THE PUBLIC MIND: `WHAT WE GOT, BESIDES THE SHAFT, IS GOVERNMENT WASTE'

To the Editor:

I read with interest that several thousand people were on hand to cheer the safe return of the Endeavour shuttle. I'm glad the astronauts are safe, of course, but I find it disturbing is that so many people haven't yet caught on to what a waste the space program is. If we really understood, nobody but astronauts' families and colleagues would be out there cheering.

The space program is a taxpayer boondoggle of epic proportions. The chief beneficiaries, besides the astronauts and others directly involved with NASA, are government contractors and the states of Texas, President Bush's adoptive state, and Florida.

When we had a Cold War enemy, massive space program expenditures could be justified to some extent for their military significance. But Russia and the other members of the collapsed communist empire are our friends now, begging for aid from the Free World.

Nonetheless, since Bush assumed office the NASA budget has increased at least 15 percent and shows no sign of abating. The Endeavour flight alone cost nearly $400 million. The mission's chief function was to benefit the International Telecommunications Satellite organization (Intelsat), which represents 122 countries.

Intelsat paid NASA $93 million, roughly one-fourth the cost of the mission.

According to the wire services, the rescue mission gives Intelsat a working $157 million satellite two years sooner than a new one could have been built and launched.

With the satellite in the right orbit, it will earn about $240,000 a day ($1 billion over the expected 12-year lifetime of the satellite) for somebody, though~ certainly not the American taxpayer who footed three-fourths of the bill.

So just what did the taxpayer get for his nearly $300 million expenditure? Well, if Intelsat gets the satellite functioning by July, they'll use it to help relay the Summer Olympics. Wow.

But here's what we really got, in the words of the governmental officials

"What the taxpayer got out of this mission was its primary function. The primary function ... was to learn how humans operate and interact in the space environment ... to set the next steps for the assembly of space station Freedom."

What we got for our $300 million was seeing how humans interact in a space environment? We don't already know, all the space flights we've had, how they interact out there?

What we got, besides the shaft, was more government waste ....

Bill Zellmer

Cape Girardeau