This is an article from the Washington Post regarding the International Space Station. It is title What is it for? After reading this article, it raised many good points and concerns going forward regarding the space station.
70 Comments
Taylor Wiggins
9/16/2013 08:23:13 am
I think it's extremely vital that NASA gets an increase in its budget. It doesn't seem very practical in respect to the average person's daily life, but it will fuel our sciences and understanding. So much can be done in such foreign territory, and no one really realizes the importance of it. Money that's thrown away every year would definitely be enough to keep the space station up and running. We can't apply too much right now, but unimaginable things can come from our research.
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Grace Price
9/18/2013 02:45:49 am
If we keep funding NASA and they end up having to crash the space station, then we have lost all the money that was used to keep it in space. The money used to fund the space station can be used on something more important like feeding hungry children or college scholarships. I think they should just crash the space station and use the money elsewhere.
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Lexy Febres
9/19/2013 02:26:37 am
I agree with Grace I think our economy cannot afford to spend money on things that may or may not be beneficial to us. The space station is not a certainty that it will bring us advancements and with our economic state currently I think it would be best to crash it and use our money more wisely.
Chad Hawkins
9/21/2013 12:45:03 pm
You're talking about a still living testament to the ability and ingenuity of the human race. We are not pitching it in the ocean.
Daniel Kunsman
9/16/2013 08:30:20 am
I feel that the International Space station is just like how Hadfield Described it, that it is our first great human outpost in space and that it is an excellent platform of human self-discovery. I mean, what person would have believed that we could have done something like this back even 150 to 200 years ago. They would have laughed at you or called you crazy. It really is amazing that we, as human beings, actually achieved this. Hopefully they continue to fund this and develop further space exploration technology so we can understand more of this universe that we are so infinitesimally small in.
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Mitchell Valaitis
9/16/2013 12:06:49 pm
I agree with you that it is a major accomplishment of humanity, but I feel that as a joint venture if lacks the necessary competition to sustain itself.
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Anson B
9/19/2013 11:54:24 am
I Don't think that would be a good idea.i think its better of being a multi-national project.
Christopher "Doing before thinking" Zuren
9/21/2013 11:13:53 am
Mitchell, you look at this as if it were Shamoo. It's big, it takes up space, what was it's purpose again? Instead, you need to think of it as a monument. It's big, it takes up space, it inspires the hell out of everybody, and quite frankly, the owner and caretakers should really scrape the pigeon crap off the damn thing.
Mitchell Valaitis
9/16/2013 12:03:16 pm
I feel that funding the ISS is a no brainer when you consider the scientific potential it possesses. Unfortunately there are way to many humanitarians who would rather give free cell phones to the unemployed members of the inner city. However I think that the fact that the ISS is a relatively small government venture in the grand scheme of things is the real problem. If private industries are really going to become invested in spreading out into the solar system then we will need to privatize space. The problem is that as it stands now, because of international agreements, space will never be privatized because space supposedly belongs to the entire collective of humanity.
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Jake Rayl
9/22/2013 12:03:44 pm
Mitch poses a good point. Even if it were privatized, space couldn't possible be "owned". And that itself would cause more problems.
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breanna smith
9/17/2013 07:20:33 am
NASA really needs to get the funds to keep the program and the research going. The money they put into it though is insane, 100 billion is a lot of money but its worth it. Also how the space station is closer than I thought . The info was very interesting.
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Taylor Wiggins
9/17/2013 09:12:30 am
Yeah, I was pretty surprised, to. Although it may seem pretty far with numbers, the space station's pretty close to us. It's kind of cool, actually.
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Matt Grauel
9/24/2013 02:28:30 am
YES. We need continue the funding because we have so much more to find and discover. NASA is more important than a lot of little ones that we fund and we could use that money
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Grace Price
9/18/2013 02:55:07 am
The people back in the day must have been crazy to think that the space station was a portal to the heavens. The space station isn't in heaven.... It's in space! Having to train 6 astronauts to know how to fix the space station and what not, is very tedious. To think that the space station is not that far away from us is really cool. If a four year old were to find out that a space station had its own phone number and they didn't, they kid might be a little mad. How could you crash the space station into the ocean??? Wouldn't that change anything and everything about the ecosystem in that part of the ocean? You would definitely kill fish and what not. I don't think it is a good idea to crash the space station. We should just send the space station out of orbit and let it float in space for forever and see who or what brings it back...
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Lexy Febres
9/19/2013 02:29:43 am
I believe that funding for the ISS should be discontinued. Although science advancements are very important to us, our current economic state cannot afford anything that isn't necessary. We need to focus on fixing our economy before we waste money on things we don't necessarily need. I think NASA is important but not important enough to spend 100 billion dollars on.
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Aleah Sokalski
9/19/2013 07:10:46 am
I agree with Lexy 100%. Like I said in my comment, I just don't find it necessary right now to fund them after their given project time when we have other economical problems. The poverty level in this country keeps rising, the gap between the poor and the rich is getting greater, we need to build our middle class up again, before spending all that money on things unimportant at the time.
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Allen Cade
9/19/2013 04:19:37 am
The ISS must continue being funded for SCIENCE!
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Jensen Luciani
9/19/2013 06:09:01 am
I think going into space would be awesome and so much fun, but it is also extremely expensive. I do not think that the government should continue funding it. That is so much money that could be used to help so many other things in the world. Although they may find scientific discoveries in space, I believe our nation needs the money more than scientific discoveries. Once we get into a better position in our economy we should send the astronauts.
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Alexa Vickers
9/20/2013 01:22:59 am
I agree with Jensen. What about all of the people in poverty? Maybe later down the road the government can give more money to the science programs. But right now does anyone know how high our deficit is? $16 trillion! we need to work on getting that down, and feed starving mouths before NASA gets more money. I'm not saying cut them completely off, just for now not as much funding.
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Iva Bradvica
9/22/2013 10:41:42 am
i also agree with jensen and alexa, instead of wasting billions of dollars on stuff up in space we should be focusing on the economy and the poverty around the world and fix things that would be beneficial to us.
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Erica Strnad
9/22/2013 01:37:48 pm
I agree, though you should think about all the lost jobs people will have if we don't use the money for ISS, which could make the economy worse
Sam Weaver
9/22/2013 04:10:09 pm
I agree with what Erica is saying, yeah that is alot of money we can use for other things in our hurt economy but if we lose all those jobs it can hurt it even more.
Frank Valentic
9/19/2013 07:06:54 am
If NASA wants to discover stuff in space then they have to go farther not just 250 miles. If they haven't found anything at that height they definitely have to go higher up. With all the new advancements they should be able to go higher. My opinion is that if it isn't going into space then why even have it.
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Aleah Sokalski
9/19/2013 07:08:14 am
I think funding for NASA after 2020 should be discontinued for the mean time. Our economic status right now can't afford to be paying for this project when all they are doing is seeing about life in space. I understand that it can be helpful in the future learning about things such as "Stiction" but right now, I don't find it to be necessary. When we are out of debt and get back on our feet, they can continue the project.
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ashley edmiston
9/19/2013 08:45:32 am
It seems that the ISS isn't really serving that much of a purpose. Maybe if more discoveries have been made up there I would say keep it. We can't explore space if the station is so close to earth, they need to go farther in the unexplored parts. I'd rather see NASA use that money on things like planet explorations, It would be a tough decision to end the funding we could really use the money on other important things back on earth. We could keep funding it a few more years and and if no progress has been made then cut the funding for a while.
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Suzi Newland
9/19/2013 09:39:51 am
i think we should keep funding NASA. We don't have to give them a boost in the nomal amount we give them. Haveing a space project station is important because if we dont have one our enemy countries could come up with a dangerous space craft that could mess with our satilites and no one would no its happening. we need to stay ontop of whats happening because there could be a future space war and we would not be able to prepare for it because we would be out of date.
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Anson B
9/19/2013 11:43:45 am
i support the ISS but when we are in a bad economy, we have to make cuts , even if it means cutting funds to multiple projects, that don't benefit the economy at all,for of course a period of time
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Marko Filipovic
9/19/2013 01:49:24 pm
Anson i am agreeing with your logic. However even if we are still in a bad time we still need to fund the ISS. Obviously we cant fund it entirely because our economy is really in a bad position to, but its a good idea to fund it somewhat. Its the space station. IT helps us know whats more out there and maybe we can use this information to find new planets. Overall we shouldn't cut it as much as we are now.
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Marko Filipovic
9/19/2013 01:52:53 pm
IN my opinion we shouldn't stop cutting it. We need the ISS to continue further exploration into space. Space is where wee need to continue in exploration. We should not fully cut it. By fully cutting it then we wont have the opportunity to continue our space exploration.
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Connor Addleman
9/22/2013 02:29:08 pm
Now before i comment, im going to say for the record i do NOT believe in aliens. however, there is a possibility they exist. we need that station for our own peace at mind. think of it as "space security" like national security....but for space
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Alexa Vickers
9/20/2013 01:24:30 am
Going into space would be an amazing experience but, the government only has so much money, maybe if they could have some type of charity fund, I'm sure many wealthy people would fund them.
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Colin Curtis
9/21/2013 08:59:56 am
I think that government funding for the space station should be discontinued, as long as the money is still going toward NASA. Since the station's upkeep seems to cost more than what the experiments are worth, that money can be going to more worthwhile projects. Although the station gave valuable experiences in living in outer space, NASA can use those experiences in the future for other missions. If they are able to, I think that it would be better to preserve the station by moving it to a more stable orbit than crashing it.
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Christopher Zuren
9/21/2013 11:05:15 am
After reading this article, I think it's safe to say that we need to be funding this way more than we should. From what I was told before reading this article, the I.S.S. was like the biggest shit science has. But after reading this, it's like,"we have stuff in space? Woop-dee-do. Now work on them jet-packs and hover-cars. I wanna be George Jetson for Halloween." Now all you Leeches and Mold out there (Yes i'm talking to YOU politicians), I know you all have compensation problems and the only way you can feel good about yourself is to screw over your citizens and shove every drop of cash that you can possibly scrape together into the military, but come on! You don't think that funding NASA and space exploration is a good idea? Yes, we know that funding an X-hundred foot long naval warship will get the Asian and European countries to stop laughing at your unfortunate "handicap", but if we have a giant orbiting space laser (researched, developed and produced by NASA), then you'll feel really good thinking about how all those foreign leaders probably defecating their trousers whilst you pound aimlessly away at your $300 Candi. That's candy with an "I" by the way.
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See Above
9/21/2013 11:07:28 am
REVISION, First line: After reading this article, I think it's safe to say that we need to be funding this way more than we are.
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Chad Hawkins
9/21/2013 01:00:55 pm
Someone had to say it.
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Anna Mijatovic
9/22/2013 01:05:35 pm
I agree with Chris. I think that if we keep funding this, we need to look at more ways of building our technology and the steps to take but cut a couple grand back. Because in the end is it really worth everything?
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Alex Goody
9/21/2013 11:33:36 am
I think that if we find out some really huge discovery like that there are possible ways to implant life on mars easier than we think or of similar caliber by 2020 or abandon it. It takes too much money to operate especially for small or intermediate findings to be kept up. It does have great scientific discoveries in its belt but sometimes some things need to stop to pave way for something better.
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Katie Host
9/21/2013 12:05:33 pm
I think we should keep funding the space station. The ISS has already provided us with information about life in space, which will be invaluable if we ever establish a colony on another planet. Although it is very expensive to maintain, I think if we let it crash into the ocean in a few years we might be missing out on other discoveries.
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Joe Zako
9/23/2013 01:05:30 am
This is a very good point and I agree with you completely. The only thing is at this point and time we may not have the to fund it as it has been very costly so far.
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Chad Hawkins
9/21/2013 01:00:03 pm
The International Space Station is the greatest achievement yet constructed by man. Discarding it into the ocean would be an foolish thing to do. NASA should continue with its research on the international space station, for it will lead to scientific discoveries that will expand our knowledge of the universe and allow us to continue our journey further into space. From a manned mission to mars all the way to a massive death star that we can use to destroy hostile alien races. Actually that's kind of ironic isn't it. Can you tell I watched to much Star Wars as a kid.
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Bill Bordonaro
9/21/2013 02:06:47 pm
I think the ISS program should continue for many more years to come. It had brought us valuable information about the universe and as technology improves it will continue to provide information to us. Currently we are 17 trillion dollars in debt, so what's a few billion dollars more to go to mars, and keep the space program alive?!
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Jen Hufgard
9/22/2013 07:04:45 am
I think our economy cant afford to spend money on things that may or may not be useful to us. To think that the space station is not that far away from us is kinda cool. We need to focus on fixing our economy before we waste money on things we don't need.
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Anton Vrebac
9/22/2013 10:17:23 am
I agree, we can't be spending money on things that we can't afford, also we are in a bad economy
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Anton Vrebac
9/22/2013 10:15:21 am
I believe we should cut some funds. The reason why is that our economy is in bad shape. We have to take care of ourselves before we do anything else.
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Kelly Lang
9/22/2013 11:38:06 am
I think the funding of the ISS program should be discontinued at least for now. It isn't a necessity right now and with our economy we can't just be throwing away money. We am always go back to it if we need or want to when we can better support it. But just right now there are more impoant things we could be using our money on. Scientific advances are important but at this one Ty aren't important enough to keep putting money on it. But I thought it was very interesting how different it was space. I never thought about how dust wouldn't settle without gravity. That was really interesting to me.
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Ryan Elias
9/22/2013 11:55:01 am
I think the funding should continue for the ISS program so we can increase our knowledge of space. I also think it would be cool to travel into space to learn more about it. Funding into the ISS program can also increase out technology. Although it is very expensive to have we should keep funding to increase our knowledge
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Jake Rayl
9/22/2013 11:59:06 am
I understand the reasons for wanting to let the I.S.S go but being an astronaut has been one of my dreams since I was five. I know that's probably not going to happen but still that kind of sucks. We are so close to actual space travel and just because of some hard times we are going to let a multibillion dollar achievement fall. If people weren't so preoccupied by the present, maybe this dream could stay afloat.
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Nick Strnisa
9/22/2013 12:49:59 pm
I think the I.S.S needs to keep being funded. The advances we've been able to make with it being up in space is astounding. If the I.S.S keeps being funded I think we will find out even more amazing discoveries.
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Anna Mijatovic
9/22/2013 01:02:51 pm
I think the funding for this should keep going. Maybe there is something out there that we might find very important to us and our solar system . By cutting this off it will give us less to look forward to. I also think though that how much the cost of this is, is really a little way overboard. If this continues we should maybe move the space station somewhere else and find out more interesting things our solar system and other planets have to offer.
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Gabriella Albanese
9/22/2013 04:14:40 pm
I agree with Anna, we cant take it down, there are so many discoveries waiting to be made!
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Erica Strnad
9/22/2013 01:36:15 pm
I agree that our economy is at an unsteady rate and could use the money on more important things. Yet the thought of all the lost jobs from the ISS could effect our economy tremendously.
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seth phares
9/22/2013 01:54:24 pm
The iss to me might be alittle bit of un needed spending on our part . Our economy as a nation has not been great. And I think that we should focus our spending on the things on hand. Even though the space station has made alot of advances for us but it might have reached its time. Getting rid of it and cutting our spending on it might not be a bad idea
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Connor Addleman
9/22/2013 02:25:30 pm
let's just turn everything over to the lambda division of black mesa( lol jk, sorry, had to make a half life reference). in my opinion, we should have the military work together with nasa to bring upon a better future
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Matt Tomc
9/22/2013 02:37:35 pm
We need to keep funding the International Space Station. If we decide to give up on it, it would make it seem as if it was all just a waste. Many fields of science benefit from the ISS because it provides an environment for performing zero-gravity experiments. Without it we would make less scientific advancements in pharmaceuticals and other fields of science. On top of that, the ISS is a milestone in human history and it would be a shame if we had to abandon it.
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Alex Svigel
9/22/2013 02:59:30 pm
I think we are waisting way too much money on this system. I think we should give it a try and discontinue this system and see how it goes because I believe we are using to much money into this. In the citation the economy is in I don't think we should be spending money if it's not useful.
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Jason F
9/22/2013 03:06:21 pm
I dont know why people thought the space station was a portal to the heavens. People back in the day must have been crazy to think that. We need to keep funding the International Space Station. If we dont it all would of just been a waste of money. But it also ccould be distracting us from the other things we need to be working on.
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Tyler Formica
9/22/2013 03:17:15 pm
I think that we need to leave the international space station up because it offers a great abundance of information about space and the universe. This also brings many contries together to achieve one common goal of making new discoveries in space. Also why get rid of something that is working at its fullest potential! I would love to see the space station stay
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Joseph Belz
9/22/2013 04:28:50 pm
I agree with Tyler. This discovery brings the entire world together to reach this goal, and that this program is very essential to us humans. There can be another species of humans out there and we may not even know it. The ISS is too important to just give up on.
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Ashley Nye
9/22/2013 04:03:09 pm
I agree with chad that it is a major accomplishment for us, but also with Lexy that it may or may not benefit us. Until we find out more, I believe that we should spend our money more wisely. Our nation has many other things that we could spend money on and benefit from right now aside from the ISS.
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Sam Weaver
9/22/2013 04:06:57 pm
I think that our discoveries in space and all of our scientific advancements at NASA are really important to our country. But I also believe that we really don't have that kind of money right now to keep spending on little projects. If we are going to keep spending billions of dollars we should be planning on going to mars or making other big advancements in space. It is a really complicated subject because if funding is stopped that's a lot of jobs lost and we could be doing great things with that money. But our economy probably can't take much more of this.
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Gabriella Albanese
9/22/2013 04:08:39 pm
I think the government should continue to fund the ISS. It teaches us so much about solar system! It has been up for so many years, why take it down now?
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Sam Weaver
9/22/2013 04:14:28 pm
Yeah I also agree with you Gab that if we didnt have ISS we would have so many more questions about space and it does teach us a lot. It is so strange to think about our country without NASA.
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Joey Belz
9/22/2013 04:23:33 pm
I think that we need to continue with this project. The ISS is one of the biggest topics in the scientific industry today and can potentionally answer many questions that we wonder as humans. We have came a very long way so if we give up now, this was all just a waste of time and money.
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Grace Connolly
9/22/2013 04:48:06 pm
I think that funding for the NASA and the ISS should continue. Exploring space could lead to important and amazing discoveries, and the space station is instrumental in doing that, as it shows what life is space is really like. Humans can't learn that through theories and hypotheses, actual experiences are necessary. Since the station can't last forever, we should learn all that we cant from it now, before it deteriorates too much. In an ideal world, we would spend money on things like science, instead of funding wars and such. However, this is not an ideal world, so we can only hope that Congress will decide to continue to fund this project.
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Anthony DiFrancesco
9/22/2013 05:03:14 pm
i think we should stop waisting money and things we dont need. the space station cant help us anymore. so stop funding money.
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Joe Zako
9/23/2013 12:58:14 am
I think it would be great if we could keep the space station if a new way to fix it could be found that would be far less costly so we wouldn't have to keep fixing it. Otherwise it may not be worth it to keep the station in space. The money could possibly be used to create a far more cost effective way to do these things in the future or wait until the economy is a bit better.
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Mekenna Wallace
9/23/2013 10:27:20 am
I think that they Gould keep funding it but when we have the money. Our main goal should be to steady the economy first then get the program started up again when we can afford it.
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Matt Grauel
9/24/2013 02:37:59 am
I think that we should continue to find the NASA program even if we need to put a little more money out. The government will find a way to get them more money that's easy for them but more people need to show intrest in this topic so it's not thrown out. If our technology impoved the whole space station would improve. They just need the money. We have so many more things to discover in space and I don't think we should abandon those discovers. I also would not want the station crashing in the pacific because it would release a toxic gas that would kill in one breath. Overall the station needs to stay in space in my opinion.
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Ashley Prohaska
9/24/2013 05:07:44 am
The program should definately be funded way more than it is. There are so many things we can learn from the universe. Space gives us potential to find out more about our planet, which is extremely important.
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Brianna Luksic
9/24/2013 05:17:22 pm
In my opinion, we shouldn't cut funding for the ISS completely. We should maybe cut back a little but not get rid if it entirely. One day, when earth explodes,we need somewhere else to go! Without NASA & the ISS and the data and knowledge they've provided us, us Americans would be lost. We need the men and women up there to further our knowledge in the future.
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