In which we observe Ted Cruz defend a government program.
It's not even a purely US asset, it's the result of cooperation between America, Russia, the EU, Japan, and China. It's one of the most powerful tributes ever made to the power of a unified scientific pursuit. And this administration wants to hand over our hundred billion dollar investment to an entity beholden to a room of shareholders. I suppose privatization of the National Parks is next. Actually, if I recall correctly, someone posted an article on here about that a few months ago.
The ISS ground control is at Johnson in Houston. 3200 employees, $3.2b in local spending in 2014. Rest assured that if ISS was controlled out of JPL, Lyin' Ted would let it twist in the wind.
Oh I'm well aware, but still a beautiful hypocrisy. "Only the folks in my voting block matter". Not a sentiment limited to Republicans, either, of course. Edit: although one could also argue that this self-interest is somewhat akin to a system of checks and balances that optimizes what's best in the national interest. Whatever.
Is this necessarily a bad thing? The cost of space exploration is enormous. We now have private companies building rockets. If there were a commercial use for the space station, it would foster more entries into space. To be honest I am not exactly sure what they do on the space station. I am sure there is a lot of experimentation but commercial ventures would generate their own scientific advancement. I realize privatization has the potential for problems and even disaster and maybe the ISS is not the right place to start but at some point the government monopoly on space has to end. I always think of the Moonshot as one of the greatest achievements in human history, something history books will mention about the US in 2,000 years. But going to the Moon was not a purely scientific endeavor. We built the Apollo program in less than a decade mainly due to our rivalry with the USSR. Great things were achieved for reasons other than just scientific exploration.