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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.
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!
So give Lance a ride up to the station for free, then present the bill when it's time to go back home. If he doesn't pay, let him walk.
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.
Find free books.
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
You wouldn't find me not paying the Russian government - what with the KGB and all. Not to mention all the corrupt Generals who are probably now looking to make a name for themselves by freeing the world from the likes Lance Bass. He is either very brave, or very stupid.
All I know is that when I'm building a bomb shelter in my backyard becuase Lance caused another missile crisis, and we're counting on Junior to save our asses, I'm gonnd be hella-pissed.
_sig_ is away
Like anyone was really living in space to begin with. Sounds like the studio is just kicking NASA out to make way for another reality TV series.
I have to wonder, who made the decision to depend upon the russians for financial support.
I mean how bad can it be that you have to financially depend on a group that depends upon Lance Bass for financial support?
somebody oughta get fired for this one....
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.
So not only is Lance a Plague to Earth, but he has just indirectly become a plague to space as well. Thanks......
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
I knew this would happen. It's always a bad idea to be rushin' space modules. They're complicated.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Blackmailing the rest of the world might work even better: If you don't make your montly payments we'll bring him back! ;)
Karma. Moderation. Is my
He is either very brave, or very stupid.
He's broke, on account of being ripped off by those nasty P2P criminals.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
The space experience would have been lost on Lance - he's a nimrod of the first stripe.
We should take up a collection and send up someone who would at least be entertaining to watch in space:
OZZY!!!
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
What is the point of he ISS? If NSA's actually ging to use it for somthing other than a pretty light the sky, then keep it going, oterwise no. Whateverhappenedto all this research that could be done in zero-grav. I haven't seen any of it. All that asie, i'd still be happy to runte lae wile nasa's gone. I usthope Dominos delvrs up there. Who wants to bet on the number of "in soviet russia" posts this one gets?
In related news, the Russians are considering 'demanning' Lance Bass
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
It's strange that nobody (afaik) is planning to redesign the launchers to include cheaper parts. The technology is very specific, but there may be other uses for it that would (hopefully) allow mass production, reducing the total unit cost.
Ok now where's my rocket engine powered car?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
It is has been proven that people in tight social circles tend to pick up habits and mannerisms from one another. I wonder if the fact that the slashdot editors are so close, contributes to the generally poor grammar skills they show when posting articles.
--- I do not moderate.
Could be worse,
Imagine if M$ bought Mir.
I'm one of those people that didn't think that the space station was a good use of NASA funds to begin with. I am a space buff, having been inspired to promote the exploration of space by the late Carl Sagan, but I just think that the funding would have been better spent in different areas. Having a lab outside of the atmosphere has obvious advantages, true, but spending billions on robotic research, research drones to the outer planets, and/or manned missions to Mars instead would have been more fruitful, IMH-astronomy education coming from Barnes and Nobles-O.
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.
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?
What SF writer could have imagined a government that would make a significant portion of humanity's dream of exporing space dependant on an irresponsible pop star?
I just dont understand why space flight is so expensive. Is it all the people working on it? Could it be bad budgeting of NASA, you know $400 toilet seats and $200 haircuts, etc.? Do they use some rare materials that are hard to produce. I just don't get it, can anyone that has worked around the space program give some insight.
Now, we're bringing home everyone from orbit.
Give it another few years, and we'll be crawling back into the oceans.
" ... Of course, some would argue that the space station was a boondoogle to start with..."
Hmmm.. I'd say its more of a space-dongle (and poorly implemented at that).
m
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 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.
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...
Metric plural or English measures plural?
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.
In related news, reports are beginning to surface that demanning slashdot.org might not be such a bad idea, given that computers would be better than humans at spotting duplicate stories.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
..Lance Bass guy not paying up? I understand he's a member of this boy band n'sync or what the foot. Now, I also know that he took part in training at the cosmodrome in Russia. Did he not even pay for the training, or did he pay for it, but pulled out from the actual flight?
I would be surprised, because I saw him boasting on the TV, how this has been always his dream, since his childhood (which was last year).
So what's the straight story here?
Sigged!
Sadly enough, though, we can't blame Micro$oft for crashing Mir.
"Deman" ISS by sending up a crew of hot-looking Russkie and American women. Install webcams everywhere, and charge by the hour. Boom! Instant solvency. I bet even Lance Bass will subscribe.
It would produce some unique science...
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.
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..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
"...the RIAA recently declared MP3 music sharing led to the failure of the International Space Station, as reduced CD sales left Lance Bass unable to purchase his flight to the orbiting rathole."
...
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.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Um, you seem to be under the impression that the US has this capability. The point of this whole "cooperation" dealie wasn't to patronize other countries, it's because their help is necessary.
sic transit gloria mundi
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...
Why, Douglas Adams of course! Who else?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
NASA is a wonderful place, they do accomplish a lot, but they have no business running what should be a civilian funded venture. These guys are holding up the works. They should shoot for core complete on the ISS and then sell it to the highest bidder. How much do you think Bill Gates would put up to own his own space-station? You'd have billionaires at each other's throats (always a good thing). It'll get the nitwit Delphi and Oracle CEOs to invest in something useful as opposed to World Cup yachts (losses 1 billion and counting). There are Universities and private materials companies who would sell their souls to use this facility. Better yet, get the government out of it completely and let a non-profit like Battelle administer the program. NASA should be folded imto the DOE and the Air Force, where it belongs. They've been allowed to be a road-block to the exploration of space long enough. Whatever is left of NASA can charge rent for laboratory space on the ISS and the profit will fund the space exploration side. Okay, flame away. [-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
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.------ What's sadder than realizing you've filtered out your own comments?
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
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.
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.
It's not really excitement that's needed. The sooner we focus on the exploitation of space, the sooner we will have a sustainable space program.
The neccessary capital will not be there untill there is obvious potential for profit.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
US Space Station would be USSS. On the USSS they could have a BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB.
It's not really excitement that's needed. The sooner we focus on the exploitation of space, the sooner we will have a sustainable space program.
The neccessary capital will not be there untill there is obvious potential for profit.
Thank you for demonstrating a future without humanity.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Space station considers "demanning" NASA
That's interesting. Why was such a high inclination chosen, what benefits did it offer?
US Space Station would be USSS. On the USSS they could have a BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB.
More like BYOO2.
It's proper to refer to organizations as either singular or plural. Generally, the singular usage ("NASA considers") is more common in American English and the plural usage ("NASA consider") is more common in British English, but it's not a hard and fast rule on either side of the Atlantic.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"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"
Yet one more reason to hate 'Nsync.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Kill ISS and the Shuttle and you have destroyed the manned spaceflight program at NASA. It would save a lot of money. It would also throw away a large amount of individual expertise and institutional knowledge, making it more difficult and expensive for NASA to ever put people in space again.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think it was widely known the ISS would never come to scientific fruition in the bowels of appropriation committee meetings and planning commissions. The ISS has become and I think was intended to be-politically-a means to grab taxpayer dollars and stick them in the pockets of Congress people and their wealthy constituants.
A pork barrel is a project that puts federal dollars in the hands of Congress people in charge of the projects or appropriation committees for said projects. The best pork barrels are projects you can trick a lot of people into thinking are useful for the greater good so they don't ask any probing questions. An example would be a Represenative from a district in Vermont appropriating money for a project in that district some friends of his run a business in. For making them rich they cut said Congressman in on the fat of the "pork" for buying midgets to do battle or whatever it is rich people do. Sometimes pork barrels can be good for the people at large, a project could bring a bunch of jobs to a job poor district and then those people can eat and the country at large benefits from said federal project.
The ISS is starting to look more and more like this every day. The billions of dollars spent on the thing are going somewhere. It isn't like the solid rocket boosters of the Shuttle are lined with five dollar bills, not literally anyways. Before we had our ever impotent "War on Terror" to provide a means for getting public money into private hands the ISS was a perfect project to pork. It had a tenuous scientific basis, it would do JUST enough hard science for data to trickle in so it didn't look like a waste. As an added bonus the EU, Russia, and Japan could get in on the act and make it look to everyone like it was a giant shiny peace symbol in the sky. It's also a project that certain states *cough*California, Texas, and Floria*cough* would have a major hand in both developing and manufacturing. Billions of dollars means lots of cushy raises for government contractors. A pie in the sky science project that may or may not actually work as intended provides sweet CYA material for hearings later on.
You may or may not ask why was the ISS funded when we coulds have gotten more hard science out of smaller space projects and still bilked money out of them in particular Congressional districts. The answer is publicity. You can't go outside and take fricken pictures of the Mars Rover with a high powered zoom lens. You can take a picture of that megabright collection of aluminum cans flying around the planet. Also unlike probes launched from disposable rockets the ISS is something that needs to be maintained. Ron Popiel doesn't have a MagicStation where you set it and forget it. The ISS is a pork barrel that could have lasted for a decade or more had it been viable to do so. That's more than ten years of government contractors selling a $500 space toilet to NASA for $500,000.
Whatever dreams the ISS was supposed to fill for geeks and engineers don't matter to politicians, only the beaucoup cash that comes from those dreams matters. The ISS/Freedom/Alpha may have started as a cool science mission with attainable and useful goals but once it got into the grubby hands of Congress it turned into one giant government contract after another. As I said, now that we've got a "war" against nobody and maybe even a real war with remote control bombs and lasers on 747s the ISS isn't much needed anymore by the government. Why milk NASA's measly 14 billion when you can milk the DOD's uberbillions?
The ISS's failure is the fault of Congress and the people looking to make megabucks off taxpayer dollars, not Lance Bass. You can still despise him resoundly and wish he we eaten by wild battling midgets or whatever you want done to him but his inability to generate investor interest is not dooming the ISS.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Access to Progress supply ships.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I think that simply being out there and trying to get somewhere is vastly important to expanding ourr reaches. While we may be going nowhere quick, we are still going. I think that our first goal should be to put a station on the moon simply for the shere idea of having one there. While it would provide vast scientific research opportunities it would also be that first big step towards branching our from earth. Any effort is needed if we are going to get anywhere. It's like the lottery, if you at least try then you have some small chance of hitting it big, if you don't chance the risk, then you have absolutely no chance.
I realize the monetary problem in this whole issue, but I still think it is vital to the moral and unification of the world. It worked for Star Trek!! Let's just forget about the whole WWIII though.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
As a somewhat-schizophrenic-over-language Canadian, I use both. If it's singular, I'm describing the monolithic entitity. If it's plural, I'm emphasizing the people who make up the monolithic entity.
...laura
Folks it is time to de-man that thing and use it to start staging for a mars mission. Start sending up fuel and supplies for the mission and storing it on the station.
Got Code?
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
First off, no one likes him. No one. Nada. Not a single person. When his name is mentioned our heads start to hurt. So why would he even CONSIDER asking people to pay for him.
Second, if you announce that you want to go, and go through all these tests, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU EXPECT TO PAY FOR IT YOURSELF YOU WORTHLESS POS. Why bother? Why waste everyones time and hopes?
The expression "god die" is so much of an understatement it isn't funny.
Ow, my head hurts.
The reason NASA keeps trying to sell the ISS as a research platform is because they -- and Congress -- lack the imagination and courage to lay out an honest plan to build a capability to travel in space. And, by "travel", I don't mean going around in circles in Earth orbit.
The science hook, in any case, invariably fails because, short of finding giant Clarkeian monoliths floating in space, the research that is done is yawningly invisible to everyone but the participants.
Science will happen in space, just as science happened when the aircraft industry built a global capability in the 30's and 40's. Remember, this, though, PanAm didn't start flying paying passengers across oceans for research purposes.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'd like to explore more of our planets, maybe start a moonbase or two. But I really don't think any manned expedition will be anywhere near self-sufficent. Better robots that can do some real work (not just dial home and tell about it) to that end would be great. For one thing, I really really wish they would put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. Then we could listen for E.T. and don't have any interferance with anything except maybe a few Voyager probes. Not like SETI which really has a problem with this.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What's all this "in Soviet Russia" crap?
I think that rather than having the station sit empty out there, we should send up harmless monkeys up there to conduct experiments. We could even give them funny names from the movie "Gladiator", like Maximus, Lucius and Cornelius.
Or the other way around - Lance pays Russia $20M to go to space camp.
Then, NASA pays Russia $41M to cancel Lance's flight.
Russia pays Lance his $20M back, and keeps $20M for a net breakeven, and the remaining $1M is split as a nice kickback. Russia gets the money, and NASA gets to claim that space still ain't ready for the private sector. Win/Win if you're in NASA.
So, best-case scenario, we have to wait until 2006 to use the budget savings to fund real space science? Shit.
(Is there any way we can get them to deorbit the albatross faster? And while we're at it, could we arrange to have a chunk land on each remaining member of the the Shuttle fleet, thereby forcing us to develop a cheap heavy-lift capability or next-generation propulsion system, rather than spending $400M per launch when and if we decide to return to space? :-)
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.
You know its easy to say the space station is a boondoggle and not worth throwing any more money at, after all its a big target that has very little success to shield it from criticisim. I hear many people not to much against bringing the crew home and letting it stay un manned for a while....
So how much money does that save ? The current cost expenditure of space station is not the station crew. The cost of the crew itself is negligible. The majority of the costs are tied up in LAUNCH costs, a small additional cost (realtively speaking) would be the manned operations centers for station ops and hardware production.
However, if station is to ever continue and or be used intermitently these centers and personel are not going anywhere as they will be needed or they will have to be re-trained if they are let go.
Shuttle cunstruction missions would still be going up so no money saved there on the launches OR the hardware. In addition shuttle missions become more complex and less productive because in addition to any construction needs a great deal of time is going to be soaked up in housekeeping chores. The ultimate ability of the shuttle crew to even perform its construction tasks would be placed in serious jepordy if even some very basic difficulites arise in bringing the station back online after being shut down. So not only are shuttle launch costs not decreased they are quite possibly increased and are deffiantly more at risk of being unable to be completed succesfully thus necessitating another launch. Don;t forget almost all of the construction missions are of a sequntial nature and CANNOT be done out of turn thus a construction mission failure would push back all subsequent shuttle launches. God forbid what if it happend twice ?
So about all you really cut are the progess and soyuz launch costs which are very small in comparison to shuttle launches. So the cost savings overall are small and the risk of completly trashing the station are greatly increased without a crew on board to deal with failiing equipment as it occurs. In particular the savings to NASA are NILL NOTHING NADDA ZIP ZERO... the savings only really effect the Russian space agency and its not really even savings since if you take them at their word this isn't a matter of not spending money they have but one of not spending money they do not have. Thats avoidence of debt not saving money.
This is a classic example to me of penny wise and pound foolish. Folks we are past halfway, past the point of no return where station is concerned. The service life of station is listed at 15 years and the clock started ticking in 2000. Extending the service life is HIGHLY linked to keeping up with any possible issues that arise WHEN they happen and that is mostly an ability only a 24/7/365 crew can provide. If you think station is useless and start talking about going to mars instead I point to you the fact that station has barely been in orbit long enough to have even made it to mars and back and it has certainly not survive on its own ( and could not ) without periodic resupply which YOU WILL NOT HAVE ON A MARS MISSION.
Station is a non sexy reality of living in space.. its like the farmers that came after columbus, they made the trip but they got no glory.. just a hard as hell life making it on a frontier. Station probably can't even function as a stand alone outpost. It is reliant on hundreds of ground controlers for its day to day operations, something that simply will not be practical with a mars mission due to comminication delays of 20-30 minutes or more. If station never presents a scientific discovery worth putting it up there for it will still be worthwhile in the aerospace technology of long term survival in space.
As for the science in particular... people are acting like its a surprise that to date ISS has largely been a bust as a science platform. People core complete is not scheduled untill 2006 which is the earliest a 6 man crew was EVER slated to be on station... and it was always stated that science would largely be secondary until such time as there was a sufficient crew on board and the construction phase was complete. Right now running science up there is like running it in a lab before its done being built where the scientists have to do the damn building. So at least don't judge it as compared to a fisnished and established lab here on earth. Perhaps it will never proove to be as important a place of reasearch as say MIT, or CALTECH or the SERBONNE but so far it is the only place where microgravity experiments can take place for durations exceeding a couple of weeks.
Take a long hard REALISTIC look at station. It has its faults, thats given. But bailing on it now would be far worse than biting the bullet and forging ahead. The costs incurred to date will have to be incurred again if we let it go to waste, perhaps it is a limited and unworthy construction but it beats nothing and thats what we have if we let it deteriorate into a useless hunk of junk.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Personally, I'd rather see the ISS boosted up to geostationary orbit (a herculean task, I realize) and used as a staging area for construction of a space elevator. That way some good might come of that orbiting albatross.
Great idea. I wonder how much more quickly a space elevator could be manufactured with that additional weight in orbit.
Could they modify some/most of the area in the ISS to produce the carbon nanotubes necissary for the cable?
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
...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.
Good point, however, the question would then be, is the "longer than 17 days" problem worth keeping the ISS operational as a scientific research station (with all of the appropriate overhead for such an experiment), or is this something which could be done on a specifically-built, standalone unit (or, less realistically, an experiment which could be passed from shuttle mission to shuttle mission)?
I guess this brings up questions like: how 'long-term' is a long-term microgravity experiment? What is the practical aim of the 'long-term'ness (meaning, let's make sure it's within a reasonably short/long amount of time without either being either unsafe or ridiculously academic). Also, what is the general weight (pun!) of microgravity in the list of considerations surrounding space travel?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
IMHO, carefully allocated government support of the aerospace industry is a good investment since being a leader in any industry is good for the United States' ability to compete in a global economy. The shuttle, the hypersonic "space plane" (abandoned), other launch systems, and remote planetary exploration are examples of truly challenging projects. "We choose to go to the moon... and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
ISS does not seems to capture the same sense of challenge.
The US seems to be losing its "edge" in the development of space related technologies that it worked so hard to acquire during the 60's. This has allowed Russia, ESA, and now even China, India, and Japan to gain significant ground. Similar things are happening to the US semiconductor, supercomputer, and aircraft industries. That is not good for "our" future economy.
Personally, I am very disappointed by NASA's decision to mostly abandon research on the air-breathing hypersonic "space plane" since it would have led to significant advances in materials, fluid dynamics, computational physics, aerospace engineering, and would ultimately lead to lowered launch costs. (It clearly had a significant utility for military purposes as well.)
ISS keeps many people employed, but a lot of those bright folks could find work on other projects.
What is the feeling about it inside NASA?
Then the terrorists have already won.
And if you think I'm being flippant, consider two things.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Not to suggest that throwing money at poverty will necessarily eliminate it, but I thought I'd point out that you and I are both likely from the world's elite in terms of wealth. To go on about not having the internet, well... if you were spending what short life you and your family had in starvation, I wonder how much money you'd think the space program/internet/microcomputer revolution was really worth. We may never totally eliminate poverty, but considering that vast majority of the world's population lives in that state, let's keep an eye on where we fit into the global scheme of things while we mentally evaluate our dollar's worth.
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.
As outlined here, they've spent $42 billion and just brought back 42 soybena seed pods. YOu do the math.
1. Chemical rockets are primitive. If were ever going to get serious, we need ion/high energy drive technology. This technology exists and it was used to power the deep space 1 probe. (currently it's the fastest space craft ever flown by NASA) However, it needs to grow up by about 10 generations. Also, with each generation (or two) it needs to be tested in space for a long duration. Now, if were currently at generation #5 and were doing long duration testing, research shouldn't come to a halt until the testing is complete! I think that the ISS should be a test bed for the first space dock so we could build bigger, modular ships that aren't intended for any type of terrestian use.
Currently, chemical rockets are the only way to get off the surface, but once in space, they should be dispenced with immediately.
2. Radiation. Studies have already shown that if we tried to go to mars, half the crew would be dead from radiation by the time they got there. We need a material that's lightweight and will stop radiation. There was an article a couple weeks ago on slashdot about a fabric that had these properties. This is critical research, that needs to have money dumped into it like an old house. Without some way of stopping radiation (or then generating a magnetic field like the earth has) we'll never explore the stars.
3. Better, lighter space suits. Imagine your in space for 6 months, you land on mars and now you've got to put on a 100+ pound space suit. Now granted the gravity's a bit less on mars, but your still going to hurting. Not to mention, these space suits needs to be durable and easily repairable. Now I know that sounds like a tall order, but I think some creative research into new fabrics + better battery/fuel cell technology could bridge the gap.
4. The shuttle is at best a reliable lifter, but it's expensive and requires alot of maintaince. Money and research needs to be done upfront on an improved lifting vechile that's in the same class as the shuttle. It should have the following design critera:
a. reuseable. From touch down, it should with a minimum of effort to be relaunchable in 1-2 months, if not less.
b. afforable. The whole system should cost in the range of a 747. This would allow for a fleet of lifting vechiles.
c. unlimited lifespan. The shuttle was only supposed to be a stepping stone to something better. Hence it wasn't designed for 20 years of maintance. This new "shuttle2" should be designed so that there would be an unlimited maintance window. The design should be modular enough that systems can be replaced without having retrofit the whole thing.
d. long term orbit. The shuttle2 should be capable of being prepped for long term docking with space stations and orbital construction facilites. Part of it's modualr design should be that it would be capable of supplying and or using power/telemetry/vitals with any systems that it is docked with.
5. Fusion power. Now, I think fusion is possible. It's a way's off, but I think that it's capable of being accomplished. Once we have a reliable way of creating fusion, work should be done to make it suitable for use in space. Concievebly, it itially should be designed as a power block that could be used in place of solar power, where huge amounts of power needed.
I'm sure people can think of a lot more, but in terms of space research, these are what I think are important...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
of course he probably didn't pay up because his taxes were so high because of all the space program funding.
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.
:-)
That's it, I can't stand it any longer. Stop the piracy of music, the race for the stars must continue!
I can't believe that he didn't have to pay upfront. Or was it an "If I don't reach the ISS(*), I don't have to pay?" (*) for whatever reason
bash$
Half of the things that need to be figured out for manned interplanetary missions need to be figured out in the weightlessness of space. The biosphere gives some great implications as to what might be needed for self-sufficiency and psychology of isolation, but most of what's gained can not be directly transferred to life in space because of the extremely different environment of weightlessness and compactness necessary.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
The only thing out there is a bunch of ROCKS!
There! I said it! Give me your worst you lonely geologists!
Why not research something which is actually interesting, like the oceans? We don't know SQUAT about them!
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Is anyone else disgusted by NASA's complete lack of any sort of enthusiasm or conviction towards any goals at all?
When I was a kid, I would read the sci-fi novels that spurned my interest in the space program, watch the movies and shows that showed great battleships and starfleets and such, and I wanted to go up. Badly. I loved space.
When I found out about NASA, came to realize what they had done in the past (moon) and what they were planning for the future, I was excited as hell. I was enthused, I wanted to be a part of it.
Now, after time and time again of NASA screwing up missions, calling off projects, backing out of research opportunities, doing a half a million things all at once, none of them with any decent research behind it, I find myself slipping more and more back into the book world of the sci-fi, because I can't get my fix from realistic space exploration anymore.
Isn't that sad? That the dreams of a young boy once matched by a space administration of a country that used to care are now only allowed to run free in the confines of someone else's creation. Instead of seeing potential all I see is a huge cloud of red tape, policies, and unmotivated people who have forgotten to dream.
Quit, NASA. You've lost the edge, if you ever had it at all. Humankind didn't advance because we sat back and made policy that it should. We dared to dream the impossible. Give the idea of space back to those of us who give a crap and take your hateful dream-killers with you.
Blog,Twitter
The greatest question of all time is: "Are we alone?"
...and yes I know the dark side of the moon isn't always dark, but we'd want to cut down on earthshine too probably... ...and imagine a beo [smack
That's really the other ultimate goal of space exploration, isn't it? (The first goal is to find us a new place to live after the earth is used up).
But there is such a simple way to answer the question: Take all the cash we are using on rediculous stuff like the ISS and:
BUILD A GIANT TELESCOPE IN SPACE OR ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.
And I mean BIG.
One so Hugeomegagigantic that it can actually SEE the surface of extra solar earth sized planets in detail to pick out cities, roads, and lights.
And then, if we saw with our own eyes that there was another civilization -- imagine the space program we'd start to have then.
Grok. If I thought I'd get three times the science out of 'em, I'd like to see NASA's budget tripled.
Problem is, you give NASA three times the budget, and you get the Shuttle, the ISS, and the GoreSat (Triana, the thing that was supposed to beam back pretty pictures of Earth so that schoolkids in the third world could see what a pretty blue ball we lived on, and go on to live in ecological harmony, or something like that.)
Since NASA ain't gonna get its budget tripled, the only way to free up the needed funds for science is to deorbit the ISS and scrap the Shuttle. The resulting savings can be used into building robot probes and launching them on existing lift vehiciles (Atlas/Delta/Ariane/Energia), and/or working on ion engines and nuclear propulsion for deep-space missions.
What would you rather see pictures of? The ISS as a vehicle to justify the continued existence of the Shuttle, or scrap 'em both for a Europa orbiter, followed by an RTG-powered Europa lander that'll melt its way through the crust? A flyby of Pluto/Charon, launched 5 years late, but still getting there before the atmosphere freezes due to its spiffy nuclear rocket. A pair of telescopes gliding out of the plane of the ecliptic on ion engines and doing serious-ass-baseline-interferometry. And in the meantime, a dozen Sojourner-scale Mars projects, at least one of which should be able to get past the Martian Space Defence Screen.
Fer chrissakes, it's not like there's any technical reasons why we can't do one science project per Congressional district, just like we do with Shuttle/ISS. (And there are plenty of reasons why splitting up the Shuttle/ISS contracts this way sucks ass. "Sorry, redesign the engines to be small enough that the parts can fit through the train tunnels from Pork District Foo to Pork District Bar" - I don't know if that one's true or not, but it's certainly dumb enough to be true.)
You're assuming that if the ISS was canned, all of the money would be redirected to other NASA projects. That's not necessarily the case. Tax cuts and new weapons systems (when the US's military superiority over the rest of the world is already so overwhelming to be almost ridiculous) seem to be the Republican priorities. Not to say anything would be better under the Democrats - they'd throw the money at subsidising drugs for old people.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Idiot moderators, the parent is NOT a troll. The article posted was indeed from Nov 26th. You might call it a flamebait for the cardinal sin of criticising Slashdot but it is not a troll. Please learn to moderate before doing it again.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Well, for a Canadian, I suppose that route makes the most sense. ;)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Joe Blow: "Why, look at that there NASA! It do take up all those vauuuuable dollurs that could be used ta fight terrorists and blow up them there Irakis! Yessir, I don't want none of my money payin' for them eggheads!"
I kind of think Kennedy's legacy of spending money on science and work that will benefit mankind in the long run is dead. Instead, we've got traditional Bush warhawking. Yahoo!
May we never see th
NASA Considers Abandoning ISS
Posted by michael on Thursday November 28, @12:13AM
from the okay-who-took-my-parachute dept. 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."
And it was on the front page of Slashdot on the 28th Nov, citing the same MSNBC article.
" NASA Considers Abandoning ISS
On Thursday November 28, @12:13AM with 543 comments..."
From memory J.A. Wheeler made some calculations some time ago that show that it is possible for species to continue to live forever in a universe that also cools and expands forever. The key is to hibernate at regular interval (that keep getting longer) and accumulate energy while doing so.
That's interesting. I'm tempted to look it up but I should really be studying for my physics final, and I doubt it has anything to do with QM.
Anyway, we're talking about billions of billions of years from now. The Sun will be history before this is an issue and the original poster is right. If humanity's descendants want to live forever at some point they'll have to move out.
I just don't see either as something we should be even remotely worried about right now.
Is the submitter trying to say that the $20 million Lance Bass would have paid, would have saved the Russian Space Programm? I'm not keen on the totals to run the program or what it costs to send Progress ships to the ISS, but it seems to me that $20 million wouldn't be enough. Maybe a stop gap for 2 months but not enough. And if the Russians want to go that route, why aren't more people lining up to go? Certainly not all billionaires are happy with terrestial fun and games?
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
For running the space station's operations, there should be robots of some kind. They don't need to be capable of any intelligence - 'astronauts' on the ground could control them. 250 miles is pretty close for light.
You still need some humans occasionally to study zero-G physiology, but why do you need humans to move lab gear around every morning?
Yes, there would be some engineering to do, but this is the good kind of stuff to trickle down to society.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)