ISS Loses Orbit-Boosting Options

An anonymous reader writes "NewScientist reports is reporting that the International Space Station has lost some of its options when it comes to altitude-boosting due to several recent failures. From the article: 'The problems began on 19 April 2006, when the Russian Zvezda service module's main engines failed during a test. The failure may have been due to a sunshade cover that was not completely open, according to a station status report.'"

Comments

Sucesses?

[mboverload]

Can someone lay out what the ISS has actually done for us? It seems to be a crowded bunch of poorly-engineered tin cans floating above us and sucking up money in the process.

Re:Sucesses?

[Anonymous Coward]

The true use of the space station is that is shows that a long term spaceship can't be built in small sections over a long period of time without the whole assembly obsoleting itself or wearing out before it starts its main mission.

For the sake of argument, presume that the spacestation had been designed to travel to mars. By adding high thrust ion engines and power plants, this could have been done. However an assembly as large as the space station and typical for the requirement, loses over a mile of altitude a day in earth orbit and will burn up in the atmosphere within 1 year of ceasing to re-adjust its orbit higher.

What has been really learned is that complex space ships of conventional design will age too soon to be of much use other than to learn how fast things wear out and wear down in a space environment.

Based on that, which had to be learned, the space station has served its intended purposes well.

Re:Sucesses?

[ScottLindner]

It's a floating garbage can, meant to make contractors money.

Boy.. aren't we the objective ones today. Did you believe in this conspiracy before the problems, or only after?

My take is that working on a massive internation project like this is very challenging. With all other joint international projects one nation owns the entire thing and accepts funding for new requirements from the others. ISS is completely different and it's teaching all nations a very good lesson. As a global society we need to learn how to do things like this. It's best for us all.

Re:Sucesses?

[cmowire]

Well, the storage room wouldn't be so expensive if they were to use some modules like the TransHab module..... oops, canceled that.

I was very excited about the possibilities of the Centerfuge Accomidation Module. Finally they could put up some rodents or fish or other small-enough-to-work-on-the-centerfuge research animals and make them run through the entire reproductive cycle in space repeatedly at different levels of gravity, so if a few Blessed Events accidentally happen some day up there, they'll know what to do..... oops, but that got canned to.

It would be useful for on-orbit checkout of large spacecraft.... but the 51 degree inclanation orbit is going to cost you enough in payload and reduced opportunities for launch that there's no point... you might as well launch something sized like the FGB into the right orbit and you'll come out ahead.

It would be great for researching viruses and such because you can crystalize proteins in space easier than on the ground.... except that between the 1980s when they were going on about it and now, they instead developed improved analytical machines that don't require the sort of perfect large crystals that space is good for.

Oh! Right! We can test out space systems that would be useful for the real missions later on. Except that the station STILL relies on a bunch of Russian hardware that we already know is a smidge clunky.

The station makes perfect sense when you realize that it's a bunch of repackaged hardware built around assumptions from the 70s that we knew to be untrue around 85. The problem is that they didn't take a big step backwards at any point between 1985 and 2000 and really reassess things.

For example, the only time that the option of launching some of the American modules on an expendable booster was considered, they wanted to make the Shuttle-C, not just buy a quiver of Atlas or Titan rockets.

Re:Sucesses?

[cmowire]

Um.

There aren't any alternatives funded for the CEV. It's about as competitive as the shuttle's procurement was. NASA was going to make the two leading teams do a fly-off, but that was removed from the plan. So, one CEV booster that's intended to last us all the way to the Mars shot, and no alternatives.

We don't need two new boosters. We don't even need two boosters at all. It would have been far cheaper to just source either Delta or Atlas EELV stages. (and leave open the option for SpaceX to sell a Falcon 9 when they get that one ready) Or, if they had wanted to build a new booster that bad, to make something that was somewhat bigger than the CEV's booster stage and then distribute the pieces of any lunar exploration missions into a series of launches. But, instead, NASA builds *two* new boosters at the same time and gets to deal with two sets of development problems with increasing amounts of divergence between the two designs.

That NASA still cannot just source lift capability on the open market demonstrates just how they haven't learned their lessons.

Re:Bring it back...

[EQ]

Why do things fail? Well the real miracle is why do they work at all:

Space is a pretty brutal enironment. Hard vacuum, only microgravity, extremes of cold and heat, etc.

Re:Bring it back...

[AKAImBatman]

How in the world do you plan to get 183 tonnes of mass back to Earth in one piece? The Shuttle has a maximum payload capacity of 25 tonnes. It's the ONLY option currently available for returning large objects to Earth.

It would be way cheaper and easier to send up a bunch of "experts" to figure the sucker out rather than return it to Earth.

(Sorry if I'm a bit snippy. Rough day, and all that.)

Coke bottle hell.....

[Roskolnikov]

1 in 10,000 something will hit it? what about it hitting something?

Re:Bring it back...

[FurryFeet]

I can tell you wht things fail. Quote Alan Shepard: "I was up there looking around, and suddenly I realized I was sitting on top of a rocket built by the lowest bidder".

But bring it back for that? You have GOT to be kidding. Do you also bring your house to a plumber's shop when you have a clogged toilet?

Re:Not really any danger...

[peragrin]

No it's like saying my parents house was too old and out of date when it was 5 years old, and still not finished. (note they never did finish it even though we lived in it for almost 20 years)

The ISS can't be finished. it needs the shuttle to finish it and the shuttle will be phased out long before the ISS is finished.

What the ISS has taught us and no one has figured out is that we need a vaible method for getting small things up to orbit easily. Progress shuttles from Russia don't count. those haven't changed a lot since the 70's. And all the budgets for such craft keep getting cancled.

Re:1 in 10,000

[solitas]

and carries people

And carries volunteers - they all know what they may be in for when they sign up.