Quote:
Originally Posted by banquo's_bumble_puppy
How would manned space exploration fare during a severe economic downturn? Say, something on the order of a deep recession or possibly an economic depression? Would ISS be slashed? Moon return flights? If taxpayers are out of work and not paying taxes, then what?
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They still lofted shuttles during the 91 Recession, and these new launches are going to be about 20% or so of the cost of a shuttle launch (assuming inevitable overruns because of NASA's bad habit of underestimating costs).
Besides, you have to ask what would be worse? Continuing to spend money keeping a 100 billion dollar investment functional, or going before the American public and basically admitting that you'd wasted a hundred billion, and lets not forget, we are 1) not the only partner in the station, and 2) not going to be capable of ferrying personnel up there for a few years.
Return to Moon flights aren't going to happen for another decade or more at the earliest, and the hardware under development currently isn't part of that particular phase of operations, so its not even being thought about right now. A recession in ten years, then you've got worries about Return to Moon flights being axed.