NASA announced kinda quietly yesterday that it’d upgraded its International Space Station contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency to include crew transport from 2014 to 2016. The price tag on that is $753 million total and includes “all necessary training and preparation for launch, flight operations, landing and crew rescue of long-duration missions for 12 individual space station crew members.” Or about $60 million a pop to get Americans to the space station.Without our own space shuttles—the last of which makes its final trip this year—paying Russia to get to the ISS is basically the New Way and we’re just gonna have to suffer the humiliation of being at another country’s mercy. I mean, some Americans will find that humiliating, and say things like commercial space-flight entrepreneur Mark Sirangelo did to Fox News last fall: “Why should the U.S. spend money in Russia? Why should we create Russian jobs and spend money on Russian technology when there are a number of U.S. companies who could provide the same kind of service?”Which is all-around the sort of faux-capitalistic stuff you hear about any tech that’s farmed out in a world where the U.S. is generally losing at tech. And will continue to.It’s worth mentioning, as you gawk at the most expensive ticket on a mode of transportation ever, that a shuttle mission runs around $450 million total when NASA does it. Granted a shuttle holds more than the two American astronauts at a time traveling on the Soyuz but, then again, with the costs and comparative benefits of shooting humans into space, it seems to this writer at least that we should be maximizing international cooperation at every level.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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