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Keith's note: In this image: The Candarm2, provided by Canada, moves the Node "Tranquility" built by Europe out of the cargo bay of an American space shuttle past Japan's JEM module while a Russian Soyuz is docked to the ISS. 
And none of that would be there if it hadn't been for NASA, the drive and dream of American contractors, and a government that supported it with money.
For all you "commercial" supporters out there, do you think this was made possible by a profit margin and the bold and game changing belief in commercialization?
Keith makes a good point with a good picture and look at what people reply with. Gutter thinkers.
Too bad that except for the 35 year old Shuttle, there is no US built/developed hardware in the picture.
Yes, the fact that hardware like Node 3 and the Cupola were built in Europe is because of a profit motive.
I don't think Rockwell would have built the Orbiter if it had not been for their shareholder's good. In Rockwell's case, they had a cost plus contract. The cost covered wages and materials and the plus covered the shareholders. In the case of the foreign-built 'US' pieces, NASA was trying to save money, usually by bartering Shuttle launch services or other US provided services, and the foreign companies were making money in a variety of deals brokered between NASA and the foreign governments. Foreign owned companies and their shareholders were making money. Foreign workers were making wages.
In the case of the Soyuz, the $50 million a seat that the Russians are charging is going to pay the workers who build the hardware, run the mission control, and any extra goes to the government who gives their shareholders dividends.
That is pretty much how capitalism works.
RC, couldn't agree more. Scoundrels. :( Ruined a great moment. Should've known better than to read the comments.
Agree with you 100%, RC, too many cynics around.
Yeah, what a bunch of whining! (and just random junk: "poor US"? Really? Who has a higher GDP and GDP per capita?)
And when did we become a bunch of commie capitalism haters? "We need to show what the US is all about: large government projects - after all, what did commerce ever achieve?" Really? Is that *really* the line we're taking here? P-leeze.
Back to the original post - yes, it's just awesome to see that mix of interactions - may it become more of a focus now and get proper use - to 2020 and beyond.
My new desktop. Makes me smile to look at it.
Its my desktop too. I think its a glorious. And I dunno why we always need to be so cynical.
Our space program kicks everyone else's program's rear even on a bad day. So we have a 35 year old space plane. NASA has an excellent mission on Mars, an excellent mission at Saturn, has probes on the way to Pluto, Mercury and Ceres, has the world's only probes entering interstellar space and a new Mars rover that is pretty rad in spite of its other-project-eating overbudgetedness.
NASA's manned space program is a bit of a mess and its sad that everyone keeps getting their work dumped into a hole over and over again.
But there's still a lot of exciting stuff going down in the states.
The X-37 is about to fly in space. This is the first new orbital spaceplane to actually fly since Buran in '88.
Americans just built and flew the first privately developed suborbital spaceplane. The privately developed, liquid-fuelled Falcon 1 just flew.
The Falcon 9 goes up soon.
We just discovered water on the Moon.
DARPA performed automated orbital refuelling.
We're putting a VASIMR on the station.
We _have_ a space station, and we're not dumping it into the sea in 2016.
There's a lot of suckage right now, but this particular kind of suckage - budgetary suckage - extends far beyond the space program, and in spite of that suckage, everything else going on is really awesome if you think about it.
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Its just too bad that our partners won't pay their fare share of the cost of building and maintaining the ISS since combined, they're a lot wealthier than us poor folks in the US are!
Marcel F. Williams