Responding to the comment:
"expect the same government to treat your project the same way
they treat someone else's project."
Oddly enough I was very pro-space station when the concept first came out in the late 1970s. The original space station was supposed to be a "floating dry dock" and one piece of a larger package. This larger package included the Space Shuttle and a purely orbital vehicle called the "Space Tug". The idea was very elegant. The shuttle would haul satellites up to the Space Station where they would be checked out by astronauts on orbit. If the satellite was fully functional, the Space Tug would transport it to it's final orbit. The Space Tug could also snag broken satellites from orbit and bring them back to the Space Station for repair. Neat concept! Unfortunately the Space Tug was cancelled before it got off the drawing board. Ever heard of the IUS or Inertial Upper Stage? It's original name was the Interim Upper Stage ("interim" as interim for the Space Tug). They changed the name from "Interim" to "Inertial" when it was clear that the Space Tug would never happen. (Aren't these spin doctors clever?) Of course there was still the problem of the Space Station. Without the Space Tug it had no real mission so they flounced around trying to come up with some scientific justification. Unfortunately there was this domino effect. If the Space Station went away then the Space Shuttle would go away. The thinking was: No Space Shuttle = No manned space program.
Gary
Space/Science » in reply to Goose and Gander
Re: Goose and Gander