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No More Science on the ISS Until Further Notice
Dyna-Soar writes "Discovery Channel News is reporting that NASA is canceling scientific research projects on the International Space Station until construction is complete. This may not happen before 2010 or 2012." From the article: "In addition to beginning development of a new manned launch system, expenses to return the shuttle fleet to flight following the 2003 Columbia disaster and delays completing the International Space Station have left NASA with a projected shortfall of up to $5 billion over the next five years"
If only congress could get the hint and stop castrating Nasa...
Why bother finising the ISS if you are not going to use it to increase scientific knowlegde. I guess filling the pockets of the contractors is the real reason for the ISS, not science.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
You'll all probably mod me down for this, but I actually this is a good move on NASA's part. We all realize the purpose of the space station is to provide scientific research, but in light of recent problems plaguing the shuttle program, the safety of the astronauts should be the foremost consideration. Not much point in moving into an appartment building until its been built, and the same thing applies to an orbiting piece of metal.
Considering the ISS hasn't produced any scientific results worthy of the name, I don't regard this as any great loss. I'd even go so far as to call it anti-scientific - the one thing the ISS has managed to do is strangle funding for telescopes and rovers that that might send back actual data. The ISS hasn't sent back anything more interesting than a bit more footage of astronauts chasing globules of tang.
Imagine what the station could have been like if our government hadn't wasted that $300 billion dollars bombing the shit out of another nation based on lies about invisible weapons of mass destruction.
Its funny how we can always come up with money to kill, but there's never enough money for science.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I think there will be hotels in space befor they finaly finnish the ISS. ISS will be renamed I-DSS and used to house the minimum wage cleaners for the hotels.
Seriously though, people in a space station are very expensive in the long run and although they provide fascility for micro-gravity research ect alot of this could be achived with and un-maned drone.
People on the moon however I think is a much better idea as with a few basic supplies it could become self sufficiant what with all the free water and an ample back yard to stick solar pannels, make hydrogen fuel and grow food stuffs. Plus the added bonus of hulking great lumps of rock to shield from radiation.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
NASA could always charge for experiments to be conducted. Plenty of R&D groups would pay up if it were reasonable, and everyone benefits.
...if you take building the ISS as a goal.
But frankly, why would you? ISS isn't a step forward to anywhere. It doesn't do anything much other than "showcase international cooperation". The science it was doing was of the "train ants to sort tiny screws in space" variety. Even the Wikipedia article can't muster much definitive purpose, beyond the usual vague claim of technical spin-offs.
They should either decide that it's a tool for a task, redesign and build towards that, or de-orbit the whole junkpile into the nearest ocean. To carry on building for the sake of mere inertia would be nuts.
If the goal is to kill it, then why keep spending the money on construction if it's never going to be finished?
:-)
I'd say cut your losses, mothball it now and spend the money on robotic missions to Europa, a prototype asteroid mining mission that actually produces real product (e.g. water for reaction mass), orbiters for Uranus and Neptune, advanced nuclear (ooh, the n-word!) propulsion systems so that deep space missions that don't take decades, and actually get some science done.
I guess it's all a bit moot, though, since by 2020 everyone will be buying elevator tickets from Liftport instead...
Sean Ellis
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A quick search on arxiv.org for 'International Space Station' yields four papers.
For comparison, a search for 'Hubble Space Telescope' gives over 200 papers.
On the other hand a quick search on MedLine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi for "International Space Station" gives 511 papers, whereas a search for "Hubble Space Telescope" only gives 70 papers.
The low number of papers found at arxiv.org is probably related to a selection bias from that site. In particular, medical sciences seems not to be represented. Similarly, papers related to the Hubble Space Telescope is not well represented in MedLine.
i was not a great discocery to bring fresh fruit ... on a ship sailing around ... ... but nothing :P i mean didn't the japanese have some
on board a ship in Columbuses times, just
like it wasn't much of a "discovery" to bring
lemon tress, etc
the globe
my guess is that the ISS has made many small
but important "discoveries" for future
long duration manned space flights
bill board worth like "cure to cancer discovered
on ISS"
neat-o material research in zero-g with results?!
Back before we had space stations, Science Fiction always visualized them as a way point for other destinations rather than just for research. Seems scientific research alone can't justify the enormous expense involved, and that the concept of a space station as a jumping off point is not often considered as necessary.
I would like to offer an alternative to completing the ISS, and Pres. Bush's "Moon, Mars, and beyond". How about we make "The Search for Life" the priority instead? For the price of the ISS, we could have had rovers on all the planetary bodies where there is even a remote chance of finding life, and sample return missions as well. The ISS can be used as is, as a quarantine for the returning samples. Put manned exploration on the back burner for now. At the rate technology is always advancing, when we get back to doing manned missions someday, we will have - who knows - space elevators or whatever to make the job much easier. The advantage of the focus as I propose is that it doesn't call for some mega-construction with mega-funding and attendant mega-bureaucracy. By it's nature, it's done in small steps like NASA's "Smaller, cheaper, faster" missions. Just imagine little rovers on the ground, and rovers in the air, all over the Solar System? Scientists will access and guide them via the Internet. Every university in the world will participate. I think it's a good bet were are going to find some microbes somewhere. Even if we don't, we will have learned a tremendous amount of planetary sciences along the way, much more than we ever would as things stand.
I've tried confirming this story on Google... I see a space probe mission or two cancelled, and some evidence that science operations on station are being somewhat neglected, but nothing as wildly improbable as a total cancellation of payload science operations on the ISS.
TFA seems to misinterpret the administrator's comments before Congress. He speaks of suspending NASA's own research projects in life science and nuclear propulsion.... the kind of cutting edge stuff needed for 9-month trips to Mars (or having the speed to reduce that to a more manageable timeframe).
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
So are you suggesting that we not critizise the space program when it deserves it? What is the alternative, watching it make the same massively expensive (and sometimes deadly) mistakes over and over again?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'm tired of hearing things like "we can't afford NASA" when we can clearly afford HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars blowing people to bits in foreign countries. Hell, we've gone from a 5 Trillion dollar surplus to a projected deficit of 12 Trillion (dubya's projected deficit when leaving office) in just 8 years (a total of 17-18 TRILLION dollars)... What's another 5 Billion? I mean, I recognize that we have to watch where our Billions go when it isn't being given to Halliburton in no-bid contracts, but other than that we should scrutinize every penny! I sure miss the innocent days of $800 hammers. Remember, it's important to have corporate kick-backs and welfare, the Bush Administration just wants to make sure that no money is spent on that there learnin' or science n stuff. Might piss off the extreme fundamentalist Christian terrorists and their crazy ideology in THIS country... They'll have to move from blowing up the soon-to-be closed abortion clinics (thanks Alito!) to blowing up those crazy NASA centers of knowledge. It won't be long now, and Halliburton will be awarded the no-bid contract to build a $3 Trillion Dollar replica of the Ten Commandments to be placed in the White House! I'm so glad that "honor and integrity have been restored to the White House."
Somehow I doubt the US government, as tightfisted as it is with information, would turn the ISS into an "area 51" for space militarization. I'm sure the countries which helped bear the burden of getting the damned thing up there in the first place would love that. They do after all have their own keys to the apartment, so to speak. I hope this was intended as sarcasm.
That was one of the most insightful posts I've read lately.
/. reads like a bunch of luddites complaining and it's getting old. So if any of those actually support an, over time, increasing human presence in space they should get out of their "old grumpy man" act. To put it in a simple way the astronauts sent to ISS are themselves the biggest experiment and the most important one (and if anyone thinks that could be done on earths surface they've reached rock bottom - pun not intended). The ISS serves as a real testbed for hands on technology concerned with keeping humans alive in space for prolonged periods and with increased efficiency and reliability. Yes, it has the potential to be much more over time, personally I hope that at some point in the future when we are actually ready to do so its orbit can be boosted to GEO, but that is of course a long way off and money is actually the least objection to doing it right away: we don't presently have the requisite technology at a sufficient level to make it worthwhile, not even close.
/. doesn't actually contain many readers that seem to be aware of how incrementally and tediously science normally progresses. Many seem to think that science progresses like the technology tree in some C&C-like game and /. is filled with people who think it more important to criticize NASA (or Burt Rutan or anyone else actually trying to do something it seems) than to actually say something enlightened (!=rehashed bickering). I guess we can all blame the armchair for that :)
/. has much clout either politically and scientifically and the ranting doesn't actually affect much except the /. "image".
_ 050818.html
/. lol
For those who, like me, actually support humans in space almost all comments regarding space on
And so what if the ISS program was used for more than just its face value of space science? Why is that such a horror? Isn't it actually better to employ people in science that benefits us than let them languish and in likelihood be employed against us?
For being a supposed "Nerd" site
Anyway I'm not worried as I doubt anyone on
Recommended reading:
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_hustle_part1
The danger of that link of course is that it will shame people into shutting up.... what am I saying? this is
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
All I saw in the article is that NASA won't be funding any of its own research. To me, that just means there will be room open on the ISS for educational institutions to put experiments into microgravity. Heck, NASA could even license their "research space" to commercial entities. I see a lot of people assuming that because the government won't be spending money on research that it won't happen. I think it will continue to happen, and NASA might even make some money out of it.