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A Brief History of the Space Station
HyperbolicParabaloid writes "A story about the history of the International Space Station, and its utility or non-utility for space exploration. One interesting insight: after the Challenger explosion it became obvious that we would never refuel a rocket with volatile fuel at a space station because the threat to the station would be so great. And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
I have worked at NASA since before the first shuttle launch. I will post in my journal some added insight to this after work. Obviously, I can not post from work.
What I post will be my opinion only, and not that of Nasa or my employer. Look this evening, around 8 pm central time.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
From Glory to Sideshow: The Space Station's Story
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: February 3, 2004
In 1989, when the first President George Bush announced his plan to send American astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, he called the proposed space station "our critical next step in all our space endeavors." It would be a base in the weightlessness of space where big rockets would be assembled and blast off on voyages of exploration: "a new bridge between the worlds."
Now, with the outpost hurtling through space 240 miles above Earth and with 16 nations struggling to complete the most challenging engineering project of all time, the station has suddenly become a $100 billion dead end.
The current President Bush made no mention of it as a steppingstone in his speech on Jan. 14 reviving the call for missions to the Moon and Mars. Instead, he spoke of it as a site of biomedical research and an "obligation" that the United States had to help finish.
Mr. Bush gave no clear indication how, or whether, the United States planned to use the station after its prospective completion in 2010. With NASA focusing its efforts and its budget on the Moon and Mars, the station's prospects are uncertain.
"I'm worried that they're going to cut off the space shuttle before we have another vehicle that can fly," said Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who is the only current member of Congress to have flown in space. "And that will drastically reduce space station use."
What happened? How did the station go from star to sideshow? Experts cite a litany of factors: cost overruns, design changes, new perceptions of technical risk after the shuttle disasters and shifting national priorities. For instance, orbital changes to accommodate Russia after the cold war made it harder to use the station as a launching pad.
The tale has no real bad guys, the experts say, but many false promises.
"It was always a steppingstone to the stars," said Dr. Howard E. McCurdy, a space historian at American University. "It was sold as all things to all people."
Dr. Alex Roland, a former NASA historian now at Duke University, said a moral of the story was that Congress and the public needed to work harder to hold the space agency accountable for its dreams.
"They keep getting trapped in their own rhetoric," he said. "They're willing victims of it. But as public policy it's a disaster because it feeds unrealistic expectations."
At the start of the space age, visionaries invariably saw outposts in earth orbit as jumping-off points. Dr. Wernher von Braun, in a famous 1952 article, told of a huge inhabited wheel. "From this platform," he said, "a trip to the Moon itself will be just a step."
In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" featured a giant outpost in Earth orbit that was a way station to the Moon and Jupiter.
Finally, after decades of fantasies, President Ronald Reagan proposed in 1984 that the United States actually build a space station. It too was envisioned as a hub for colonies on the Moon and Mars. For Mr. Reagan, the station also represented a way to challenge the Soviet Union. In the cold war, Moscow made human outposts a hallmark of its space activities.
But Congress did not vote construction money to pay for either Mr. Reagan's vision or that of the first President Bush. Not until 1993 did a new a new vision for space take shape, this one emphasizing harmony over rivalry. That September, President Bill Clinton announced that Russia had joined the station effort as a full partner. Its giant rockets were seen as a boon for the project and a good backup if the shuttles should again fail catastrophically, as the Challenger did in 1986.
"One world, one station," said Daniel S. Goldin, NASA's administrator at the time.
There was just one problem. For the Russian rockets to reach the grand unified station, it would need a different orbit.
Shuttles flying out of Florida usually go into an or
Organic free-range music... yum!
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Hmm, it's in near earth orbit to accomodate the Russians.
I thought they needed extra fans to accomodate the wind passed by the Russian cosmonots after eating all that dodgy Pizza hut grub.
Jumping off the space station will not take you very far very fast. You will pretty much just stay in orbit with the ISS. By definition, it is in orbit. If per chance you DID jump off, in the direction of earth, then it would probably take about a year or so for your orbit to decay enough to re-enter earth's atmosphere.
gus
.. if only.
do you people recall those many sci-fi movies and books made during the cold war which feature teams coined of american and russian heroes usually working together on a spacecraft or such...?
obviously, it is not that easy.
Aure entuluva!
Here.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
The first thing I built wasn't a scale model of the Effiel tower or a working crane.
The space station can run longterm experiments in microgravity while we teach ourselves about working *really* high iron.
In my own life I too look at how things might be perfect all the time. But I don't expect them to be so. And so it is with all endevours. But somehow this one alone should stand out in singular fortuitious perfection?
Less crack more science.
The station is in an inclined orbit of 50 degrees, because Baikonur, the Russians launch site, lies at about that latitude. It takes a lot more energy to launch a shuttle to that inclination than its normal 30 degrees. There are also fewer launch opportunities. One benefit of having the station at a high inclination is for earth observation. It flies over a lot of ground. But it is an expensive way to take pictures isn't it? The station was a bad idea pursued to the bitter end. Credit George W. Bush for changing NASA's focus on it.
an ill wind that blows no good
Why doesn't NASA just go one step further and establish something on the moon. Surely that would be an even better jumping off point.
Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
I enjoyed reading this piece over on Pravda about how America faked moon landing & how Russia is just The Best!(tm)
Well excuse me, but as the Russians are about the only reason we have the ISS in the first place, it seems a little stupid to go complaining about having to accommodate them.
One interesting insight: after the Challenger explosion it became obvious that we would never refuel a rocket with volatile fuel at a space station because the threat to the station would be so great.
Presumably, refueling tanks would be tacked on the ISS, not kept inside the pressurized sections for storage. Therefore, unless the tank violently busts apart (unlikely, a steady leak is far more probable, even in case of a collision), there's no danger of the fuel leaking out and roasting the space station to oblivion. More likely, there'd be a leak, frozen fuel would be dumped in space, and the tank would empty more or less fast, possibly forcing the controllers to stop the ISS from spinning and/or reorient it. There is no such thing as volatile fuel in an atmosphere-less environment.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Russian parts, American parts... ALL MADE IN TAIWAN
Ok back to work.
And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?
While this may be true, the ISS was already to be in a horribly useless orbit to begin with, Russians or not.
Because of a weakness in the shuttle and the immense weight of the station, the station is in a perpetually decaying orbit. That is, to say that the shuttle, each time it docks with the station, has to fire its boosters while docked in order to push it back to a higher orbit. If the shuttle doesn't go back to the statio within the next few years, the ISS will go the way of SkyLab. (The Progress and Soyez ships do not have enough power to push the ISS high enough.)
Why put the station in such a poor, low orbit? Because the shuttle can't fly that high.
A recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.
"Why put the station in such a poor, low orbit? Because the shuttle can't fly that high."
It's not in a low orbit because of the shuttle, it's in a low orbit because it's manned and therefore cannot go higher without being either in or beyond the Van Allen belts: in the belts you'll kill the crew real fast, outside the belts you'll kill the crew the next time there's a solar eruption that emits a lot of radiation. No manned station is going to be much higher than ISS without a lot of radiation shielding.
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
I'm sure the astronauts currently living on the station are quite thankful for this as the United States does not have another vehicle and they would all be dead if Russia could not reach them now that the shuttle has been grounded for a year. Should China and/or Japan enter into this endeavor from a launch vehicle point of view, being accessible is hardly a detriment to the utility of the station.
Clearly, the utility of being able to reach the station from Asia for existing missions far outweighs the utility of using the station as a departure point for missions that have yet to be defined. Besides, the station design is that of a scientific laboratory, not of an orbital drydock. Having already ruled out refueling, can you imagine constructing a transport vehicle in the middle of that tangle of trusses and solar panels? If both construction and refueling are out of the picture, what's left? A snack bar? Seriously, that thing isn't even designed to handle an espresso machine.
A lot of concessions and compromises have kept the space station from realizing it's potential.
Yeah, "concessions and compromises" like, say, allowing redundancy in the type of supply vehicles so that if, say, the shuttle fleet was grounded, Russian Soyuz supply ships would still be able to get supplies and replacement crews to the ISS, as well as getting them back.
Yeah, I can see how those "concessions and compromises" are a major bummer. Not.
If you want to blame that shit on someone blame it on the penny-pinching politicians who scaled back the ISS's scope to cut costs.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I think you mean escape velocity.
:)
Interesting question though
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
You sure they're a bunch of rocket scientists with cold, hard facts and plenty of good data and insight, and not just complaining because of a political agenda - ie; it's election time and they're running a slurry of "look how the conservatives are wasting our money for broken stuff when they could be giving prescriptions to old people" articles?
Who cares if its a jumping off point for anywhere? It was never intended to be, AFAIK. It was never meant to be an interplanetary gas station. It's an orbiting research laboratory, plain and simple.
It's value to the scientific community is tremendous, it allows a ton of research into weightlessness, living in space, etc. That's its purpose.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Space development is a big bootstrap problem, and the only way to get a virtuous cycle of development and payoff going is to prime the pump with lots of cash. What happened was that funding levels stayed at a level below "critical mass", but have been maintained long enough that it still adds up to a lot of money. Unfortunatly it's been frittered away in a long string of abortive, wasted efforts (Skylab, Freedom, NASP, X-33, X-34, SLI, OSP, etc etc.) If they had just STUCK with any one of those long enough to actually make it work, instead of abandoning it as soon as the first development challenge came along, MAYBE we'd actually be somewhere by now...
As for the decision to work with the Russians on ISS; if we hadn't done that there wouldn't BE a space station. We'd still be on the ground. Notice how the Russians currently supply: the core module, propulsive attitude control, orbit maintenance, life support functions (O2, CO2 removal, water, food, sleep locations), crew transport, the EVA equipment being used, a major part of the power, basic telecom, and some other things. The U.S. supplies: a mostly unused lab module (complete with air leak), some power, a $700 million connector node, high data-rate comm and a lot of paperwork requirements.
As for NASA's progressively more and more conservative attitude; that spells the death knell for actually doing anything. If you can't transfer fuel in space because it might be danegrous, then you won't actually ever go anywhere beyond LEO or maybe the Moon (in limited cases). Captain Obvious says: space has risks. You have to just learn how to deal with them, not just sit back and decree you won't ever run them. At least not if you want to actually accomplish something... duh.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
The Russians *do* have a shuttle, or at least they did, but they never scraped up enough money to fly it. What ever happened to Buran?
(I'll be mildly amused if it turns out to be Russians who create the materials needed for an orbital tower. Hmmm, it *was* their idea....)
Terminal velocity is the maximum speed you'd reach if you fell off the ladder at the top. Gravity would be pulling you down, air friction would be pushing you up, eventually they balance and you reach a maximum speed. In a vaccuum you'd keep accellerating till you hit the ground.
You're talking about escape velocity.
Yes, you would, that's the idea of the space elevator that's brought up from time to time. But you'd be expending energy constantly on your way up.
Think of it more that you fire a bullet straight up, how fast would it have to be going to leave earths gravitational well? You expend your energy all at once - like the big engine on a rocket. That's escape velocity.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
To escape the Earth's gravity and not be forcibly pulled back, you would have to leave at about 25,000 MPH, or about 7 mi/sec. That's a lot of energy to move a moon shuttle from Earth orbit. Note that it took the entire, very large third stage of the Saturn V rocket just to move the LM and CSM to the moon. If you have small payloads, like space probes, it's not so bad. But economically, there's a way to spread things around.
A space station still works great as a waypoint. It just wouldn't be practical to start your adventure to anywhere except the Moon from there. So, create a new shuttle that can better move men and supplies with much greater abort options (hint: Fly the shuttle by a new next-gen plane to near-space [62 mi) then pop the bastard from there with far less needed fuel and still keep an abort option as both orbiter and booster plane are glideable or have powered-flight capacity).
Such a station would indeed have at least two (backups, remember?) moon shuttles, flyable only in space. What? Fuel? Who says you need to use liquid fuels? Try solids that can be lit and relit in space. The fuel cores could be sent on shuttles without as much worry about volatility than liquids. There is one way to stop a burn in space--stop the oxidizer (you're in vacuum, figure it out). Hypogolic fuels (ones that dont need an igniter--they burn when two substances touch) are still a nice bet as well, and may be safer to upload in separate trips.
Let the moon itself be the fuel depot, optionally--there is probably a way to produce what is needed there.
From the moon, with its puny 1.47 mi/sec escape velocity, trips to anywhere work great and require less energy to achieve. Most importantly, astronauts would have TWO in-space safe-haven return locales in case things get ratty somewhere along the Earth-Moon transits.
Once you're in route to Mars, however, you better be able to make oxygen from a can of Spam, because rescue options would be pretty sparse.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
Since THIS space station was never intended to be a "jumping off point", why is that a problem? Since the Russian capsule is the only way to get people there and back for now, accomodating thems seems like a good decision at this point. If we get to build a space station intended for "jumping off" in the future, it will be built in the required orbit, and I hope Russia, Japan, China, and lots of European countries join in on it!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
For instance, orbital changes to accommodate Russia after the cold war made it harder to use the station as a launching pad.
Originally the ISS was going to serve as the garage for exploration of the solar system. But, political reasons for collaborating with the russians ("let's be friends to show everyone that the cold war is over") forced to change the orbit four out of the sola system plane to let the russians, from their higher latitude launch pads, reach it and help a bit. The ISS became from one of the greatest scientific endevours to one of the most expensive diplomatic tokens ever.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Terminal velocity is the fastest speed at which you can fall. Air resistance prevents you from going any faster under gravity alone, so the exact velocity depends on your shape and size. Yes, you do mean escape velocity. Escape velocity is the speed necessary to completely escape Earth's gravity, NOT just to reach orbit. If you reached escape velocity, you would fly off away from the earth entirely, not end up in orbit. As to the ladder problem, the speed you get is the speed of the ladder being whipped around the earth like a rock on a string. The higher you go, the faster the end of the ladder will whip around. If you ran the ladder all the way up to geosynchronous orbit (the height where an object orbits at the same speed as earth's rotation) you could just hop off and be in that orbit. If you got off lower or higher, you wouldn't be going at the right speed to maintain that orbit and would fall to earth or rise to a higher orbit. Incidentally, another problem is the strength of the ladder. Each separate bit is at a separate height, so each is going too slow or too fast for the orbit at that height and so wants to lead or lag behind the rest of the ladder. The stresses are too much for any ordinary material - that's why people who discuss space elevators talk about using carbon nanotube materials!
How does the Challenger explosion connect with orbital refuelling? I suppose the ISS is a lousy place to store SRBs on cold days, but (a) the SRBs are thrown away before you reach orbit, and (b) one day in vacuum is as cold as another. Naturally fuel storage and transfer wouldn't take place inside the habitat, anymore than the corner gas station keeps its gasoline in jugs stacked in the office. Of course, the gas station is surrounded by oxidizer and the space station isn't, so fuel safety is a somewhat different proposition in orbit....
Why are people questioning the energy cost of hauling fuel and interplanetary spacecraft to the moon for launching? That's the dumb way to do it. You make the fuel and the spacecraft *on the moon*. The whole point of starting from orbit, or from the moon, is to avoid hauling hundreds of tons of stuff up from ground level in the first place. It's been the plan for 50 years or more.
1) Once the U.S. congress cut the funding for the habitaion module, the ISS officially became an orbiting pork barrel. It takes 2.5 people to maintain the station, and with 3 aboard that's .5 peopple for science. The hab module would have accomodated 7 scientists.
2) On fuel-in-space and There is no such thing as volatile fuel in an atmosphere-less environment.
Let's keep looking at this: Volatility doesn't mean simply explosive, and it is true that fuel requires an oxidizer in space, however, here are some problems:
a) Fuel is "sticky". Not sticky like glue, but when it comes into contact with things in microgravity, it stays there.
b) Fuel is caustic and corrosive. There are so many things that we do not want fuel sticking to, such as gaskets, joints of mechanisms, windows, experiments, instruments, and space suits because
c) Much of the fuel for satellites and such are not simply liquid oxigen and nitrogen, but stuff like Hydrazine, which has too many immediate dangers to list. In short, a small amount coming in through an air lock after an EVA could asphyxiate everyone on the station, be ignited by static, etc.
d) In case all that wasn't enough - just how can we approach the ISS if there is a cloud of fuel around it*? We can't fire any thrusters (with their own oxidizers) into a cloud like that.
Ok I'll zip it now.
kulakovich
* Yes, I know, there is already a cloud of bits and pieces and ice and etc. But that is nothing compared to a fuel leak.
Okay, Mir was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It had guidance systems, attitude control, life support, power systems, everything you need for a long-term space vehicle. It also had mould, dents, leaks and a shredded solar panel, but we're not that bothered about that.
Start building the ISS as a set of add-on modules to Mir. Take advantage of Mir's facilities until you get the chance to replace them: run off the existing power bus until you get the replacement solar panels sent up (or, preferably, some RTGs). Use Mir's life support until the air recycler is installed. etc.
Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Mir will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as living space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, Mir was ludicrously valuable.
But no, Mir went down in flames and the ISS went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that the ISS will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough, the commercial stations will be eclipsing it.
It is widely known, but little commented on, that the manned space program being conducted by the U.S. and Russia is a collosal waste of money that is producing little in the way of meaningful scientific or technological research. Rather the I.S.S. is primarily justified within the policy making organs of the U.S. government as a means to keep experienced Russian engineers employed and thus minimize the risk of them being employed by a nation with a desire for interconinental balistic missile technology and who are reckless enough to use it.
Basically, the manned space program in the U.S. and the USSR has become a giant welfare project for aerospace engineers.
While in the short term this is a cheap way to slow the inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems by increasinlg underdeveloped and recklessly led nation states, in the long run it is a losing game:
First, because the spread of technology is inevitable, and secondly because the field of aerospace engineering is distorted, with many more engineers seeking training in schools than there is a true economic demand for. These people are not only diverted from turning their talents to more productive areas, but later in life will lobby to keep the pork coming.
President Bush's proposals are an even bigger waste. I wouldn't mind if they were to be funded by voluntary donations, but the thought that people will be taxed to fund this boondogle when they already have to work so hard to make ends meet irritates me. I would like to see government getting out of the fields of scientific research & space travel. Let us keep our tax dollars and spend it on the charities that we want to fund. Let us pick our priorities. I think the results would be quite surprising to people who think that government support is required for these projects.
Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity you will reach if you start from stationary and are accellerated by gravity through the atmosphere. Obviously it's a function of mass, aerodynamics, atmospheric pressure and strength of gravity.
On earth we can assume gravity is fairly constant and pressure is dependent on your altitude. If the pressure is zero (because you're in space) then mass and aerodynamics don't count because everything accellerates at the same rate, but in the atmosphere, something with a lot of mass and good aerodynamics (i.e. low drag) will have a higher terminal velocity than something with very little mass and poor aerodynamics (i.e. high drag). Think of the difference between dropping a feather and a rock.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Click
:-(
ISS was never intended to be a "jumping off point" to anywhere. The move to 51.6 to accomodate the russians was a political move. Thank Clinton, it was his bright idea to bring in the russians as full partners in the hope their missle techs wouldn't go somewhere else...like say Iran. Given ISS' mission (microgravity research, NOT a spacedock quit watching star trek) any orbit will do, but KSC's due east 28 degrees would be best case in terms of payload.
I actually turned down a chance to tour ISS elements in the processing facility.
Amusing ISS historical anecdote: While preparing to close the payload bay doors for the launch of Destiny (the US lab), it was discovered the camera on the elbow of the shuttle's robot arm came within an *inch* of the labs hull. Much hemming and hawwing, and I forget what the final solution was, but I think it's a little amusing that after all the billions had been spent, all the test had been done, they got an "awwwwwwcrap" at literally the 11th hour.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
I dont think the ISS orbit was chosen to accomodate Russians.
It takes the least amount of fuel to put something in orbit if said orbit at the the same angle as lattitude of the place you are launching from.
51.6 degrees (ISS orbit) is lattitude of Baikonur, Russian space port. The space station was started by launching large building blocks by Russian D1 boosters. I do not think there is an equivalent to those in US. So the choice of orbit was natural to maximize the available technology.
On a Mars trip you'd be carrying hundreds of tons of fuel for the return journey, and quite a few tons of supplies of various kinds. That alone makes a half-decent radiation shield for the trip from Earth to Mars... shielding on the way back would be more complicated.
Given its high orbital inclination, ISS isn't the ideal first stop, but it's still possible to go places. In a simulator, I've gone from ISS's orbit to the moon without changing inclination. It looks scary, but really it's no worse than any other trans-lunar-injection. As for fuel cost, well, the simulator gives you a huge fuel budget but the non-coplanar transfer orbit is still WAY cheaper than changing inclination before heading out! I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the cost is the same.
For a lunar-orbit-rondezvous mission, I can see one potential problem: the possibility of having to wait longer for a launch window from the surface to the command module.
All that said, I kind of like GWB's plan of jumping out of our commitment to ISS as soon as possible. Consider it an experiment in international space cooperation, more than a scientific platform. The experiment is over, lets learn what we can from it and move on.
The Buran flew once, 100% automated and unmanned from launch to landing, at the start of the 1990as iirc. After that, they decided that it was too costly and mothballed the 2 completed and 3 under construction. One is at the Russian National Space Museum, one is in Australia, and the 3 in construction were dismantled. The Energia booster flew a further 3 times, and hasnt been used since due to no need for it (It could have launched the ISS as it stands in 2 or 3 boosts, it could carry a lot.)
However, IANARS (I am not a research scentist), but I am unaware of any "flagship" research that ISS is conducting or will conduct in its present 3-person configuration, or even its "Core Complete" projected configuration. I think it's been said elsewhere, without the full build-out of 7 occupants (with at least 4 fully dedicated to science), it is of dubious scientific utility. What puzzles me is how politicials fail to realize that without the commitment to built it to this level of capability, its utility is kept at a bare minimum (about at the level of being able to say once a day or so, "Hey.. look, up in the sky, its the ISS!")
If we were to throw a few more Shuttle launches at the project, we could have a REAL laboratory. Instead, we have spam in a can inclined at 51.9 degrees. Gee whiz. Remind anyone of the fiasco in the early 70's of the USAF telling NASA what design specs to build into the Shuttle? Look how well that turned out.
What we need at NASA is a scientist-administrator who has the White House clout to back him up. Though O'Keefe is much better than his tyrannical predecessor Goldin, O'Keefe is an administrator-type bean counter. While NASA, from an institutional point of view, may have needed this "tough love" right now, ultimately, it must be given a scientific leadership as well, starting from the top.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Its all very nice talking about space stations the moon and mars etc but really , its all a bit pointless until a type of propulsion technology is
created than can get people off this planet as easily as an airliner taking off AND be used in space. Chemical fueled systems just don't cut
it and Ion engines are so underpowered as to be useless even in space (15 MONTHS just to get to the moon! Gimme a break!). What the solution is I don't know but
currently we're still at the space vehicle equivalent of a canoe , not even a 16th century galleon, and if we wish to start exploring space then we're going
to need something a damn site more useful than what we have at the moment.
Dude, chill. I took so long finding out how to get the google referrer that all the other stories were posted; when I started looking the article was 0/4. I suppose that makes me a karma whore, but if you check my history you'll see i'm recovering from a time when I forgot to post anon on a big bunch of crap penis jokes.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Okay, Motif was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It has widgets, programmers who know it, stability, and attitude (or was that altitude? I forget...) control too. It also has mould, dents, leaks, and a shredded-looking user interface, but we're not that bothered about that.
Start building GNOME as a set of add-on modules to Motif. Take advantage of Motif's facilities until you get the chance to replace them. Run off the existing codebase until you get the replacement interface set up. Use Motif's technical support pool until the documentation recycler is installed. etc.
Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Motif will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as scratch space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, those ancient electrons are ludicrously valuable.
But no, Motif went down in flames and GNOME went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that GNOME will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough (as if it isn't already), other commercial products will be eclipsing it.
ISS serves no scientific purpose with its current staff level. ISS serves no functional purpose with its current staff level. The crew has one job - keep it from falling apart. They are in fact custodians.
It doesn't matter that ISS is a failure in the conventional sense - it is a huge plus for Boeing who I am sure is billing the govt 2x or 3x on every billable task, since there is no meaningful competitor. Mars and the Moon projects will similarly sit alongside missile defense as the pet projects to keep military contractors in the black for the next half century.
Several studies supported the ISF, and some even pointed out that a manned presence (even a heart beating) in a microgravity environment would contaminate the microgravity environment.
It turned out that the desigh was so sensible, that many of the big aerospace contractors percieved it as a threat. An ISF could be placed into orbit for a cost of about $700 million (vs the billions for the station) and would be an inexpensive (compared to the ISS) paltform to screen processes for space manufacturing. If and when an application was found, the operation would become self financing.
To make a long story short, there are dangers when trying to find a place among the hogs feeding at the federal money trough. The new company was stomped to the ground and eventually went away.
There is now talk about abandoning the ISS to redirect big $$$ for the mood and Mars exploration. A permanent manned predence in space is too dangerous and expensive to maintain.
Wherever you go, there you are.
It's obvious to me that there are plenty of safety precautions that can be used to allow refueling of spacecraft at a space station.
(1) Use binary fuels. E.G, LH/LOX. On Earth liquid hydrogen is seriously flammable, and liquid oxygen will make other things ignite. In space, liquid hydrogen will find no oxidizer to make it burn, and liquid oxygen will disperse into vacuum too quickly to make objects around it burn very well.
(2) Use breakaway tethers. The other major hazard with using volatile fuels is that fuel components from a punctured tank may jet away, imparting kinetic energy to its source. An incident like this with a spacecraft or fuel storage tank hard-docked to a space station might potentially deorbit both. By attaching both fuel reservoir and spacecraft (while fueling) to the station with a breakaway tether, this danger is significantly reduced.
Although the ISS has been marketed from time to time as a "jumping off point", it's not really designed to be one.
Even if we did have a properly designed way station, in the right orbit, at the right inclination, there's an entire infrastructure that doesn't exist. To truly get good use out of a way station, you need specialized space craft, rather than a general purpose pickup truck.
For example, there are very different mission requirements for getting personnel into low earth orbit as opposed to material. It doesn't make any sense to try and use one vehicle, like the shuttle, for both. Material can withstand greater acceleration than people, without the need for life support. So why not have different lifters for people and parts?
Also, any craft that travel from the earth to orbit have certain needs based on the fact that they travel through the atmosphere, and have to reenter that atmosphere. Aerodynamic design, heat shields, etc. These are design features that aren't really anything except for dead weight when you're trying to go from low earth orbit to high earth orbit.
A space tug designed specifically to go from low orbits to high orbits could probably do the job a lot better, and more safely.
High earth orbit also makes a lot more sense as an assembly point. Why would you want to put all your goodies together over the course of time when you still have so much gravity well to climb up out of?
Low earth orbit is also full of junk. I don't know how many pieces of space garbage they're currently tracking in LEO, but I know there's a bunch of it. Why not have your assembly point a little farther out where there's less stuff to put a hole in your mars spaceship?
Of course, if you go out a useful distance, you'll need radiation shielding, a lot more than what the ISS has.
If you're going to be assembling larger craft for manned interplanetary missions, you'll need room to store all your stuff, whether it be vehicle components, reaction mass, consumables, construction crew, whatever. The ISS doesn't have room for any of that junk, even if you through a bunch of inflatable hab modules at it.
The ISS is a laboratory, and it's serving that purpose pretty darn well, despite the fact that it's not even fully staffed or supplied.
Imho, we need a way station, but the ISS isn't it, never was, and never will be.
to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere
:-P
If we let them have Afhganastan like they wanted during the cold war, then they would have a more equitorial launching point. Silly Americans
Table-ized A.I.
Pity you got modded as flamebait, I agree with you. The article states:
But Russian rockets blast off in Kazakhstan, much higher on the globe than Florida. They cannot fly much lower than 51.6 degrees latitude without running the risk of dropping spent rocket stages or astronauts during an emergency re-entry on Mongolia or northern China. So the Clinton administration decided to erect the station at 51.6 degrees, hailing it as a "world orbit" accessible to all spacefaring nations.
Let's not forget the Russians are the only ones with experience of making and running a spacestation, nor lets forget it is the Russians who are doing the bulk of the construction and running it (the article does go on to acknowledge this).
The whole idea the present station could be a 'jumping off' point really is crazy - it has no command capacity, it is 100% dependent on supplies (fuel, parts, etc) taking supplies by shuttle or shortrange capsule and then loading them on something else is much more inefficient than sticking them on that something else and skipping the middle-man (this is only a conventional engine, not a warp drive!), it is extremely fragile. But it does allow applied research into space-based technology - a vital stepping stone in the international space effort.
For example, that means that if the US currently has a population growth of 1% (from births only) the amount of resources this birth rate consumes is equivalent to a birth rate of 33% in the third world!
There is no third world nation that has such a birth rate so the real issue is the developed nations drain on world resources rather than the population growth of third world nations.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Previous NASA studies for Mars missions have seldom if ever used the Moon as a launching pad because that would take about twice as much energy as going from the Earth or an Earth outpost.
Here we have a NYT reporter overstepping his limited technical knowledge and making stuff up again.
The best place from which to embark on a Mars mission, in terms of lowest delta-V (i.e. least amount of fuel required), is a high earth orbit. Second best is from the moon's surface. The worst, by far, is from Earth's surface.
For the NYT to say both earth and an earth-orbiting station are superior launch points to the moon is quite ignorant.
IAAOA (I am an orbital analyst).
That that is is that that that that is not is not.