a thing that came to mind.. how are they gonna protect it against small asteroids?

I think for NASA that's small change compared the life expectancy of the telescope.

I stand by my opinion that, especially now, all spaceflight, manned and unmanned should be a joint venture between all space agencies. And not just in components etc, we should definitely have an IASA.

In a report published February 4, 2007 by Florida Today, if Congress clears a mid-year spending bill as planned, it will be the seventh time since 1994 that lawmakers have approved a cut for the nation's space agency, according to an analysis of NASA budget documents. In the past, Congress has approved these cuts to NASA's budget:

* $553.8 million in fiscal 1995
* $155.5 million in fiscal 1996
* $131.7 million in fiscal 1997
* $61 million in fiscal 1998
* $51.3 million in fiscal 2000
* $10.8 million in fiscal 2004

we should definitely have an IASA

Sorry to bust your bubble but 4.5 billion is a lot consider that other cost are also high

Grant millions is smaller than billion but at this rate we will run out of funds for 2 space probes/programs anything each decades or so.

stupidest politician in history of history.

anything that starts with I-acronym is already laughworthy.

a wedge, you might be interested to hear that its going to be positioned in the E-S L2 lagrange point.

the UN is nothing but a bunch of small, whiny European countries

basically where the earth eclipses the sun.

anything that starts with I-acronym is already laughworthy.

dabled a bit too much in the economy

keeping it in American pockets hasnt hurt anyone, and its not exactly like keeping it between countries would make it any more of the B****

But I digress - again...

be it NASA, ESA, RKA or whatever the chinese call it.

basically where the earth eclipses the sun.

In line with two masses, beyond the smaller mass. It's where the light from the sun doesn't bother your camera (as much)

The first is up for debate, with string of huge ****-ups in the space programs

a sad fact that commercial rocket launches have better succes rates then any government program

It has military rights, it is anything but toothless

And as far as I know most any respected athropologist and political scientists will say that is the greatest thing for world stability since the defeat of Napoleon.

The two important ones is NASA and the Russian Space Program.

The only two that have actually had major succeses.

the Russian one has really since collapsed. they've all but pulled out of the ISS program.

although the chinese are moving on up.

The Russian Space Agency is one of the partners in the International Space Station (ISS) program, it contributed the core space modules Zarya and Zvezda, which were both launched by Proton rockets and later were joined by NASA's Unity Module. Roskosmos is furthermore responsible for expedition crew launches by Soyuz-TMA spacecrafts and resupplies the space station with Progress space transporters. After the initial ISS contract with NASA expired, RKA and NASA, with the approval of the US government, entered into a space contract running until 2011, according to which Roskosmos will sell NASA spots on Soyuz spacecrafts for approximately $21 million per person each way (thus $42 million to and back from the ISS per person) as well as provide Progress transport flights ($50 million per progress as oultined in the ESAS study [3]). RKA has announced that according to this arrangement, manned Soyuz flights will be doubled to 4 per year and Progress flights also doubled to 8 per year beginning in 2008.

RKA also provides space tourism for fare-paying passengers to ISS through the Space Adventures company. Currently three space tourists have contracted with Roskosmos and have flown into space, each for an announced fee of $20 million. Despite the price, the space tourism venture has proven to be very popular and all tourism flights are fully booked until 2009.

Roskosmos has committed itself to further provide two additional modules to the ISS, both scheduled to be launched by Proton rockets. The first one, the Multipurpose Laboratory Module is currently scheduled for launch in 2007 or 2008, with one Russian Research Module following in 2009.