150 billion with almost no scientific return. The money would be much better spent on robotic, scientific missions such as the Mars Sample Return or an Enceladus mission at a fraction of total cost of the ISS. Manned missions are just pork.

Why? Because it is science. It is possible that Mars once harbored life and the biochemistry of such a divergent life form would have far-reaching implications for understanding the origin of life and our basic biology. The cost of the Mars Sample Return mission would be not significant compared to the US' military budget. Doing such a mission would generate tons of hi-tech jobs across the country. Neo-Luddites love to imagine that cost of robotic space missions would somehow solve all sorts of social issues, but MSR would generate a lot of jobs and create a lot of technology.

SLS was pure pork and dumping it is understandable ... However dumping the Mars Sample Return mission is very bad....

As usual the human spaceflight directorate ( Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) at NASA) is up to its old tricks, stealing money from science missions to fuel their super-pork, super-pointless manned missions. NASA has a long history of doing this all the way back to the late 70's. It is why Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman formed the Planetary Society. At one point, NASA spent more on a new space toilet (made in Russia no less) for the ISS (about 30 mil) than for the Europa mission (about 5 mil). This foot dragging and poaching went on for years before the Planetary Soc. put NASA's feet to the fire. But the SOMD is up to it again; wasting billion on some asinine Moon pipe dream that could be done with robots for a fraction of cost.

because he certainly does not.

Greed by the CEO and top officers in other word. Short-term cash for them and to hell with the future.

It is worse than pork because it poaches funds from the science missions, i.e. JPL and their robotic missions to Mars, etc. And the manned mission Pork Directorate has been dong this for decades. At one point, they spend more money on a new space toilet for the ISS than they spent on the Europa robotic mission. Thankfully public outrage overruled the pork masters at NASA and the Europa mission recently launched before they could chop their funds for yet another pointless manned mission expense

There is a hug gap between mapping and understanding how it works. This is not a "huge leap". The announcement is hype for more funding

Neglect???? No it is greed. Greed by top management. Short-sighted greed. Milk the company for as much as they can before retiring to The Hamptons and let the company die.

OK then if you are so sure, go ahead and ride in it. I think I will stay on Earth.

Krill is full of fluoride. It is harvested in vast amounts as animal/salmon food and as human supplements. So much has been "harvested" from the southern oceans that it has caused a crash of many ecosystems around Antarctica. Leave the krill alone.

Indeed, just a may to torture most of the staff into leaving. The tech industry and the economy in general is in the dumps and worse than the "official" figures show. It has been glossed over by the media...

It is really creepy that the CCP is so paranoid that they pay trolls to post such nonsense.

If you really want to go into a deep down a rabbit hole, you might claim the reason the Chinese are trying to access all those human genome sets is so that they can design a virus that only effects those evil round eyes.

Wow, spoken like a typical bonehead boss.