Why cant anyone but the Americans save the planet?!

LOL, yeah - just say thanks to us and move on!! :)

You forgot all those British Pigeons that learned karate to enable to break all those windows.

Hahahahahaha!

By we do you mean every country other then the U.S?

If so, percentage wise; the U.S does spend more on movies then any other single country.

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until Obama cancelled the program

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Obama did not cancel the shuttle program. He had nothing to do with it. In point of fact they were slated for retirement for a very long time, and were retired pretty much on the original mark.

Thing is, the shuttles were very old tech before the first one was ever launched. The "demo-model" (which never did anything but ride piggy back on a 747) sat unused for ages before the program got funding again.

By then the technology for the shuttles was very old & out of date. They were 1960s and 1970s tech, stitched together with a few new items (external heat tiles, external boosters & a big external fuel tank) to make them functional. They also gave them some new "fault tolerant" newer computers.

In the last decade of their working life, many possible (and far better) re-usable replacement space vehicles were tested, and bid on by various companies (including the "Delta Clipper") and in the end the US government FIRST chose to use tiny "return only" vehicles. Then they scrapped them too. The shuttles were to die and not be replaced by anything.

The money that would have gone into the new shuttle replacement was going into other places - a replacement for another system

The cash went instead into a replacement for the "ECHELON" satellites (and their similar systems) which had, for quite a while, been used to monitor every phone call made that bonced off of a telecommunication satellite.

But the world of tech had changed a lot. The world had gone over to huge fiber networks and the internet was growing up fast (fiber links even crossed oceans). These new networks, with fiber and computers all talking to one another, could NOT be spied on by the old network of global ECHELON satellites as they only got data that was sent up into space (they are not a myth - you can check WIKIPEDIA).

So a new system was built (I read about this in the mainstream news just last week) which cost a huge amount - more than ever spent on anything by the US government EVER before. You see, ECHELON and its relatives in the spy world were to be replaced. The web was huge and its large and completely FREE and uncensored speech was seen as a massive threat "to freedom and democracy" (huh? free speech and being "safe in ones paper and person" was now the enemy).

So the old stuff was replaced with the new stuff - with new massive underground computer bunkers (all but the last few touches of the new system were in place LONG before 9/11 & before the patriot act made a few tiny pieces of this legal). Most of the system is still technically illegal but it still runs 24/7, gathering a profile on every person on the planet who uses a phone or the internet.

There are now huge4 secure rooms accessing every fiber line - official secure rooms that require a high security access to get into, inside of the phone company buildings of the world. The US now taps the fiber in every single telecommunication company EVERYWHERE that would allow them to do it (MCI, SPRINT, ATT, US WEST, etc) in all of North America, the EU, Australia...in fact in nearly all of the world (the US has military bases in all but roughly 20 of the worlds over 100 nations & those nations that had those bases pretty much all cooperated with the new spy network).

By 9/11 this new system was very close to complete. After 9/11 the biggest part of it went online "officially" after only a few weeks, while the dust in New York was still on the breeze. And somehow, nobody asked where this new massive system came from, how long it had been being built, who made it, or how it got there so fast after the bombings.

The missing shuttle money, the missing money for the nations public schools tpo keep education equally available for all people (a way of treating the schools which had been illegal for ages) and also most of the other things that are no longer funded - it now goes to fund the largest spy system ever known to humankind.

It is being used to spy on you, and on me, and to read this message I just sent.

THe american flag is RED WHITE AND BLUE!!

Probably because if you need a country with a hyper-bloated defence budget, or you need a country that spends more money(not just per capita) on space travel, you're going to the Americans.

Its awesome how you little people from your 'better than American' countries run around putting us all down but are no better. Just because you people learn to live with royal-tyranny, or third-world justice, left-wing lunatics wanting 100% tax rates, etc., does not make you better.

Name your country. They all have their share of problems to others not living there. Its like expecting the English to contemplate '1200 dead in NIH hospitals' (you can google that) and then looking around themselves for the fault.

More than likely, whatever country youre in, America has probably fed you, propped up your government, saved you from Nazi's, came when you needed disaster relief, and spent more than any other country in 'humanitarian' drivel somewhere along the line.

Too bad we wont be keeping tabs the next time some pathetic country cant feed their own, have borrowed themselves to death, or need 'bailed out' again thanks to their wonderful government and its people. If it was up to me, youd get back exactly what you deserve.