

An "International Space Station" is all fine for Public Relations but does USG have other plans in the pipeline for its own space station projects? Does NASA have publically-viewable 10-year and 20-year plans where you can see a list of all their projects, the budget allocations, and how far they've got with each project?

And does the USG have other agencies (hidden ones?) which also have a budget for space projects? What proportion of NASA consists of people working for more clandestine projects? Does USG (or agencies) have clandestine Space projects?

Presumably something as costly as Space would leave a big black hole in any US budget, so it would be quite hard to cover up wouldn't it?

What I'm saying is, having to pay for a few months for the Russian ferrying to the Space Station is nothing much, and I'm wondering just where the International Space Station stands in the USG agenda for the use of Space?

Originally posted by blairpark79
An "International Space Station" is all fine for Public Relations but does USG have other plans in the pipeline for its own space station projects? Does NASA have publically-viewable 10-year and 20-year plans where you can see a list of all their projects, the budget allocations, and how far they've got with each project?

And does the USG have other agencies (hidden ones?) which also have a budget for space projects? What proportion of NASA consists of people working for more clandestine projects? Does USG (or agencies) have clandestine Space projects?

Presumably something as costly as Space would leave a big black hole in any US budget, so it would be quite hard to cover up wouldn't it?

What I'm saying is, having to pay for a few months for the Russian ferrying to the Space Station is nothing much, and I'm wondering just where the International Space Station stands in the USG agenda for the use of Space?

I'm assuminging USG means: United States Government.

If its a secret how would we know? Nasa has there future plan kinda laid out, but not in high detail yet, as in probe missions, But they plan on going to the moon before 2020, and then on to Mars, and beyond. I like there goal but I think its to ambitious (especially with the war), awhile back they planed on a Space station that would be a "jumping" platforn to missions to Mars and stuff, but the reality is that the ISS is a HUGE money sucker, taking over 8 billion per year just from Nasa's budget.

The black budget which is over 30 billion per year, no one knows if that money goes to maintaining secret facilities, or making space planes, or hypersonic bombers, ufo's, we just dont know. The USAF puts more and more money per year to space research, but who knows if something has being built.

oh, and as for the ISS, Nasa still thinks (which they cant) that they can finish it in 2010, and then finally retire the Shuttles, they will stay using the ISS for i around 6-8 more years, then ditch it. Because by that time all the money will be focused on the moon base.