Let's hire the Russians to take us to the Moon!

[halman]

Instead of spending billions on rockets that we hope private enterprise will make obsolete soon, why don't we hire a contractor to take us to the Moon? There is one on the market, and they are highly qualified. Their economy is in such a mess that the American dollar is as good as gold, which means that they will work for far less than American contractors, allowing NASA to spend the bulk of its budget on the hardware that we want to send to the Moon. This contractor has a stable of rockets, from medium to heavy lift, either in production, or in designs that have flown. Investment into this contractor will allow it to continue its efforts in mastering the frontier that one of its country men made real, by explaining how to get there, and some of the things that can be done there.`<br /><br />The United States has decided that it cannot afford to spend any appreciable amount of the federal budget on creating the future. Yet it wants to continue to be a pioneer in off planet exploration and development, which requires the production of very expensive hardware. But before that hardware can be used, it has to be hurled out of our gravity well. Now, we have proven our skill in doing that, but we have neglected to maintain our ability. To regain that ability will be very expensive, yet there is every intention of having the private sector take over the launching of payloads, so spending government money to build new launchers is counterproductive. Our dwindling engineering talent would be used the most efficiently if we applied it solely to what we have been doing best for some time, the production of advanced equipment to manipulate the environment.<br /><br />The Russians can get us to the Moon, and do it faster than we could, and a lot cheaper. The money that we save by hiring their launch capability we could invest in what we want to launch, which is the equipment and supplies needed off planet. This would be true co-operation, as well as an application of the <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>