People like to send mail that’s postmarked “Christmas,” or some other exotically-named town. Now you can send someone a letter from the International Space Station?if you can afford the $20,000 “stamp.” Now that the Russians are no longer taking tourists to the ISS, they’re thinking up new ways to make money to support their space program. For former communists, they certainly believe in capitalism when it comes to outer space.
Since the crash of the space shuttle Columbia, and the temporary halt to U.S. shuttle voyages, Russia is now the only country sending spacecraft to the ISS, and all seats must be saved for astronauts. Who would have thought that the Russians, who used to be teased about their relatively primitive equipment, would now be shouldering the entire burden of taking scientists and supplies into space.
We may not know it, but we’re getting messages from space all the time.
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