NASA ~ Ending the Space Shuttle

The Obama administration has made recent significant efforts in the direction of ending the United States Space shuttle program.  This program is headed up by NASA, and cancelling it can have major impacts.  What the Obama administration is doing is ending our own space shuttle program and using the Russian program to take our astronauts into space if need be.  There are several impacts of this.  The first main one is we break the International Space Station Agreement.  Article 5 of the treaty requires the United States, represented by NASA, to work in the building of the space station until it’s completion in 2012.  With the last NASA space flight to be launched soon, we will not be able to uphold to agreement to complete the International Space Station.  This means we will be breaking article five of the treaty.  The second disadvantage is we lose our status as the world leader space aeronautics.  This means that either the Russians or the Chinese will take the lead in space.  If this happens we will become dependent on them for all of our exo-atmospheric travel.  If we wanted to launch a satellite or even improve one of our satellites they would know.  This means, that our own military intelligence relies upon the consent of the Chinese and Russians.