Interview with Story Musgrave, Space Shuttle Astronaut (Air&SpaceMag)

On Jul 27, 5:35*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 7/26/2010 9:55 PM, G. L. Bradford wrote:

You say "totalitarian." Well, the USSR DID upstage us because a
DICTATORSHIP can commandeer public funds at will, without public
support. I've heard the USSR spent up to 90% of its GNP on defense
(one reason they were non-competitive, in the long run, in the attempt
at the moon).

Although it probably wasn't that bad, it certainly was a lot higher
proportion of USSR GDP than the US - which is spectacular enough; right
around 24% currently.
As Hitler figured out, you can blow your economy right through the roof
be throwing vast amounts of money at "National Defense", as it's
constantly getting obsolete and needs updating...and your populace will
be far more ready to save their nation by building the world's best
fighter plane than spending billions to come up with a way to save five
MPG in average car gas consumption...even though that would save them
more money in a personal sense in the long run.

Pat

I appreciate your common interests with me, even though refeneces to
the USSR as "not being that bad" and implying the US (Though not so
direclty implicating the USSR) is like Hitler when it dares have a
military, are marks of a typically misinformed or head-in-the-sand
liberal. It does not matter how much bad facts about America's enemies
are exposed...liberals are sure the problem is AMERICA and
conservative thinking is always labelled as HItleresque! nothing could
be further rfrorm the truth,. But we probably agreeon space.