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.

Comments

Stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exploring space is one of the most inspiring things mankind can do. Giving up on the space station might easily become permanent (once congress discovers they are paying a lot of money to have NO PEOPLE AT ALL in orbit); at that time we will have lost our only stepping stone towards the stars.

In order to get to other worlds we need better technology. Better technology does not grow on trees, it must be created. Without a manned space program we will not create that technology, and arguably without the space station there is not much of a manned space program left.

Stop this madness, before it is too late!

Re:Stupid!

[raytracer]

The basic problem with this view is its starry eyed idealism.

The ISS isn't our stepping stone to the stars, or if it is, it is like saying your front porch is your portal to the rest of the world. Stepping out on your front porch isn't a significant help to getting half way around the globe, and the ISS isn't anywhere close to getting us to the stars.

This wouldn't be all that bad, except that our ISS stepping stone is a very expensive stepping stone. It costs real money to maintain, money that could be available for other projects, projects that would more reasonably allow us to fufill our goal of reaching out to the stars. The luxury of storing soft squishy humans in orbit is just that: a luxury. In these tough economic times, it makes sense to reconsider spending on luxury items.

I'm just about as gung-ho on space exploration as they get, but I'd like to see more bang for the buck from our science projects.

Re:Stupid!

[Cujo]

Well said. There are serious problems with the ISS in concept and in execution, but its biggest problem is how much it has cost and is likely to cost in the future. And NASA has NEVER had a good handle on what those costs will be. Congress has bigger fish to fry, but sooner or later they're going to get infuriated at all the flim-flam

I think the best thing to do is de-crew the ISS for a year or two, with 2-3 shuttle flights a year to check it out. Everyone else stand down, and no more damn presidential commissions - let's get serious about deciding what to do with this thing and what it's worth paying for.

That said, I don't think the justification needs to be purely scientific. The critics of manned space flight have always had the argument that for the short to medium term, better research can be done for the same money. It's a good argument, if the only return you're looking for is scientific.

Re:Stupid!

[dslbrian]

Agreed. If we can spend billions on a retarded program to monitor our own citizens (Total Information Awareness), we can certainly spend what it takes to keep the space program alive.

Space exploration is an investment in the future of humanity, and its benefits are not only to extra-terrestrial activities. Many of the materials and products used today rely on things invented in the space program.

Re:Stupid!

[Trane Francks]

If the porch is LEO, going out on the porch and coming back in a bunch of times, same as we have been doing for quite some time, isn't going to get us closer to The Next Town/Mars.

You've entirely missed the point. You would leave through the garage to go on a long trip, but that assumes that you already have the experience to travel those roads in safety. It's just a complete load of bollocks to think that one goes from being a landlubber to being an interplanetary explorer without some serious practice in the immediate vicinity first.

Our shuttles and the ISS consume very large quantities of money, and don't give us much return.

Forgive me if this sounds anal, but I really think you need to add an "IMO" to that. It's not a statement of fact and the scientific community would argue the point as being ludicrous. Perhaps the return on investment is not worth the cost to you, but the comment fails to stand up as a blanket statement.

Real scientific research goes on up there in areas that will offer significant benefits to future off-planet manufacturing, mining and general exploration. Moreover, I think that this stuff is necessary simply because as technologically adept as our species is proving to be, we're incredibly stupid with regard to controlling our population so as to live in harmony with our environment. It's only a matter of time before overcrowding puts us in a position where we really do need to consider living off-planet.

I don't think we'll be wise enough to avoid it, to be pessimistically honest.

The money that has been spent is gone. We should make all current decisions based on what gets us the most for our money going forwards.

I quite agree, but urge you to consider that long-term gains are often trashed in the search for short-term profits. Make no mistake, space exploration is a long-term project. To expect it to be anything but a money pit within the next 50 years is just silly. Hell, we haven't even been flying earth-bound for all that long. Keep things in perspective.

It is better for Nasa to decide these things on their own terms, instead of having Congress show up with the axe.

Man, do I ever agree! Unfortunately, a researcher's agenda is often closely tied to an investor's purse. NASA's just living within the contraints of what they had to sell to maintain funding.

good riddance

[bcrowell]

The ISS has never done any science. 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.

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. 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.

Re:good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, excuse me, but you've missed one very important fact - the ISS is still under construction and will be for at least 2 more years! You can't expect a research facility to produce at 100% capacity when it isn't finished yet. And Nasa never had any intention of expanding crew sizes past 3 until after core complete, i.e AFTER construction is completed. Your criticism isn't based on facts.

A bit trite?

[mccalli]

Of course, some would argue that the space station was a boondoogle to start with.

Would they? Who? And why?

I find it a little trite to dismiss the effort of the International Space Station with a quick phrase that has no backing. Reasons? Well then, suggest 'em!

Cheers,
Ian

Re:A bit trite?

[yog]

Right. Some would also argue that manned missions to the Moon were a total boondoggle. After all, what did we get for it? A bunch of rocks. All that money should have been invested in the War on Poverty instead. Think what a nice society we'd have today. No microcomputers or internet, but at least there'd be a bunch of public housing projects and a whole lot of social workers to keep their inhabitants docile.

I think the U.S. has dropped the ball on space exploration. Without such a national mission, we are reduced to such worthwhile causes as "providing affordable housing", prescription drug insurance and other European style goals that do nothing but drain the treasury.

The U.S. will sink back into the '70s morass if it drops the space ball. It's primarily through great national projects that the great technological achievements occur. I say, pour money into the ISS and damn the naysayers. Send a manned mission to Mars within 10 years. Build a permanent station on the Moon. The tech exists; all it needs now is political will.

Edge of Extinction?

[johnbr]

My goodness you people must be young. History doesn't end. There is no plausible scenario that would ensure that we "never go back into space". It's like when I tell my 5 year old that he can't have ice cream for dessert and he falls on the floor wailing "I'll never get to eat ice cream again!!!".

The journey into space is a journey. It will take a long time, and there will be plenty of hiccups along the way, but it will happen. The first pioneer from New York who wanted to settle California probably didn't make it all the way - he probably stopped part way, and helped establish a town, and the next guy coming through was able to get farther.

Maybe the ISS isn't the right answer. Maybe space elevators are the right way to enable large-scale space travel. No one knows. But claiming that we're going to stop going into space because of a relatively minor setback is foolish. Where else are we going to go?

The key is commercialism

[Woogiemonger]

The very success of the United States proves that capitalism is the only answer. Compare the exponential advancement of computer technology to the thirty year old space shuttle technology. If NASA worked 98% to inspire commercial space ventures, working to help the nation's state of space technology rather than focusing on discovering if life ever existed on Mars, then we'd soon see space hotels orbiting between Earth and Mars, colonies on other planets, etc. Research would be far easier to manage given a better platform, rather than this "smarter, cheaper, faster" stuff that NASA and it's international counterparts are trying to come up with together. The average American says "Wow, space, that'd be a wild experience." That's how to get the public funding, and once you get public funding, and by public I mean general public, not crazy millionaires, then the sky is the limit, as computer technology has discovered. The X-prize is a very nice start towards this way of thinking, but we'll need much more focus on manned space technology and space tourism before we have serious competition in orbit.

Re:The key is commercialism

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the key things capitalism does is shut down enterprises that don't make sense. Schumpeter called this 'creative destruction'.

Government programs, OTOH, keep going for decades after they've become pointless, just to preserve jobs/pork/etc. NASA and manned spaceflight in general are a prime example of this.

Turn manned space travel over to commercial enterprises and you will probably discover they are not interested in manned space travel. Hype about tourism or microgravity manufacturing notwithstanding, there's no near term prospect of making money there.

Skylab Redux?

[Snowgen]

This kind of like Skylab all over again, isn't it?

Skylab was never intended to be abandonned permanantly. The shuttle program was supposed to be done in time to boost Skylab's orbit and reoccupy America's first "space station." But budgets and schedules being what they are... The shuttle launched late, and Skylab's orbit decayed early.

So, when they say they're going to "temporarily" un-man ISS, I woner how temporary that would be...

Re:Skylab Redux?

[gorilla]

Budgets and schedules weren't the problem. The problem was that NASA transformed itself into a giant burocracy machine. Instead of a bunch of engineers and pilots determining what should go into the vehicle, instead there will 5 years taken to write a huge report to an advisory sub-committee, who will take 2 years to read it, then send recommendations to the main committee, who will decide that the political climate has changed, and the original proposal should be redesigned.

Why don't we just foot the bill..

[xchino]

Look at the amount of money we've sunk into this, and then compare the prices that other countries are expected to pay (and stil don't). It seems to me we just expect money from them as more of a membership due than real financial support. So why not just cover their debts and take over the ISS completely? It'd be expensive, but I think that even the threat of United States Space Dominance might motivate Russia to shell out a few more ruples to stay in the game..

And the loss would be?

[bgfay]

The ISS hasn't done one of the most important things any space program can and must do: generate interest. It's not that NASA has to do a May sweeps thing, but they need to do something sexy and exciting (e.g. the Mars Rover) and do it well. One of the things that attracted all sorts of positive media attention was that the Mars Rover mission was cheap. The public ate that up. "We get all these cool pictures of Mars, a neat little robot to look at, and it didn't cost that much? Wow! Give me more of that." Of course, then someone mixed up inches and centimeters and the life went out of that balloon. Oh well.

The point is this: landing men on the moon was sexy. People were desperate for it. The goal wasn't just NASA's but was that of the entire country. And the goal of the ISS would be? Would be? Beuller? Beuller?

Why did we go to the moon? I would wager that part of the reason we went was because it sounded cool to do. I know that's simplistic and there was the whole cold war to think of, but basically, it was really, really cool as in, "dude, we walked on the moon." In the process a whole slew of stuff happened, was discovered, was improved...and we're better off because of it. (Of course, we never really went to the moon and only a fool believes otherwise , but the point is still the same.)

NASA _should_ scrap the ISS, now. Don't OS/2 it. (Pardon me while I put on the flame retardant suit.) Sure, a lot of money has been dumped into it. Fine. Leave it there for a while and if we can figure out a way to use it well, then go ahead.

Okay, now for the controversial part: Ground the space shuttles. The shuttle builds the ISS. The ISS is no more. The shuttle is needed no more. There are better ways to put satelites in orbit.

Without the ISS, NASA can concentrate on "cool" missions again. Send a probe to Pluto, to see if we can. Send rovers to the moons of Saturn, to see if we can. Do cool stuff that will capture the minds and hearts of the public who foots the bill.

Without the shuttle, NASA could concentrate on creating a "cool" and "inexpensive" manned spaceflight vehicle, one that doesn't need to blast off.

Not that any of this matters. I teach public school which isn't that different from NASA. Schools don't change even when they know they should---they don't change because they fear change. NASA, seems to me, is about the same.

Look at it this way...

[Wampus Aurelius]

The ISS was conceived during a time when Soviet Russia had just collapsed, and Russian rocket scientists were freshly out of jobs. So I'm sure someone in the US government figured out a way to keep all those scientists employed so they wouldn't go off and design nuclear rockets for "rogue nations" like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.

Nowadays the situation has stablized quite a bit, and I figure that the US doesn't feel quite as threatened by Russian rocket scientists. Maybe they actually saw the quality of work these guys (don't) put out, and decided that they weren't as big a threat as first thought. So, with the threat gone away, so has the need for a giant lumbering science project to keep those scientists happy.

As it is, I can't really think of a useful purpose for this space station. People said all sorts of things it could do when the project started, like be a research platform, or a jumping-off point for more manned moon missions, or a large "symbol of international unity and cooperation," but have any of those things happened? Especially the whole "unity and cooperation" thing...it's like the US and Russia are roommates who aren't getting along, and Russia isn't paying the rent.

Where's a better place for US to spend its money? Perhaps we should fold up NASA, shift its budget to balancing the budget deficit, and allow privatization of space. That way, the money being lost in space won't be my taxpayer money. Now, if only I could pull my money out of ol' Dubya's little desert expedition...

I disagree.

[PaleBoy]

First and foremost, there is no problem with idealism. Idealism is not a bad thing. Idealism is what pushes people to change the world.

Secondly, the front porch IS the portal to the rest of the world. I am currently on crutches, due to an accident, and just getting myself to the front frikkin door of my building requires work, some pain, and ingenuity. But it's a start. And if I figure out a new crutching technique while hitting those stairs, well, things have just got a little easier next time.

In fact, stepping out on your front porch is a NECESSITY to getting halfway around the globe.

I believe that Tolkien is in my corner for this one:

"...there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

I know, not exactly a scientific authority, but I think it speaks to my viewpoint- if we take that first step out the door, the stars don't seem so far away.

LOTR! Two Towers! Two days! Oh man!

I digress.

I believe that the space station offers us the challenges of surviving and working in space, in a very real, day to day way. We will encounter problems, setbacks and innovations that we simply wouldn't get just from unmanned satellites and on-Earth experiments.

As far as it being a waste of government money, I can think of plenty of off-topic things that the geovernment wastes it's resources on, that are far less valuable, interesting and inspiring as the ISS.

Blaming Lance Bass...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is incredibly stupid. Sadly, in this day, it makes perfect sense to most people. If the Russians were counting on selling tourist tickets to rich people to fund their portion, they weren't being realistic. Blame the Russians for weaselling out of the space station deal, but don't blame it Lance. And no, I'm not a fan of NStinque or the BackDoorBoyz or whatever suck-ass boyband he was (is?) in. I'm just sick to death of people blaming everyone but themselves when they screw up. What's next - fat kids suing McDonalds? Oh wait, that did happen.

Re:ISS? Should be USS...

[swfranklin]

The point of this whole "cooperation" dealie... it's because their help is necessary.

Sure, to do it on the scale it is being done. My point is that we need to either (a) scale back to a project we can afford, or (b) increase the budget to support the project we want to do.

Re:NASA Consider "Demanning" Space Station

[freeweed]

Too late.

There's a reason they're called 'boy' bands.

More practical than it seems, Grasshopper...

[meepzorb]

Well, let's see what some of the practical requirements are (for example) for a manned mission to Mars:

(1) A solid understanding of the effect of long-duration (3+ years) exposure to space in closed habitation.

(2) Development of self-sustaining ecologies for said closed habitation.

(3) Psychological and health studies to maintain crew safety and performance during said mission.

(4) 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).

(5) Development of long-term logisitics support for these types of mission.

(6) Development of practical management techniques to effectively manage large, long-duration, multi-national space programs (dont underestimate the importance of managment science... Apollo was as much about figuring out how to MANAGE a moon mission as it was about actually getting to the moon).

Now, how, exactly, could we learn ANY of these things without having a space station?

Granted, the current ISS has been poorly managed, but dont go calling it 'useless' since we need to learn quite a bit before we can move on to interplanetary manned missions.

There's a reason...

[idontneedanickname]

...why they built the ISS. It's to experiment how humans live in space. If we're going to go anywhere far away, we need to know how to keep our travelers healthy. The ISS helps us understand the effects of weightlesness on the human body and lets us prepare our travelers better.

porch :: bad analogy

[endoboy]

A proposed alternative analogy-- you want to cross the ocean. The proposed technology involves making longer and longer piers, with "crew habitation" shacks at the end. A 2 mile long pier exposes the crew to some pretty harsh ocean conditions, and may even teach something about the ocean. It is not, however, a meaningful step on the path to crossing the ocean. Similarly, extended stays in LOE may expose you to some pretty harsh space environments, and you may even be able to do some serious science while you're there. It is not, however, a meaningful step on the path to Mars, the stars, or just about anywhere else.