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NASA Consider "Demanning" Space Station
Heartbreak writes "James Oberg, in an article for MSNBC, says that NASA is making contingency plans to leave the International Space Station without a permanent crew for up to a year if the Russians can't deliver the required Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to support it. A serviceable Soyuz is required to evacuate the crew in an emergency when the US Shuttle isn't there, and Progress is needed for resupply. The Russian space program is doddering on the edge of financial collapse after several recent setbacks, including the failure of Lance Bass to pay up.
What SF writer could have imagined that humanity's dream of exploring space would be brought to the edge of extinction by the financial irresponsibility of a pop music star? It would be a boring and depressing story, at best." Of course, some would argue that the space station was a boondoogle to start with.
As a docking facility/point-of-departure, the ISS is *terrible*. Its inclination is so high that it's tough to get loads there and back, and subsequent exit/entry insertions are off the plane of the ecliptic, so you've got to correct there, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Very little science is being done because it is currently a 3 man crew. Up until just recently NASA has had the 6 man crew pretty much in limbo because of cost over runs. Before a larger crew can be used Node 3 and the US HAB module need to be launched and attached. After that the Japaneese Experiment Module (JEM) will be launched and attached. It's not until JEM is opeations that any resemblence of real science can occur
Yeah, right. Do you have any idea how much the ISS costs? $100 billion. Each shuttle flight costs $400 million. Even a Soyuz costs $100 million, and the Russians take a tourist only when they have an unused seat on the flight.
At the current going rate of $10 million a tourist (and $10 million tourists are pretty rare), you'd need to get 10 in every Soyuz (capacity 3) and 40 in every Shuttle (capacity 7) to break even on launch costs alone. Then throw in the cost of the space station... ha, ha. Profitable -- not in this lifetime. But then again, since "everyone knows" that there's money to be made, these numbers *must* be wrong.
How about we reduce the cost of launches to something more reasonable then the aging shuttle fleet? Did you know the shuttle flies on a mules butt? Well not literally, but the width of the solid rocket boosters which are built somewhere outside of south florida for political reasons is limited by the width of railroad tunnels, which are based on the width of train tracks, which are based on the width of a team of mules rears. It costs ~10X as much to lift cargo with the shuttle as it would have with any of the next generation replacements but for some reason NASA decided to keep flying shuttles rather than spend some capital on the future. With a 1/10th cost things like space tourism start to become realistic. Taking that $10million dollar tourist now covers almost 1/4th of your launch costs and he is nowhere near 1/4 of your cargo capacity (or he is and thats fine too because you are running a small lean launch vehicle with an even smaller launch cost).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"...but the width of the solid rocket boosters which are built somewhere outside of south florida for political reasons is limited by the width of railroad tunnels, which are based on the width of train tracks, which are based on the width of a team of mules rears."
This is an urban legend. The theory goes that trains were designed based on wagon hardware, and hence the size of a mule team. But there were several competing guages in the early days of rail, so it doesn't fly.
None the less, being able to transport your parts by rail makes sense (they aren't shipped in one peice in any case, they're too long) and there is certainly no evidence that making the boosters wider would reduce launch costs. It may cost 10X as much to lift cargo by shuttle as by the estimates of the contractors who want to build the "next generation replacement", but that still doesn't make space tourism realistic. By your numbers, just to break even, each launch needs 4 tourists paying 10 million a peice. How many launches do you expect to fund this way?
The ISS has never done any science.
A negative is easy to disprove: PCS Results
If there was ever any hope that it would, that hope is gone now that the number of crew has been lowered -- they're being kept busy full-time now just doing what's necessary to stay alive.
The Bush Administration decision to not launch the Habitation Module has severely crippled ISS research, but it has not eliminated it.
A fair way to handle the fiasco would be to force all NASA programs to compete in the same kind of peer review that's required for NSF and DOE science.
Are you familiar with the process to apply for the opportunity to do science on ISS? It's not so different from getting an NSF or DOE grant. The investigators doing research on ISS are real scientists that do real, published, peer reviewed research.
This would have the effect of killing off the crewed space program, while steering more funding to uncrewed probes, which are what actually do the science.
Unmanned probes can do important science, but not the same kind of science that can be done on ISS. Both are important.
Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan -- which has been sort of adopted by NASA -- lets you do most of these things without first having a space station. The basic idea is to send a robot propellant factory/return vehicle to Mars ahead of the astronauts.
A solid understanding of the effect of long-duration (3+ years) exposure to space in closed habitation.
Zubrin argues that the psychological effects of close proximity for the length of the trip can be easily studied on Antarctica, or at sea. The plan calls for tethering the Earth-to-Mars spacecraft to a spent booster and spinning it for (faux) gravity, which should take care of zero-g health problems. The only outstanding issues then are radiation (for which he suggests basic shielding plus a shelter for solar flares) and medical emergencies (for which he suggests cross-training and luck).
Development of self-sustaining ecologies for said closed habitation.
Since the crew travel in a different craft each way, the Mars Direct plan simply replaces the mass fuel for a round trip with the equivalent mass of life support. He does the math in a 'The Case for Mars'.
Psychological and health studies to maintain crew safety and performance during said mission.
Can be done on the ground -- see above.
Development of technologies to allow us to construct large structures on-orbit (since no Mars-bound vessel will be small enough to fit on the end of an Energia booster).
Mars Direct is designed for Saturn Vs, but Zubrin has a variation using Energia in his book.
Your points five and six (about logistics and management) I'm not too sure about. Mars Direct is a lot closer to a Apollo mission than an ISS mission, but it's still novel territory that will require/spawn new techniques.
In his book Zubrin talks about objections to Mars missions because of the perception that a moon base (or in this case an ISS) is a pre-requisite. He fears that the space program will use up its tenuous goodwill with congress (and hence its funding) by screwing around in orbit when we could be getting started on Mars right now...
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
And consider the other countries getting caught in the crossfire: the Canadians contributed a cool robot arm, the ESA is putting up a whole module . The really sucky part is other countries that took part in good faith are gonna lose their research time because the station won't be operating at peak performance.
-AD