We don't own it. I think it's called the ISS for a reason. Hell, the
Russians are broke and seem to be docking there more often
then we are.
Yes, but as long as Russia is the gas station for western Europe
believe me they aren't broke. We (the US) paid for Zarya because
we could get it cheap as we didn't want to pay for Lockheed to
build it.
ALL of the the significant pieces of the ISS were paid for by the
US taxpayer, in terms of lift costs (the shuttle program).
That's OK, we can afford it. And there isn't anything wrong with
leveraging our technology for the benefit of mankind.
Our butts are going to be in a bad situation when we close down
the shuttle and the only manned transport option is Soyuz. We
forced them into the TMA design because the TM design was not
to NASA standards. And they'll want payback on that.
This is ALL politics.
We can't get Ares/Orion off the pad fast enough, at this point.
And at that, it's only a rough parity of an existing known reliable
system.
This would be a good time to look at extending the shuttle
program, I know it's past its prime and it has all ready killed fourteen
astronauts and two vehicles. And it's expensive as hell.
But it is the only man-rated (hah) vehicle we have right now. But
we know how to run it. I mean we have 3 out of 5 still flying.
Things like the ISS and human spaceflight don't come cheap.
This is what JFK called "...the things that are hard..."
But I seriously doubt that anybody whose name is on this list,
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0114.shtml
would argue that that it wasn't worthwhile.
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