Plans for International Space Station Cut Back

Sajma writes "Reuters is reporting: NASA and its space partners on Friday approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending shuttle flights, a top NASA official said. Space agencies in Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged."

Comments

NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[LostCluster]

There's a term in Washinton DC that comes straight into play here. "Unfunded mandate". When a government agency is told it has to do something it doesn't presently do, and not given a matching budget increase to cover the cost of that task, it's a big problem.

One of two things has to happen.
A: Existing programs are going to get slashed in order to move the money from existing projects to fund the new one.
B: The mandated project isn't going to go very well due to having not enough funding to get it done right.

While Democrats get accused of being "tax and spend" types at times, the Bush Administration seems to have taken on a "forget to tax but spend anyway" policy. NASA's budget just doesn't match its assignments right now, and that's what's leading to half-baked projects coming out of there.

NASA's got to get the shuttle program that's currently grounded back on its feet, meanwhile the Hubble Telescope is in need of a scheduled service visit and the IIS isn't completed yet. On top of that, Bush wants them working on a people to Mars project they didn't ask for. The Mars request didn't exactly come with a budget attached...

Would you like your taxes low or would you like NASA funded properly? It doesn't seem like you can have both.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Nurgled]

That's true of everything, including things that most consider a lot more important than NASA.

I live in the UK, so there's no NASA to worry about funding. However, it really annoys me when, in the run-up to elections, the political parties start talking about reducing taxes, amongst other things. If the system was running perfectly and there was a funding surplus, I'd say cutting taxes is a good idea, but while hospitals continue to close and downsize, and education funding drops through the floor, we either need to raise taxes or optimise the systems that are in place.

I hear that there are over ten managers per patient in national health service hospitals here. I also see schools wasting money on computers that are five times faster than mine just to run Microsoft Office. The money's going to the wrong places. Either refocus the existing money or increase tax. Those are the only solutions.

This applies to NASA in the US, too. I wish voters would think it through and realise that, until we've got the system working properly, tax decreases are a bad thing, and that they should vote for parties which don't claim they are going to cut tax. That's the problem with allowing everyone to vote, though, I guess!

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[jabberjaw]

Does it really have to be an either/or question?
Yes. If you want cool stuff, you have to pay for it.
Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance, ( i mean we could get rid of the nukes, not just stop taking care of them.)? Just get rid of ICBMs all together, i mean, is it all that important that we be able to kill someone in 4 hours instead of 8 hours with a nuclear cruise missile?
No, we cannot cut funding for nuclear weapons research/maintenance. You are lying to yourself if you believe that anyone in Washington would consider purging nuclear weapons from our arsenal. As for cutting maintenance funding, surely you jest. From what I have gathered (though I could be wrong) we really do not know too much about how nuclear weapons age, thus cutting the funding for those who research this would be most unwise.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Goonie]

They also learned that there was a great deal of maintenance to be made and that all the experiments that were planned in the first place simply were not realistic. It's closer to a space survival crash course than a scientific facility since 60% of the work time in space has to be spent to make sure everything is in order.

That's incorrect. As I understood it, the reason why there's never any time for science is that he ISS was intended to have a crew of six people. If there were actually six people up there, the maintenance burden would stay the same, but you'd have three extra people to do science. Why did the ISS never have a six person crew? Because the six-person escape vehicle never got built.

And as for all the wonderful science that was to be done on the ISS - as I understand it there isn't any great clamor from actual scientists for it. How many screams from the scientific community have you heard about the ISS scale-down, compared with the huge outcry about the Hubble?

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[Zeinfeld]

Does it really have to be an either/or question? Couldn't we cut funding for something else, like say nuclear weapons research/maintenance,

Or the $250 billion spent so far on the Iraq war with another $250 billion or so that is going to have to be spent if we want to prevent Iraq being essentially annexed by Iran.

If you look at the federal budget most of it is eaten up by so-called entitlements. The government has to pay pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid come what may and there is not much that can be done to reduce that. Those retirees in Florida are not going to allow their pensions to be cut.

The rest of the budget divides into roughly two halves, military spending and the rest, that is education, health, transport, energy, farm subsidies, corporate welfare, state aid etc.

The military budget itself consists of roughly two halves which we can call the defense budget and the political/corporate welfare budget. The defense budget is the stuff that actually has some military purpose. The political/corporate welfare budget is the bases that are only kept open to keep the local senator happy, weapons systems that the army does not want, planes that the airforce has not asked for and so on.

There are still plenty of $700 hammers and $1,200 toilet seats, in Iraq Haliburton took the spare tires off the brand new Mercedes trucks it was using, when they got a flat tire they just abandoned the truck. Cost plus you know... But the 168 billion overcharged on the fuel contract only shows what happens when they know the administration is deliberately turning a blind eye. The same thing goes on in the US on pretty much every cost plus contract, just not quite to the same extent.

Padding out the military budget with pork is a bipartisan consensus. There are a handful of folk willing to stand up to the waste. John McCain being one of the few, ever since Goldwater the folk in Arizona have not been impressed by polticians who bring back pork anyway.

There was a lot of silly speculation about Kerry choosing McCain as his VP candidate. I don't think it was ever seriously considered. McCain knows he has much more influence as a Senator wielding a swing vote than a VP with a competent President. There is only one job that I think would persuade McCain to leave the Senate and that is the only job that only he can do, Secretary of defense.

Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.

[DerekLyons]

In short, lately, our policy here in the U.S., the nation that put mankind on the moon with the support of basically the whole country only 35 years ago, is, "Fuck Space".

Unsurprising. Before Nov 22, 1963 the countries attitude was essentially "Fuck Space".

The Apollo program got the national support it did, not because it was a bold leap, but because it created a black eye for the Russians and as a monument to a slain President. Even that support didn't last too long. NASA's peak budget was in 1967, and dropped steadily thereafter. Saturn V production was halted in 1968. Congress was cancelling moon landings in May of 1969 [1], before we had even landed for the first time! . By Apollo 12 (the second landing), people were complaining to TV stations when their favorite programs were pre-empted for mission coverage.

[1] In some ways the cancellations of Apollo's 16 and 18 (the missions were subsequently re-numbered) were good things as the one of the Saturn V's already aquired for them became Skylab, and one of the CSM's flew Apollo-Soyuz. (Yes, you read that right. Congress cancelled missions for which the hardware had already been built and paid for, all to save $20-50 million in operational costs.) Two additional missions were later cancelled, their CSM's flew in Skylab, and their Saturn V's became the infamous lawn ornaments at JSC and KSC.

Re:Never ?

[zors]

Sure, we might have the funds for a space station someday, but probably not this one. Who knows what technology will change in ten years to make whats up there difficult to modify, or what sort of international problems there will be with getting support for updating it, after it is supposed to be internation al remember.

What's the fucking point, then?

[phillymjs]

If they're going to hobble the project so severely, why even keep it at all? Just deorbit the damn thing and maybe we can all get a free taco out of it-- I think that'd be a better return than what we're currently getting for all our tax money that was poured into the ISS.

~Philly

Re:It's a bad platform in a useless orbit.

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard would it be for them to boost it into a much more suitable orbit or to one of the lagrange points?

What a waste...

[FridayBob]

What an incredible waste. Not that working on the ISS sounds as exciting as setting up bases on the Moon and Mars, but think of all the money and effort that's already been invested in the ISS. It hasn't really even begun to pay off and it's already being dumped! What's worse is that I don't see the Moon/Mars mission happening anyway -- it's going to cost too much. After all, from a political point of view, there's really no point (except in the short term for George Bush). So, if ultimately Congress does not cough up the money for this project, then what will we be left with? Not much: no mission, no shuttle and no ISS. Great. One step forward, two steps back.

Not accurate

[ncaHammer]

This article states that

Bill Gerstenmeier, space station director at NASA, said that if the shuttle started flying again in the spring, as planned, construction would resume in earnest on the half-built station, with the Japanese and European modules going up as early as 2007. Crews could expand from three to six members as early as 2009, he said, depending on construction at the station and positioning a second, three-person Soyuz rescue craft there.

NASA may retire but that will make

some room in the United States' Destiny science module for experiments would be used for a support system to regenerate water and air. Mr. Gerstenmeier said some displaced capacity would move to room in partners' modules where the United States has rights.

Private industry and space

[0x0d0a]

Now what, exactly, would privatizing the space industry do? It sure as hell wouldn't make us push the limits. You'd get lots of companies shoving people up to LEO for kicks or launching satellites. You'd have reduced profit margins, and less incentive to be extremely careful about waste being released in orbit. You certainly wouldn't go to Mars or the Moon -- doing so is expensive and unlikely to produce a return.

Really, the only economically viable approaches I can see that private industry would provide would be space tourism (sounds good, only scales to a certain degree), and satellite launches.

Re:Scientifically useless from day 1

[senahj]

Even with a full crew, the ISS is scientifically useless.
Too much vibration, orbit too low (so the shuttle can reach it).
Not a good enough vacuum.

NASA had to browbeat scientists into making up some sort of
experiments that could be done there. No important science
was _ever_even_proposed_.

---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.