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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.
for US Space Station. NASA should never have embarked on a "cooperative" project without having the wherewithal to go it alone should the partners have to bail out. I'm all for cooperation, the Soyuz/Apollo missions were great. US astronauts working on Mir, and Cosmonauts on Spacelab (had it lasted) are great ideas... but someone needs to be in charge, and capable of running the project by themselves if need be.
Reducing the amount of resources devoted to this project should actually benefit other projects in the long run. While the ability to study the long term effects of living in space has been very helpful in documenting what will be needed to support people for long trips, what other real breakthroughs have been made? Maybe now NASA can take a real look at trips to Mars.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
As a docking facility/point-of-departure, the ISS is a great (if premature) idea. As a ground-breaking testing lab for space-related sciences, it was a dud from it's conception; is there anything they can/could do on the ISS (aside from the ol' "how long can someone stay in space" trick) that couldn't/hasn't been done on any one of the NASA/Russian orbital missions?
To put it very briefly - as I already have (puts on fireproof suit) - the sooner we focus on the exploration of space, the sooner we retain the excitement and imagination of exploring, which is what we do best.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Space technology is our only answer against all extraterrestrial threats, from comet impact to solar flares to asteroids. Without interstellar space travel, our species is eventually doomed to extinction. Therefore all development of space technology is a step towards survival.
Kill Trolls Dead. Here's
Stepping out on your front porch isn't a significant help to getting half way around the globe
So what do you do, climb out the window?
The ISS may not be the a literal 'stepping stone' in that respect, but there's still a lot of technical hurdles that need to be tackled before manned space exploration becomes really viable... and the ISS is (or was intended to be) a great place to develop that technology.
I say we find a way to make it profitable. Everyone knows that once there's money to be made development takes off (no pun intended). Maybe NASA should consider bringing tourists into space just for the extra revenue!
=Smidge=
What the Russian Space Agency ought to do is sell lottery tickets. The winner gets a ride into space (as long as they qualify in terms of health and being able to cope with the training). I'd buy a ticket! I'd bet they would be able to make more than 20 million per trip.