Reinstate the U.S. Space Shuttle Program

The groundbreaking Space Shuttle Program should be reinstated. Current plans to provide seed money to companies in attempts to privatize space travel are dangerous an ineffective. It has taken NASA decades to come to the level of security and technology that we are now leaving behind. Acknowledging the funding problems, will not providing money to private companies for the development of technologies we already possess and later purchasing passage on the same vehicles we just helped pay to create be a nearly equal financial burden? Years of research, hard work, and millions of dollars are just being discarded by the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Medical and Technological breakthroughs are being left undiscovered. The United States must return to space, soon, and on its own terms.