All the Cool Countries Are Doing It

NASA chief warns against spaceflight gap - Space News - MSNBC.com

"The U.S. human spaceflight program is "strained to the limit," NASA's chief said Thursday, warning against any long gap between the end of the shuttle era and the first flight of a planned new spaceship.

"The United States risks both a real and a perceived loss of leadership on the world stage if we are unable to launch our own astronauts into space for an extended period of time when other nations possess their own capabilities to do so," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told a congressional committee."

And if other nations were jumping off a bridge would we do it too? Seriously, I think this is the first time I've ever heard a scientist use the "everyone else is doing it" excuse. I don't know what he's worried about though, I think we've proven the United States to be very good at lauching people out into space. It's just the "bringing them back safely" part that we haven't exactly perfected yet.