That giant flushing sound…

is the sound of NASA pouring another $318 million down the ISS rathole. While I’m actually an advocate of manned space exploration, the ISS is nearly completely useless, and there’s no good reason to waste even more money on it. The US does have some obligations to other nations regarding ISS, but I believe we could buy them out for substantially less money than we’re spending on it. That would allow NASA to devote more resources to unmanned programs as well as other manned programs such as the CEV and related programs. The unmanned programs in particular seem to be getting short shrift these days.