Bob, Politicians are the same the world over.
I note that some of your Politicians seem paranoid about the USA's biggest trading partner, Beijing. I don't mind betting that in a few years time your Politicians will be falling over themselves to vote billions of tax dollars to the Space program to prevent the US falling into 3rd place behind the Russian Federation and Beijing.
Fortunately few ever see the name that's allocated to keps. Gould's TV interview, http://www.wbir.com/news/article/178784/2/STEM-education-reaches-new-heights , showed how amateurs can use the media to promote the great acheivement of the ARISSat team.
73 Trevor M5AKA
--- On Fri, 5/8/11, Bob Bruninga bruninga@usna.edu wrote:
,,,it now lists keps for 'Radioscaf-B'. (no ARRISat-1' listing). Will that eventually change?
I chuckle.
We in the USA have virtually abandoned manned space. We have no manned space flight vehicles because all we do is squabble with the attention span of 2 year olds in our politics and long term outlooks. All our politicians do is worry about their re-election in the next 2 years. They cannot face the really big issues that need to be solved without jeopardizing their re-election by the me-first, screw-them electorate. The voters only have the attention span from one radio talk show to the next.
So since the Russians are now the only manned space program that can provide the ride, I guess they get to call it whatever they want. Our guys worked VERY HARD to build it and deliver it against unbelieveable pressures and bureaucratic issues, but the only way to get it to ISS was to give it to the Russians.
Sigh... Bob, WB4APR