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International Space Station: Canada to the Rescue?
Apostata writes "The following story from the Globe and Mail outlines a proposal of the head of the Canadian Space Agency to seek renewed funding for the recently stripped-down NASA budget for the ISS. He makes an interesting point that - contrary to the belief that the ISS is a NASA brainchild/braintrust - many countries have poured $billions$ into it's development and should thus have a say in whether there should be any cutbacks.
Read all about it here."
i'll probably get modded down to hell for saying this, but wouldn't the mind boggling amounts of money that get ploughed into the ISS be better spent on more, smaller, saner, more economical projects ones that do new/cool[tm] stuff? And what are the benefits (other than PR) of maintaining continuous presence in orbit anyway?
You at least knew they made the Canadarm, right?
I'm a bomb regardless
I don't see this article as saying that Canada is going to rescue anything. Rather, they are lining up along with Europe to complain (with some justice, since NASA is not upholding the ISS agreements as they currently stand). Now, I suppose if a nation complains enough and is willing to use this as a bargaining chip (e.g. in trade talks or whatever kind of talks matter to the US), then complaining becomes a kind of action. But a much more direct sort of rescue, a more obviously effective one, would be to come up with some funding. Europe once built a half-scale prototype of (some portions of) a crew return vehicle, but in recent years that activity has changed to "well, maybe we could build a few components for the US crew return vehicle, that would be cheaper. Well, is Europe prepared to build their own crew return vehicle? Or pay Russia to supply more Soyuzes?
The other amusing aspect of this whole thing is the number of times that the US has cancelled its part of a project (shuttle, partially; some science satellite in the 80's the name of which is at home; even Spacelab in a sense), and the fact that Europe (and other partners) fail to learn. It is like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown time after time, and Europe seems to always line up for another kick. I guess Canada is now joining them.
No, but Slashdot is an American site, and most of its readers are American. I'm European, but I don't expect Slashdot to put, every time it discusses anything international, every single possible variation on the phrase.
I'm also a little upset with people bitching that the US has limited everyone's access to the ISS. The US has poured far more money into it than any other participant, AND has had to cover for things when other members (Russia, mainly) defaulted on debts. So don't act like it's just the Americans' fault.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
(begin rant)
Funding cuts that make it impossible to do research should not be made, since this is a research platform, after all. If they cut funding to this, just like they did with DS1 (story earlier today), then the entire scientific commmunity is going to be pissed. What is the point of putting up a multi-billion dollar space station if not to do something more than have it just sit there, with no experiments being done? That ticking sound is the time before this thing plunges into the ocean years from now. the only question is "what do we do with it until then?"
(/rant)
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
It seems to me that cutting back on astronauts now would be like buying a Porsche, then only driving it a few times in order to save on gas. The US has already committed huge amounts of money to this project, and cutting back now could severely limit the usefulness of the space station, making it a complete waste of money.
"Mr. O'Keefe is a budget hawk and has said he believes that technical excellence at any cost is not an acceptable approach by NASA.
This seems like a rather odd thing to say to the press... I would think if *I* was relying on NASA to do something in space, I would sure want "technical excellence" at any cost. This is not a walk in the park, it is space exploration, and attention DOES need to be paid to detail.
or am I wrong?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Do you ever get the feeling that if we just let G. Dubbya hang a few "lasers" off the ISS let him point them at caves where "terrorists" live the space station could have an unlimited budget?
That being said, I'd agreee with the poster who pointed out that the ISS is a huge expenditure compared to what we could do with many smaller projects, but I think it's necessary to have big prjects that are the culimination of the technology that's being devised. Classes that don't have final exams are always considered slacker classes because people don't have a goal to work towards, and the same thing could be said for space projects.
While the...rest of the United States declares that almost all of the low gravity research to be done on the ISS has already been done on the ground.
-US takes the initiative to throw off the chains of an obsolete and oppressive monarchy.
Choosing instead to worship Topm Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow and George Clooney.
The future of manned spaceflight depends on pan-national co-operation.
Have you seen the results of international cooperation? Everybody teaming up to try and put up a Low Earth Orbit space station, and finally getting hardware in orbit after 2 decades of redesigns, tens of billions of dollars of cost growth, United States delays that threatened European schedules, Russian delays that threatened American schedules... and the result just isn't that impressive, even for a space station.
What human spaceflight depends on, apparantly, is international competition. Russians orbiting the globe, "putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before this decade is out", you know, that sort of thing?
We don't need Chinese astronauts on ISS, we need China building it's own space station in half the time... because apparantly there's nothing that motivates the American space program so well as being laughed at.
And I'll say it again: US-Government domination of space needs to end. Since the end of the cold war, NASA and, to a very small extent, its Russian counterpart have more or less ruled space. Sure, there've been a number of "private" or corporate launches, but all of them have come from Cape with a heavy kickback to NASA.
What is needed is for private corporations to take up the slack, building their own launch sites and launching their own whatevers. If this means corporate domination of space, then so be it. I would rather see the Microsoft Starship Gates make warp one than none at all.
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He makes an interesting point that - contrary to the belief that the ISS is a NASA brainchild/braintrust . ISS is a NASA goal (to the extreme detriment to what I would argue should be the real focus, probes going out to learn about the solar system. On top of that, not only are we sinking 100+ Billion dollors on this (100x the contribution of any other country... and for good measure we are covering most of the soviet's costs as well), we are cutting programs that would go out and examine the Kuiper belt, the sun, etc.
Think of what kind of knowledge we could gain. Long term space research? bzzt. Soviets already did that. Radation effects on humans? bzzt.
The entire problem is that this space station was created by the state department and congress rather then the scientists. ISS? What ever happened to freedom and liberty the first names of this project.
Screw the space station. Give us a workable re-usable launcher and the NGST.
At least, that is the only conclusion one can draw from reading this particular article. The USA already not only pays it's own chunk (90+ % of the total cost), it pays Russia's as well (since their science agencies defaulted). Some truth in advertising in the header might be helpfull. Or perhaps the Canadian govt now thinks that it can appropriate american funds (esp when the Space station will be 5+ billion dollors over this year alone).
Maybe I'm just uninformed, but it seems to me that by leaving space exploration to the egg-heads at these govt science agencies, we are not making the kind of progress a more ambitious goal-oriented approach might produce.
In the 60's man went to the moon. The moon! Many times. We haven't been back in decades.
Why is there no base on the moon? Why aren't there more space stations in orbit? I think part of the reason is that the focus is on doing dumb experiments instead of just building these facilities as rapidly as possible.
The shuttle was a big step forward. Mir was a big step forward. The ISS will benefit from both these achievements. What I object to is reading quotes from guys at McGill University who are getting bucks to do research on reflexes in space. This is idiotic when we still need lots of money to put more facilities and equipment up there.
I figure you could spend all your money every year on pure research science. And I think you'd get a lot out of it. But it should be remembered that it was guys like Columbus, Hudson and Cook who made the big discoveries of the last exploratory period. Guys who went and did what they wanted to do to see if they could. They weren't sailing ships filled with lab rats and experiments. They wanted to see what was around the next corner, see if they could get there, and see if they could settle there. I don't understand why this spirit has been lost.
Goals need to be set. ISS completion by 2005. Base on the moon by 2010. Man on Mars by 2015. Base on Mars by 2020. Let's get a move on.
Although I support the efforts of the ISS and orbital research from what I've heard there is in fact not a lot of good research they can do in weightlessness
The only reason to do space based research is because of the microgravity environment. If the experiment does not require weightlessness, then it is done on the ground.
Personally I think it says something when you're accepting experiments from junior high schools...
Personally, I think those are mostly publicity stunts to try to raise student interest in science.
Does anyone know of useful research being conducted by astronauts...
Fundamental science research is usually not considered "useful" in the sense that it has obvious immediate applications (then it would be called "technology" or "engineering"). Scientific research is all about discovering new things. Often these new things turn out to be "useful", but it's hard to know if something undiscovered is useful.
There are a few hundred links to existing space research projects here: http://microgavity.grc.nasa.gov
But to those who believe in the right to bear arms up here - we can't. To those who believe that we have freedom of speech? Freedom of the press? Not in Canada. The government can censor you if they so choose.
Um, Canada does have a constitutionally enshrined Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is very similar to the American charter in scope and strength. There is no constitutional guarantee of any right to bear arms, but even in the U.S., this provision is anachronistic and is kept alive for entirely the wrong reasons.
Both governments censor speech to some extent, but both are among the freest countries in the world with respect to protecting the legal right to free expression.
There are serious impediments to free speech for most residents of both countries, but this is largely the result of speech costing money combined with the decision to extend the right of free speech to nonhuman corporate entities with vast resources that can easily be used to overwhelm all other voices. (Coca Cola has billions to spend each year to get out its message; how much can you afford to spend?)
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!