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Given SpaceHabs financial problems it's entertaining to hear Tom Pickens III spouting about who should pay for the ISS after US funding evaporates: the pharmaceutical companies. Granted they have an interest, but I don't see them picking up that big a tab on their own.<br /><br />Of course the reason he gives, crystallization of proteins in microgravity, has been shown do-able in Earth gravity using magnets about the size of those in research CT scanners.<br /><br />Wired link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Texas Investor Eyes Space Station as Orbiting Pharma Lab</b><br /><br />MOFFETT FIELD, California -- A swaggering Texas investor with a famous name wants Big Pharma to pick up the tab for the International Space Station when NASA eases off.<br /><br />Thomas Pickens III thinks the pharmaceutical industry and the space station need each other.<br /><br />Drug discovery is an arduous and extremely expensive project. But in space, molecules do miraculous things. Disease-causing proteins crystallize so well -- growing larger and clearer -- that finding a drug to stop the protein's damaging activities could happen months, if not years, faster.<br /><br />Scientists have known for decades that some science works better in space -- but it hasn't been easy to get experiments up there. Now, with NASA planning to reduce its $2.6 billion annual investment beginning in 2015, the agency is throwing the space station open for private enterprise. And the Texas financial scion and multimillionaire is ready to transform space science with an injection of capitalism.<br /><br />"If people knew what I already know, the International Space Station would be considered one of the most valuable resources our world possesses," Pickens said at the ISS National Laboratory Workshop last week. "There are things you can only do in microgravity that will eventually lead to pro</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>