[FPSPACE] Euro-Russian capsule: The silence is....like a vacuum

[David M Harland]

At 4:16 pm -0400 15/10/08, E.P. Grondine wrote:
>My general conclusion ... was that manned space development was too 
>expensive for any one nation to undertake by itself acting alone.

It is not primarily a matter of cost, but of will. If a nation had 
the will to do so, the money would readily be found. You'll note that 
the prospect of spending  a trillion dollars spread out over a 25 
year period to mount mount a manned mission to Mars was judged to be 
ridiculously expensive, yet the US government has pulled almost that 
amount of money out of the hat virtually overnight simply to buy some 
duff assets and a minority share in a couple of banks. It puts going 
to Mars into a new light.

dmh