INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

GROUP SAYS INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SHOULD FOCUS ON EARTHBOUND, DOMESTIC ISSUES
May 12 2008
Washington, D.C. – These days NASA seems to spend more time defending itself than it does exploring space. With the aging shuttle program limping along, wearisome probe launches, and the seemingly impossible task of regaining any level of public interest, the criticism seems warranted. No project of late though has received as much flack as the International Space Station.


The now ten years in development project (due to be completed in 2010( has received much criticism. Generally that talk has circled around the notion that the money being spent could be better used in other projects, or even repurposed away from the space agency entirely and directed into other government programs.


Now, a new group has levelled a different type of objection against NASA, the ISS partners, and the station itself.


“The Peoples for Domestication Front” is a Jacksonville Florida based advocacy group. They have taken a slightly different tact from the normal protestations against the station.


“We believe the station should be constructed,” said Dwight Hershen, spokesperson for the group. “But we believe it should be produced here on Earth.”


The issue at stake is the highly specialized nature of the construction taking away jobs from Earth bound labourers and support workers. They also believe that the involvement of other countries is unneeded being that the bulk of the work and cost is being taken on by US interests as it is.


“With the growing economic crisis here in the United States it is totally unreasonable to be outsourcing jobs to space. We lose jobs to Mexico, to China, and now to outer space. How is a worker making fifteen bucks an hour going to afford to be able to commute to space? He can’t. This outsourcing and ‘specializing’ is ruining the US economy and everything it is based on. The station should be built here, in the good old USA.”


The problems with such a prospect are numerous though. “Our partners are very important to the completion of the project. There is a great deal of specialty work that goes into a project of this nature and we in the America don’t necessarily have a monopoly on it,” said David Humphries the media relations officer for the ISS. “It would also be impossible to build the station terrestrially because of gravity. The parts are produced on Earth and then assembled in space, but it would kind of defeat the purpose of building a space station if we were building it on Earth.”


The PDF though is undeterred. “We are going to take this to the Supreme Court if we need to. America must remain the number one priority of the world, no matter the cost.”