Slashdot Mirror
NASA Considers Abandoning ISS
mbstone writes "MSNBC is reporting that NASA is threatening to mothball the International Space Station unless Russia coughs up its share of the money for maintenance and support missions. NASA is now making "contingency plans" to leave the station unoccupied for as long as a year. What I want to know is, why a contingency plan? Didn't NASA already have a plan in place? Are U.S. taxpayers going to pay millions extra to develop new mothballing equipment and procedures that could have been designed-in at far less cost?? Also, I would be glad to house-sit, I use very little oxygen."
If NASA is serious then some of us are going to get very tired hearing about how the Russians are sending every boy band member into space.
I hope none of those space-moths make it down here, they sound like nasty little blighters.
Just think of the market for music video and movie productions, not to mention overpaid entertainers.
"C"
Wouldn't this be a good time to allow the private sector in on this? Why should the governments get all the fun up there? I can't help but think tourism and a private sector push into space will do for space industries and the like what the governments of the worlds could not: enable living in space- make it a reality.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Russia seems to be more concerned with sending tourists to space than contributing funds to the further the space station. I guess NASA was just helping them construct a Motel 6.
I recently watched the IMAX Space Station 3D move and not only did it convice me that the entire space program is a hoax, but that this so-called "Russia" place is too.
It would be a great shame to lose the manned presence in space, even if the amount of research they have been able to do is heavily restricted by having a very small crew up there at any one time. The crew is limited by the size of the escape module - currently a Soyuz. It looks like it'll be 2012 by the time the planned NASA replacement escape craft is ready, so they're going to have to come up with something different in the meantime, or the ISS isn't going to fulfil anywhere near it's potential for research.
Paul.
"What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
Is this really a bad thing. Considering that the astronauts on board spend 85% of the time doing station upkeep. The science value of the mission is questionable. If NASA got the proper funding to go with the original plan of 7 astronauts, I could see the value of maintaining the station as valuable science could be preformed.
Shut it down for now, until more money gets passed to make the ISS valuable. Perhaps NASA should redirect more of its money from the ISS to new propulsion technologies (nuclear etc) to reduce lift costs (yes I know you probably wouldnt want to do a launch from the ground to LEO with nuclear rockets, but perhaps other avenues could be approached).
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Did they really think Russia had any cash to piss away on the space station in the first place?
I mean, buying or creating the technology is one thing, but maintaining and supporting it is another.
That's why russian submarines end up at the bottom of the ocean (or sold to a cocaine smuggler), and their nuclear plants meltdown and irradiate hundreds of square miles.
They may as well ask Eithiopia to cough up their share.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I attended a meeting of one of the ISS partner nations. In exchange for their contribution they are allotted space in "lockers" to run their experiments. They had a hard time finding any research institution or private interest who wanted to use the locker (the price was around $10,000 per pound). Apparently there is not much current scientific need for a zero gravity environment.
They were willing to let you fly merchandise if you wanted to, so you could buy a space pen, or perhaps fly your uncle's ashes to outer space.
I left the meeting thinking that the ISS should never have been built, and this comes from somebody who is enthralled about space exploration.
Ok... ponder this for a moment. Maybe this isn't a bad thing?
As long as the station lies dormant and routine maintence takes place, what is the worst that could happen to the ISS? The potential benefits are that we would be saving both American and Russian space program dollars that could be used on other projects. I'm sure we could still send up missions to add additional modules to the ISS, just leave the station uninhabited for a few years.
Maybe this sort of refocusing of our uses for the space station and immediate priorities is what is actually needed right now to give both American and Russian space programs a little bit of budget breathing room?
-James
"How can you judge something if you've never been there, that's what they do in Russia." --Bart Simpson
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I too would be willing to housesit, but only if there is a broadband connection. And no limit on traffic!!!
Better living through elasticity.
Even heroes have the right to dream
Sure, Russia owes us money...but why can't we just finance them for a while? Someday, perhaps, they'll be able to pay.
Another concern: How are the people going to feel who have put a lot of time and effort into this project? The shuttle launch was delayed twice, causing our astronaut on board to miss Thanksgiving. Shall we reward her by telling her that the last 6+ months she spent up there was all for naught?
My suggestion: Keep at it until it is finished. We should have known from the get-go that Russia is a broke country and we should have foreseen the fact that we will need to support them until circumstances change.
"This food is problematic."
Evict the Russians if they are not willing or able to pay,
Unfortunately, it's the Russians that provide the Soyuz spacecraft (the only means for escape if soemthing goes wrong) and the unmanned Progress spacecraft. The ISS could not operate without either of these (especially the Soyuz).
Yet Another Web Site
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As many people have commented the space station has been a huge black hole of money.
For each win we've had there we've suffered many setbacks.
85% of their time is required for maintenance.
Very little hard science has been done due to construction delays and retrofitting many of the parts.
Even the science they have done hasn't been much.
Russia may be a joke about contributing, but they have the right idea on raising money. Send people who can afford to millions up there to fund further development.
Two guys are sitting in a bar, and one says "you know, I kind of like the smell of mothballs."
The other guy replies "How to you get their little legs apart?"
I hate when nouns are turned into verbs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
(this is not a troll)
I think (1) for the space station is costing us, and (2) what it is costing us to put their asses in space, and (3) for the potential benefits of a larger crew, it would be more than worthwhile to station a larger crew there, even if there is no way for them to escape in case of catastrophe. I mean, look at Mir - all the shit in the world happened to them and they never had a fatality.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
"Yes, but do you use very little food or water?"
Funny. I have a feeling you'll get a job writing for Will and Grace.
Well, ok...
In Soviet Russia, SpaceStation abandons You!
-- I am become sig, destroyer of posts.
It really is a shame that the governments of the world just don't take space seriously. The future of humanitry rests in the stars, and unimaginable amounts of research can be conducted in space. If only governments would realize that spending money on the future (space), is so much smarter than on the present (military).
NASA is a great program, the best space program in the world. This is something the U.S. should be proud of. But continuous system failures and project cutbacks are tarnishing the image of NASA. NASA needs more funding, its running as on a diet of death, and soon, if the trend continues, our kids might not ever know of a U.S. space program. Send a letter to your senators/representatives today, tell them that NASA is not only the best space program in the world that needs more funding, but the best hope humanity has towards working for the future, instead of worrying about the present.
PlatinumCursor - "Blinded by the bling..."
... boost it to a 36000km orbit, and sell it to SES Astra as a replacement for their failed 1K satellite!
It was originally planned for what, 15 million, and then thens to congress and beuracracy, is up to 50 billion i think. Anybody remember what skylab costs? Im guessing a few retrofitted boosters would have been much cheaper than this thing. ANyone know why this option wasnt used? IT seemed like we had a perfectly functioning concept, and threw it a way for new high tech gadgets that suck.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
"Things have to be fixed down here before they can be sent up, IMHO."
If more people had the same wrong-headed attitudes as you, we wouldn't have moon cities or the solar power satellites that freed us from dependance upon the kill-crazy Saudi Muslims.
oh, wait...
Did you just call the hippies of the 60s greedy? Have you read "The Greatest Generation"? It was about the WWII era people. We went from the greatest generation to perhaps the worst. And yes polititions of today are wimps and coward compaired to 50 years ago.
Just relax one party is in power now and hopefully we'll have a vision soon(for better or worse).
Actually we could have been to mars by now but the moon was doable quicker so we did that instead. It was Kennedys fault we didn't get to mars. He decided we had to beat the russians to the moon. Meanwhile Von Braun wanted to get to mars but was told his dreams were to big and his plans were foolish by politicions.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
If it's abandoned and I can get up there, can I claim it under international salvage rights laws and sell off the pieces? It's only 20 million to get there should be easily able to make that back. Sell it as a weekend getaway with the best damn view on the planet, a steal at $500M.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Before looking at high taxes, it might be worthy to look at how much of taxes goes towards massive military expenditures as opposed to the others you listed in your post. The space program costs start to look like a drop in the bucket then.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
If it was not for the Soyuz that's attached there now, the ISS would not be inhabited at this time. What do they want now, have the Russians cough up a second Soyuz, so at least a crew of six could stay, because they are not up to their part of the CRV?
And by the way, this is no treat at all for the Russians, they were the first to suggest this, when NASA started complaining about the CRV.
I disagree - If I am not mistaken, the pressure difference your body (14 lb/sqr inch) and space (~0) would cause you to explode almost instantly. Just like when they drag up samples from near the bottom of the ocean, sometimes they get the hollowed out remains of what was a deep sea fish, exploded by the difference in pressure between its natural habitat and ours.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If NASA want to setup "SaveISS.com" and get a Paypal account, I'm prepared to chip in a few bucks. Who's with me?
;-)
If SaveKaryn.com can generate ~$14k in donations, I'm sure a high profile begging project like this can generate some serious cash
-psy
I was never in favor of the ISS; its just a multibillion dollar turkey that sucked money out of other projects. With the money we could have saved on the ISS, we could have sent probes to every planet in the solar system but we let the siren call of the space station distract us.
I am not against the space station, I just think it was ill concieved, thats all. I agree with a previous poster: Let's rent it and move on to other, more interesting things.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
The Space Station's Cost
INITIAL DESIGN PAPERWORK -- $10 billion
HARDWARE -- $25 billion
SHUTTLE SERVICING COSTS -- $20 billion
MAINTENANCE -- $41 billion
YEAR 2001 COST OVERRUN (disclosed immediately AFTER the presidential election of 2000): $5 billion.
Scrap the Shuttle Program
documents how the USA slipped to just 29% of the world's launch market share in the year 2000, even though we had 48% of it in 1996, and apparently all of it the decade before.
How did this happen if NASA has a larger space budget than all other civilian space agencies combined, as well as its Congressional mandate to: "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space"? How did some countries evolve from non-players in space two decades ago into dominant commercial players today?
Perhaps NASA should build a "Sea Station" 1000 feet below the sea and use submarines to take foreigners and other salaried government tourists on "missions" to conduct "experiments" and set "endurance records" while "improving international relations". This idea may seem crazy, but it would be much cheaper than the shuttle program and accomplish just as much.
Imagine what could happen if the $4 billion a year and 30,000 shuttle experts were diverted to R&D?
I just can't help but feel the whole ISS and Shuttle Programs are a waste of money. I'm much rather see NASA's time and money spent researching other ways of getting into space.
And if you get bored with geosynchronous orbit, use the adjustment rockets to take her over to Neptune. It's beautiful this time of season.
I suspect that this is not so much a Space Policy move as it is a step in the dance of international diplomacy. The administration wants Russia to bear more of the costs, so they are floating out the idea of shutting down ISS as a negotiating tactic. I would not be surprised if they "settle" for Russia agreeing to extend their obligation to supply the station lifeboat for a few more years until NASA's orbital space plane is ready.
Shutting down the ISS is probably not likely. If it comes to that, however, I would not mind sacrificing a couple of years of 3 man station occupation in order to spend that money on getting a 6 or 7 man crew onboard sooner. Twice as large a crew should yield a lot more than twice the science.
The way such byzantine things work they may actually be after something completely different, like Russian support for a particular postwar Iraqi governmental structure.
If I am not mistaken, the pressure difference your body (14 lb/sqr inch) and space (~0) would cause you to explode almost instantly.
You are mistaken, 14 lbs/sqr inch really isn't that much pressure when you think about it. You will not explode in vacuum, and you could probably last around 30 seconds or so in a vacuum.
Yet Another Web Site
I did a quick websearch -- Nasa had a page up (which has since disappeared), but there are copies floating around out there. Interesting reading though.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Sorry. I usually avoid cliches like the plague. :)
I think you'd have to get there first, to qualify as a squatter.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Open the windows and the moths will die.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
(i.e., do you asphyxiate before you freeze to death?).
Considering that vacuum acts like an insulator, you'll long be dead before you freeze to death.
Yet Another Web Site
Is this anything like the movie industry? Russia just goes along with everything until its time to pay up, then oops! Looks like we're outta cash! Sorry we can't pay you Mr. Lee... errr... NASA!
;)
We're sending UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad, so why not send a crew of SEC auditors over to Moscow and find out where all their money is going?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
The space shuttle was originally supposed to be good for 100 missions per copy, at about $100 million turn-around cost. Now it's 25 missions per copy (unless they blow up earlier) at $500 million and up turn-around cost.
The whole space program - from Mercury to Apollo - cost only $25 billion, and it did REAL science.
1) What's wrong with mothballing ISS for a year or two? Well, if it's anything like Mir, and by which I mean it has people on board, it will, if not properly maintained, fill up with fun things like fungus and mold. Mir had problems where a computer would short out, and they'd open up panel to fix it and find that all of the circuit boards were covered in a sticky, stinky blue-green mold. Or they couldn't see out of the windows because of the layer of film growing on them. Not fun. No wonder the crew spends so much time cleaning.
2) Wonder why only 3 people are on board a station designed for at least 7? How abour the fact that congress ccut the budget for a new 7-man escape module, so all they've got is an old 3-man Soyuz capsule lashed to the side of the station to get them out of trouble. And unlike the proposed and now cancelled escape craft, which would have been automated, the Soyuz needs a cosmonaut to bring it down, so the station must have a Russian pilot on board at all times doing housework, as opposed to someone useful like an ESA scientist would would have been on board anyways if they had a big enough escape pod.
3) Ever wonder why a station build and finance almost entirely by America has two Russians on board compared to one American. Is it because of their years of experience fighting mold and electrical fires on Mir, or is it because the State Department ordered NASA to through the Russians a bone. You be the judge!
4) Speaking of throwing the Russians a bone, the entire history of this station has been littered with decisions made solely to appease the Russians. Remember, the station is years behind schedule because some of the corecomponent modules had been assigned to the Russians. And the Russians were taking their sweet time putting said modules up. they kept claiming that money was a factor, but the fact of the matter is all of the Russian modules were paid for almost entirely with American funds. Sometimes a module would be on the pad ready to be launched and the Russians would hold on putting them up until they got even more money. the worst part is this was a State Department decision, not a NASA one. In fact, NASA at the time had a duplicate of every Russian module built and ready to go up 2-3 years before the Russians actually put them up, but were ordered by the American government to not use those modules and instead had to wait on the Russians.
5) What about money from space tourists being used to help save the station? Well, that might work if NASA allowed space tourists on their end, but they don't. It might also work if any of the money from spce tourism actually made it to the Russian space agency, but that doesn't happen either. I don't know the breakdown on where the money went from the two space tourists Russia has already sent up, but I do know that when the Russians put a giant Pizza Hut ad on the side of one of their rockets, the fee for the placement agency was 90%, and most of the rest of the money went staight into the pockets of the space agency heads. (BTW, a standard placement fee for advertising like that is around 10%).
The moral of this story: modern day Russian is full of corruption and graft, and is nowhere close to the technological creativity they displayed in the 1950's. They do still have, however, many nuclear weapons, so the United States gives them a reach around at every opportunity. I wish the Americans would evict the Russians from the station and replace them with the Europeans and the Japanese. Then we might actually see the station be good for something other than video clips on the news. Or news stories buried on page A72 of the paper describing how two male cosmonauts spent 6 months sexually harrasing a female American astronaut, and how NASA told her to shut up about the whole matter. YEAH RUSSIA! Make rocket go now!
At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.
Like I said, we have now found the perfect use for boy-bands
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
James gets angry as Kara's juice is always floating towards him due to his large gravitational effect. Rick and Julio's ongoing power struggle leads to the inevitable...taking it outside.
NASA could stop sending up identical copies of the gyros and oxygen scrubbers that break every week, and start sending up experimental items to find one with a better failure ratio (while of course keeping spares handy to avert disaster, I'm sure).
Maybe this way, when a cheaper space vehicle or space station comes about, they'll know how to keep it working.
Can anyone here explain exactly why the Space Station takes so much time and effort to maintain? What is it that can't be automated on ISS?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The difference is the deep sea fish are dealing with a MUCH higher pressure difference. At just 300 feet, you've got a pressure difference of about 150psi. (And some of these samples are take from over a mile down).
At a pressure difference of 14psi (slightly higher, actually), you could easily rupture some of the ore fragile tissues - ear drums, sinuses and tear ducts perhaps. The rest of the body would hold up fine all things considered.
So the real, immediate enemy would be heat loss. With no air, theres no convection. The only heat loss is radiation... and unfortunately for you the inky blackness of space is about 4 degrees kelvin (last I heard, anyway). You'ld freeze before you'ld suffocate.
=Smidge=
It seems the primary factor that caused Lance Bass not to go to space was the $20 million he couldn't raise. I say, don't worry about the return trip. Let's raise $10 and send him on his way. It's a win/win.
the pressure difference your body (14 lb/sqr inch) and space (~0) would cause you to explode almost instantly.
Your flesh has enough cohesion to hold itself together, even in a vacuum. When people climb Mt. Everest, where the pressure drops about 40%, they do not explode.
IIRC, the US Air Force has some data on it (too lazy to search right now). The results would be a lot like "the bends" that divers get. Although your blood would not instantly boil, many of the gasses would come out of solution and cause bubbles to form in your blood vessels. This gas would increase the pressure in your blood vessels, damaging the more delicate ones exposed to the vacuum (such as lungs and eyes). As the gas comes out of solution, your internal pressure rises and the process reaches equilibrium. However, you have bubbles in your blood and torn capillaries in various critical regions. This combined with the lack of oxygen is ultimately what would kill you in a vacuum.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
It was clear when the Bush administration nominated a bean counter to run NASA that science and exploration were no longer matters of public policy. I'm just surprised it's taken them this long to find an excuse to end it.
How much do you want to bet that the next NASA budget will severely curtail manned spaceflight activities? They'll use the excuse that the shuttles are too old, and that they're waiting for the X-37 to come out.
Wouldn't this be a good time to allow the private sector in on this?
I really can't believe that somebody is seriously suggesting the commercialism of Space, you clearly have not considered the consequences of even this first apparently small step. There is good reason that the commercialisation is illegal under international law and treaty. You only have to look at the actions of the old Colonial Charter Companies to see the dangers. They ran riot over large parts of the globe and where only constrained by finite space of the Colonies.
New Space based commercial entities are a genie that once out of the bottle are never likely to be every constrained again, they would grow unchecked by earth bound morality, law, or nation, any unchecked at all by an essentially infinite space. They exhibit exponential growth and would quickly become more powerful than you could ever imagine, driven by one overwhelming factor; the accumulation of resources on an near infinite scale, an accumulation that would redefine the term greed.
The resulting 'Companies' would make the Commerical enties of SCI-FI look like cartoon kittens.
Someone else pointed out that 1000 people at $10,000 per head doesn't make sense, but 10 people at $1,000,000 just might.
How about 5 major pr0n studios with $2,000,000 each? (My contribution? Well, I volunteer to wear a pizza delivery guy's uniform.)
Five shuttles? Don't count Enterprise -- she can't fly in space. There are four: Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.
Discovery is down for maintenance and upgrades right now, which leaves three. Columbia is too heavy to fly to the space station with any amount of useful payload on board, so she flies research missions that don't dock with the station -- the next flight will be a research mission, actually.
That leaves two: Endeavour, in orbit now, and Atlantis, which is being processed right now to carry the next bit of the station up. When Atlantis is up, Endeavour will be in processing.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Your numbers are way off base:
Cost of Skylab was about US$10 billion.
TOTAL (ie. not just the US) cost of the ISS is about $100 billion over 30 years (Reference)
The original US Share of this was about US$15 billion (for comparison, ESA's share was US$8 billion) when the plans were finalized in 1993 (I think?). NASA's cost overruns in January were revised to be a little under US$5 billion
For comparison, the American Manned Lunar Program (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) cost about $100 billion (in 1994 currency terms). Reference
One of the reasons this option was not used is that NASA doesn't have any boosters that could be retrofitted.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
Id say asphyxiation and freezing to death wouldn't be a very big problem.
To freeze to death, you'd need to have some matter around to absorb the heat off your body. That ain't going to happen all that quickly in space.
For asphyxiation, you would have the air sucked out of your lungs, but you would probably still have enough oxygen in your bloodstream to keep you going for a minute or two.
I think someting related to part of your body bursting would be the worst problem.
for a very special episode of Junkyard Wars, when an American and a Russian team will be tasked with converting disused space stations, space debris , and old computers into nuclear powered mopeds.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Wasn't Teflon invented years ago for some non-space program purpose in the '70s? My understanding is that they couldn't make it stick to anything to make it useful, until the US military found a way to use it to coat the inside of rifle barrels.
-- clvrmnky
long term... is that two quarters or three?
In the 1960s, it looked like the sea was being opened up as a new frontier. Nuclear submarines were cruising the oceans and exploring under the polar icecap, undersea habitats were built, big offshore drilling platforms were constructed, ocean-bottom mining was tried, and deep-submergence research submarines descended into the deepest parts of the ocean. There was even a whole genere of undersea science fiction.
But, like space, it turned out that all the essential tasks could be done without sending people there. Today, there are many underwater robot vehicles, but no underwater habitats. The deep ocean, like space, belongs to machines, not people.
unfortunately for you the inky blackness of space is about 4 degrees kelvin
But isn't temperature a characteristic of matter? Isn't the inky blackness of space mostly vacuum? How can a vacuum have a temperature? If you put a thermometer in a vacuum, you're getting the temperature of the thermometer glass, right?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The private sector doesn't want anything to do with manned spaceflight
The solution is simple: separate people and cargo. A cargo launcher needs to be cheap and have a pretty good chance to reach orbit. The private sector can handle that just fine, thank you. Reusable or expendable, horizontal or vertical launch and landing - whatever. Let the market sort it out. NASA should just commit to buying orbital delivery services and not compete with their own suppliers with your tax dollars.
A crew taxi vehicle needs to have a good chance of reaching orbit and an excellent chance of bringing the passengers back alive in case it doesn't. In other words, it must have effective abort modes in all stages of the launch. NASA will handle this part.
NASA: manned operations, deep space probes, science stuff and X vehicles.
Private sector: Orbital delivery. Off-limits to NASA.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The other alternative is to tax the citizenry into oblivion and turn the US into the very Russia it is seeking to get money from.
I am still pissed off at congress for giving the international space the money to run and letting the collider in Texas go to waste. One of the problems with letting uninformed politician make scientific decisions based not on science, but on their re-election strategy. At this point though, I would hate to see the iss program dropped.
Sure there's pizza delivery...it just costs you $20.000.010 for a pie :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
The whole space program - from Mercury to Apollo - cost only $25 billion
actually, it's much closer to $100 billion
and it did REAL science.
I would argue that much of what was achieved was engineering rather than science.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
So here's my personal best possible outcome of this:
$$$ saved:
1. ISS scrapped or mothballed long term.
2. Shuttle upgrade program scrapped - expires at end of current lifetime.
$$$ spent:
1. Money allocated up-front to be spent on fast-track development of low cost, manned, VTVL reusable launcher (a la Roton, DC-Y, ISAS RVT, PHOENIX, etc.) with incremental build-and-fly development. Orbital 2-man demonstration vehicle to be flight ready by end of 2006.
2. VTVL design licensed to multiple commercial implementers (Boeing, MD, ArianeSpace, ISAS, etc.) Commitment to buy cargo space from cheapest bidder, starting 2008.
3. Award commercial, fixed price contracts for operating local spaceports (Mojave, Utah, etc.) If your state has a pro-space senator, then they can set up local jobs in space!
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Much of what was achieved was engineering, but, let's face it, it was also "rocket science" in the true meaning of the word.
America is not suffering from a lack of vision; it is suffering from a lack of results, a plague of soured "return on investments". It's one thing to have lofty goals, but it is quite another to spend without purpose.
... this time around, it's not government that's going to have to lead the way.
Why was the ISS built? Was it so NASA scientists could perform all of these hi-tech crystal expieriments & gravity tests? NASA lists a set of reasons here. Some goals are noble... "To create a permanent orbiting science institute in space capable of performing long-duration research in the materials and life sciences areas in a nearly gravity-free environment", "To conduct medical research in space", "To develop new materials and processes in collaboration with industry"
No, why was it really built? Two more "reasons" are more ominous (and really, the only goals that suceeded). "To forge new partnerships with the nations of the world." and "To sustain and strengthen the United States' strongest export sector-aerospace technology-which in 1995 exceeded $33 billion." In retrospect, we now know that that "export sector" was selling long range rocket diagrams & targeting systems to the Chinese, some of the more ethically dubious actions of the Clinton administration. ISS was a shortcut for the US government to funnel money out to other First World nations, which bloated the national budget and artifically increased our Gross Domestic Product... a surprising correlation to Wall Street's activities over the same time period.
So, where is America's spirit of exporation today? In my opinion, it's not outward to the stars, but inward... the Internet. We're working to build a world of interconnected services, where a doctor can telemeter themselves accross the country to perform operations, or have digital paper, or communicate in virtual worlds (EverQuest & now the Sims Online). Each new network discovery has the same effect as throwing another satelite in space, for a much smaller cost.
What will it take to rekindle the spirit to go to space? Money. Show me where I can make a profit, when the transportation costs are negligible, or maybe asteroid mining to find pure crystals of metal, or terraforming
Our military expenditures allow us to remain a fully free nation without having to form various humilating coalition arraingements, such as the EU, just for security and strenght.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
...and Columbus was a latecomer in the list of Europeans visiting America. The vikings had already explored down the coast looking for suitable settlements, while North European fishermen had been fishing the coasts of the North West for a couple of hundred years.
Perhaps the latter would be a better analogy as they were specifically looking for reaping commercial rewards, rather than than settlement. The only building they carried out were work places and temporary accomodation when it wasn't possible to get back (as far as I remember, feel free to correct me).
All the commercial passengers they could possibly send up at twenty million a pop doesn't come even remotely close to paying for anything -- in fact, it wastes money, because the cost to them is far more than that.
Russia does that for one reason, and one reason only -- that money can help them in the very short term to pay off debts that are due, and can push the actual cost of the flight off even longer, and it provides publicity which clearly they hope will cause NASA to step in and foot the bill for the stuff that they're not getting done (as we've been doing all along).
This space race was lost by both sides before it even started. Killing the ISS would probably be the best thing NASA could do. Maybe our tax dollars and national efforts can do to something that is actually productive. There is little in the way of new technologies being developed for the ISS, and essentially zero science being done on the station because of budget cut backs.
Yeah, damn commies! give them a look at our free market system and whadda ya know, they go and do a better job of it than us. We should never have shared our ideas with them in the first place!
No, temperature is a characteristic of energy. And there's enough microwave radiation floating around in space to bring anything up to equilibrium at 4K.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Vacuum only acts as an insulator as far as conduction of heat is concerned. You will still radiate away all of your heat, and pretty quickly too, though probably not as quickly as you would asphyxiate.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
While the "Progress" resupply ship is critical to keep the station stocked with food and fuel, I've long questioned the whole concept of the "Soyuz" escape capsule.
It may sound heartless, but do we have nobody in this country (or any other) willing to explore like they did 100 years ago? Lewis and Clark didn't have an emergency return system... but that didn't keep them from exploring the Mississippi (though there aren't any alien guides this time around).
Another example. In the 1700s, Captain James Cook lost several men each time he journeyed to unknown lands -- sometimes to hostile natives, often to disease, and not infrequently to accident. In fact, his journeys blow NASA's whole idea of long-voyage "I love you, you love me" compatibility to pieces: Cook was a fair captain, but did not hesitate to use the whip when it was needed.
Another interesting note in Cook's explorations: Free (as in beer) Beer! According to an interview with Cook biographer Tony Horwitz on the local PBS station, the rotten conditions on board ship were made tolerable by the large quantities of strong beer in the hold. This led, of course, to some of the death-by-accident statistics (such as sailors falling off the "comfort seat" -- the gangplank with a hole in it for use as a toilet).
I don't mean to paint too drab a picture of future exploration, and I wouldn't want to see the whip making a return on board ship... but until we're willing to lose more than a half-dozen explorers in 40 years, we're not going to get anywhere.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Assuming a relatively small surface area is exposed then the major immediate concern is blood boiling off. The Russian Orlan space suit has a protective rubber bladder on the inside that is supposed to buy you enough time to save yourself in the event of a glove blowing off or puncture.
The US suit on the other hand put more effort in ensuring that the situation won't occure at all.
My understanding is that it takes 2 seconds or so for your blood to start boiling when exposed to space.
You will not explode in a vacuum, provided you exhale before depressurization. In space, you would remain concious for about 10 seconds (this happened to one person who was accidentally depresurized during training.) and you would live for about 2 minutes. It takes a long time for the blood in all of your tiny little capillaries to boil off and cause swelling, long enough for you to die of asphyxiation before you have to worry about that.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
You'ld freeze before you'ld suffocate.
I disagree. Yes, space is very cold, but the vacuum acts like a thermos bottle. You would only have radiant heat, which is actually very little. You would stay quite warm. You would suffocate in about 2 minutes and stay conscious for 10 seconds.
BTW, one guy (from NASA) was depressurized once during training. He was able to escape the chamber, which was in a vacuum, completely conscious and no worse for wear.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
While it could be argued that the current Soyuz is a completely redesigned version of the original:
Soyuz 1
Mission Statistics:
Date: 04/23/67
Flight Time: 001d 02h 48m
Number of Orbits: 0018 orbits
Cosmonaut Crew:
Vladimir M. Komarov
EVA's:
None
Payloads:
None
Mission Highlights:
Komarov became the first Russian to make a second trip into space. The main purpose of this 1-day flight was to test out the new Soyuz spacecraft. The reentry process of Soyuz 1 appears to have gone completely normal through the routine communications blackout period. However, in the last few miles of descent, the parachute became twisted in its lines and the spacecraft was destroyed in a hard impact. Komarov was killed instantly on impact. It was ironic that both the United States and the Soviet Union suffered their first mission-related fatalities within a few months of each other.
AND
Soyuz 11 (Salyut 1)
Mission Statistics:
Date: 06/06/71
Flight Time: 023d 18h 22m
Number of Orbits: 0385 orbits
Cosmonaut Crew:
Georgi T. Dobrovolsky
Vladislav N. Volkov
Viktor A. Patsayev
EVA's:
None
Payloads:
None
Mission Highlights:
What had been a most successful mission aboard the Salyut 1 space station, turned into disaster upon reentry of the crew. A pressure release valve in the Soyuz spacecraft malfunctioned, allowing the oxygen to escape from the cabin during reentry. The crew, as was the custom on earlier Soyuz flights, was not wearing pressure suits. When the recovery teams opened the hatch on the spacecraft, they found the flight crew dead.
If someone has to point a gun at me to get me to cough up, then their arguments lose a lot credibility. Their claim that the money will be used for "the future of humanity" is just a sick joke. Indeed, when I see all the money my federal government has thrown away just this month I'm convinced that almost none of the money withheld from my paycheck, will actually be spent on "the future of humanity."
We need to cancel as much of government as we possibly can, including NASA. If NASA's work is really important, we'll decide to do it on our own, and no one will have to force us.
Write a letter to your senators/representatives today, reminding them why they are allowed to govern at all, and warning them to not exceed their authority. I don't think getting rid of NASA is a top priority, but it's still a step in the right direction, and if we start treating NASA as some sort of sacred cow for nerds, that just makes it harder to justify slaughtering someone else's cow.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hmmm - Lance Bass was willing to pay $20 million just for a couple weeks on it. Imagine how much rent they could charge all of N'Sync for an entire year!!
Just think - Earth could be N'Sync free for a whole year and NASA would have somebody to water the plants.
I think that's sarcasm.
Well, four moderators thought it was informative
It was.
It correctly pointed out that Russia wasn't the only entity hindering the space station's development.
One word: the empathy factor (citizens expect to see human in space).
unfinished: (adj.)
Would you really get the bends if your space suit popped? It's only one atmosphere of difference. In diving that's, what, 32 feet?
Yeah I get your point but I think the man Colon had better PR but not a lot else (hence US school kids poem). It became very important for politics to make a big deal out of what he did (Spanish / Portuguese empire aspirations and influencing the Pope). There's some well proven archeological evidence of Viking presence (documents referring to Bjarni Herjolfsson's trip in 986 etc) and various written reports about the later European fishing industry. Columbus had an interest to publicise his discoveries, as did his sponsors, they wanted payback and he wanted more money to find that route through to India. I am more interested in the fishing industry metaphor for the parent thread as here was a group of people who were resource-picking rather than intending to settle. This I think is more likely our way to the stars or at least further exploration of the near solar system within our life time. They kept quiet because they didn't want their taxmen and kings finding out about their rich new fishing fields....
I think it's all a bit murky about the 'clearly identifiable' - I think he was the man who got the PR sorted well, plenty of Europeans had been sniffing round that part of the world. Mr Colon (as the Spanish and Portuguese prefer to call him) discovered Cuba and Hispaniola on that first trip, explored Venezuala in 1498 and did such a bad job of mismanaging his colony even by the rather low human rights levels of that time that he was taken back to Spain in chains in 1500.
I haven't heard his group tagged so much as the disease vector, except for VD that I guess was very common in Europe. Syphilis can kill, but it was smallpox that did a number on North America IIRC.
Native Americans removed to Europe tended not to last long, and thus were quickly deemed unsuitable slaves. The absence of so much disaease among the Indians is still a puzzle (some think the bugs didn'ts survive teh Arctic trip), but it was real.
Lastly, as for discovers of America, it would have to be the Native Americans I think, who numbered in the millions before any Europeans showed up. Plus they got there the hard way -- they walked! But "discoverer" has different meanings depending on the context.
The problem is with the Russian space program and NASA. Back when both organizations started out, it was an extension of the cold war. Both were formed as branches of each country's military forces, and were funded as their research also influenced the nuclear war that in the end never happened. They were in competition with each other for the upper hand, with national pride as the prize. As such, they recieved a massive amount of funding (to the point of bankrupcy on the Russian side). With that threat diminished, if not dispensed with entirely, both programs have been largely gutted. Add to that, a growing public apathy for a program that is largely still dedicated to science, porkbarrelling and what has become, for the most part, a military country club.
For example, even though the Hubble telescope has proven invaluable as a research tool, in it's original deployment, it was a national joke. Even today, it's historical scope pales in comparison to the lunar landings.
What I propose, is an international effort between private and public corporations and civilian space enthusiasts. Currently, what exists is a massively disorganized scattering of individuals and individual groups trying their own thing, truly only sharing two things: A massive interest in space, and a large amount of enthusiasm. What is needed, however, is a common ground to operate on, and the organization to build with.
We need a largely centralized system to incorporate the best of the best concepts in space technology, independant from any government organizations or interferance. Governments beget beaurocracy, and beaurocracy begets stagnation.
As for financing, it isn't THAT difficult. If we could just get 1/10th of the world's population to contribute $10, then that would be sufficient to get the first manned launch vehicle off the ground, complete with launch facilities, administration et al. It wouldn't be a space plane per se, but a manned two or three person capsule. Perhaps one could even sell a seat on the capsule with a raffle system, which would make an incredible incentive for large donations.
Pilots and experienced space veterans are, frankly, a dime a dozen, I'm certain some of them would love the opportunity to be directly involved in a pioneering space program once more, one that'll influence it far more than any government controlled system today.
Experienced scientists are a dime a dozen as well, first off, there's many in aerospace who, while they exceed many requirements of the space programs, aren't taken in due to budget constraints, or because they simply don't know the right people. Additionally, grab as many whistle blowers as you can. Why? Because they not only knew what was wrong with the current system, but they *acted* on it. That is what we need. Instead, NASA and the Russian space administration would fire them or kick them out, resulting in the continuing backslide both organizations have been experiencing. And that, in fact, would give us an edge.
This is what needs to be done. Stop hoping and wishing for "space welfare" to come to the rescue, join forces and start your own space program! At the least, there's 2-3 million people around the world who want to go to space, and want to build rockets so they can do so, at least 1/4-1/3 of which are capable of doing so.
All that NASA and Russia have, is a couple hundred thousand who're hobbled by beaurocracy and ineptitude in the very same government, that, for the ol' Slashdot tie in, consider file swapping as theft and viewing your DVD on another operating system as hacking (and subsequently a major felony deserving of a life sentance, thanks to one of the new riders on the Homeland Security Act). How can anyone in their right mind expect these same people to see any scientific viability in space programs?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Thanks you.
XML causes global warming.
Why bother creating your own satellite when there's a ready made one right next door? Granted, your idea that "if we can colonize that we can colonize anything" is definitely true, but why try to run when you have not yet learned to walk? You will eventually run, but the time and effort required to make such a leap would be enormous, with no payoff until the very end. By moving in more measured steps -- a moonbase first, a space station second, a Mars base third -- you get more consistent payoffs on your efforts and the learning curve is much less steep.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
...more Tang for the rest of us.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Or the europeans, or the Saudi, or whomever. I am sure that someone else than Russia could be interested after all.
Lastly, as for discovers of America, it would have to be the Native Americans I think, who numbered in the millions before any Europeans showed up. Plus they got there the hard way -- they walked! But "discoverer" has different meanings depending on the context.
If you speak English, you're operating in the 1500 year old civilization that was once known as "Christendom" but now, since we beat up or absorbed just about everyone else, we simply call ourselves "civilization."
Besides which, our Asian-American ancestors didn't discover the Americas as much as they moved here. No one back in Aisa ever got a return-ship saying "look what we found!"
No, temperature is a characteristic of energy. And there's enough microwave radiation floating around in space to bring anything up to equilibrium at 4K.
errrm...the word "anything" above...does that word by chance refer to MATTER? If so, my question stands...Is it not MATTER in space that has a temp of 4deg K?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I don't think it's a coincidence that America's only Catholic president got us to the Moon.
I like Kennedy as much as the next guy, but I think there have been presidents that have accomplished feats orders of magnatudes more important than sending a man to the moon.
Yes, when you're involved in the True Church [vatican.va], you know that despite all your efforts, Death will get you, so it's better to be in orbit and die in a meteor shower, or die of a pressure suit leak on the Moon, than cravenly hiding in a planned retirement home.
History is littered with the bodies of those who fought over the "True Church". I have no problem with you being a Catholic, you should have no problem with me not believing in organized religon. More people have died fighting for their religon than for any other cause.
I suggest you examine your faith. Why do you believe? What justification do you having for believing? Think about these, nothing in the history of human civilization has been more dangerous than those violently acting on blind faith. It is naive to think that you have found the one true god, and that you follow the one true faith. What happens to all the Buddists/Muslims/Wiccans/(insert religon here) that just happened to live fantastically selfless lives?
Please don't preach about your one "True Church". You may extoll it values, but don't shove it down my freaking throat.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
We measure temperature by observing the effect of energy on matter, but the energy is there whether the thermometer is there or not.
Which brings us to my original point: you can't have temperature without matter. The Inky Blackness of Space cannot be said to have any temperature, much less an exact temperature like 4degK. Presumably, matter floating in space will stabilize at 4degK, but that's doesn't mean that the space itself is 4degK. Therefore, the argument that one would freeze to death if exposed to the vacuum of space because it "has a temperature of 4degK" is invalid based on the fact that empty space has no temperature. In fact, I'd say that one would freeze to death faster in a walk-in freezer chilled to 270degK, since in space heat loss is almost entirely radiative and the air in the freezer is sapping your heat conductively as well.
But whatever it is that kills you, I'd say being ejected out of the airlock doesn't leave you a whole lot of time for analysis...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.