Depending on local prices, you might be able to build a better Shuttle or "barebones" media computer for a similar price.
When NASA needed to build a new shuttle after the Challenger disaster in 1986, companies like McDonnell Douglas had to bring engineers out of retirement, said Randy Jayne, a former aerospace executive who is now a senior partner at Heidrick & Struggles International, the executive search firm.
Sure the sight of Jaws, the silver-toothed assassin that almost ate Bond's face, and his odd love interest was funny but the thought that the private sector could build a space shuttle was far funnier.
Sure, Hammond and May's later attempt to build a space shuttle out of the oft-maligned Robin was more dramatic, but to me, for sheer comic value, nothing in the Top Gear canon can beat Clarkson's deadpan, "Oh no, I've crashed it.
President Bush's speech tacitly acknowledged that the last 30 years of the space program -- the effort to build a fancy space shuttle to nowhere and the lumbering International Space Station now floating through the sky like a creaky spider -- were a costly and morale-deadening detour down a dead- end road.
For instance, parking garages next to the terminals would be removed, and a new terminal just for checking baggage would be built a short shuttle ride away from the existing terminals.
She said the long-term plan for the Enterprise had not changed: "We're looking to build a museum around the shuttle".
The Wall Street Journal calculated that $550 million was more than it cost to launch the space shuttle, build a B-1 bomber or, adjusted for inflation, pay for the Louisiana Purchase.
At that time, still pursuing Braun's vision of a space plane and complementary orbiting base, the agency had hoped to use the shuttle to build a space station, but the high cost of funding the first project precluded starting the second.
Among the spending plans in the House bill that the White House did not request -- and Mr. Lott is grumbling about -- are $600 million to repair highways and bridges, $75 million to spruce up NASA's fleet of shuttles, and $20 million to build a new Food and Drug Administration building in Los Angeles.
