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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.'"
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.)
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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?
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.
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.
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