Space Station Partners Bicker Over Closure Date

jcdick1 writes "The current partners in the ISS are in discussion regarding the closure date of the space station, even though it still has not been fully assembled. 'The United States insists it will pull out of the station at the end of 2015 while Russia wants its life prolonged, said European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain at an astronautics congress in Hyderabad, southern India. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has told space station partners that the US agency has no plans for "utilization and exploitation" of the science research lab for more than five years after it is completed, Dordain said.'"

Comments

Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The Russians and the Europeans want NASA to keep paying for the high costs of maintenance of the ISS.

Pooooorkkk innnn spaaaace!

[kabdib]

The sooner the better.

The shuttle / ISS have done only harm to the space program.

(Go read _The Hubble Wars_ if you want to see how bad it was in the 80s. And it only got worse from there).

No Oil in Earth Orbit

[markg11cdn]

The US space agency has projected its own annual bill for the project to reach 2.3 billion dollars by 2010. In comparison, the pentagon is seeking 190 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hdMpMla3A7P7PUbQx-344i6agLbA

Re:my 2 cents

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISS is in the wrong inclination as a stepping stone to the Moon or Mars, and it's in that useless inclination because the Soyuz is not powerful enough to reach another orbital plane.

The ISS is an exercise in futility and useless feel-good space politics. It actually hinders any manned Moon program by drawing away funds. We need to operate the Shuttle fleet instead of retiring them because no Shuttle means no ISS.

Burn the useless thing.

The US are just beaing logical

[MLCT]

If you plan to not only go to the moon, but to setup permanent bases, then the ISS is largely irrelevant (in its current form). The ISS is complex, hard to maintain, and relatively difficult to live on. The moon, while having a few technical issues, is basically a much more sensible bit of solid ground to base yourself from. The ISS as a floating lab is very expensive - all it brings to the party is all the hassles of space (living in zero g, life support, things going wrong) and none of the benefits (resources, discovery, exploration)

And here's a precedent.

[Rob T Firefly]

Jules' Undersea Lodge is an underwater hotel built in what used to be La Chalup Research Laboratory, a 1970s underweater research station. Whether in the near or far future, there's bound to eventually be a market for a similar concept in space tourism.

Automated Transfer Vehicle

[StefanoB]

If new vehicles aren't developed to reboost the ISS regularly (e.g. robotic boosters) the ISS will simply fall into the atmosphere and burn up. The European Automated Transfer Vehicle is capable of reboosting the ISS. First launch will be early 2008, according to the ESA.

Re:No Denero.

[ArcherB]

You're spending almost *THREE* fuckin' billion dollars a *DAY* on the war, and yet a mere billion a year for NASA is much money?! Yeah, right! Half of your research is getting done there, imagine with the funding for the war you could have established a permanent base on Mars for less than a year!

And they could be spent on education, or roads, or bridges, or public bathrooms, or whatever. But you know what? They wouldn't be. Saying what you COULD do with the money is meaningless unless you actually plan on doing it. That money stood about as much chance as going to NASA as it did my pocket! Now, if NASA's budget had been cut as a result of the war, then you would have a point. But, as I stated, it wasn't. And even if the war had never happened, NASA's budget would not be any different than it is right now. So when you claim that the reason NASA does not have an unlimited budget is the war in Iraq, you are being completely dishonest. You are trying to turn the debate on NASA's budget into a Bush Bashing session, and I just called you on it.

The world has always been broke.

[Froeschle]

It seems that the world has been hopelessly broke since the beginning of time, yet there has always seemed to be more than enough money *everywhere* to finance mass murder.

Re:it's a threat

[vtcodger]

***You are all making a major error in considering this in nationalist terms.***

Maybe.

A bit of history. The ISS started life as "Space Station Freedom" -- an initiative of the Reagan administration started around 1984. It was to cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars and to be in orbit by 1995-1996. It was a US project. Around 1990 it became clear that Space Station Freedom was over weight, over budget, and quite possibly unbuildable. After a gazillion redesigns failed to improve the prospects, the Clinton administration sucked a bunch of suck^H^H^H^H international partners into the scheme, and renamed it the International Space Stations.

So far, the US has put something like $30 to $35 billion dollars into Space Station Freedom and the ISS in direct costs and another $25 billion into space shuttle costs directly related to the ISS. Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency have thrown some money into the pot, but not all that much. Russia -- the other major contributor -- threw in two existing MIR modules and a number of Soyuz flights.

You may think that the international aspect is important. I don't. This fiasco has Made In America stamped all over it except for the relatively inexpensive MIR modules contributed by Russia. In fact, without the US effort, the other participants would probably be basing their efforts on MIR, Russia would have earned some foreign exchange during the troubled years of the 1990s; the world -- primarily the US -- would be maybe $40 billion dollars richer; and the human race would have accomplished pretty much nothing much more cheaply.

***The ISS is an utter waste of time and money.

Agreed

***The original purpose of the ISS was to have something for the Shuttle to visit.***

The ISS (Space Station Freedom) didn't need a mission. We're talking the Reagan administration here. All gut feeling. No coherent planning. Reality need not apply. (Bush 1 and Clinton were quite a bit better. Bush 2 is even worse.)

***The purpose of the Shuttle was to build the station.***

The Shuttle program predates Space Station Freedom by a decade. It was intended to replace the expensive expendable launch vehicles of the 1960s with much less expensive reusable lanuch vehicles. Predicatably the costs were grossly underestimated and the launch frequency of the reusable vehicles was grossly overestimated. 'Taint cheaper. More accurate would be to say that the purpose of the shuttle has become to build and support the ISS. Without the ISS, the Shuttle might actually make some sense as a platform for experiments.

The good news is that the Shuttle is supposed to go away in a couple of years -- 2010 and be replaced by a super-duper low cost, reusable, launch vehicle called Orion in 2014. What are they going to use in the intervening 4 years? I haven't a clue. What will keep Orion from being a typical US manned spaceflight project -- over weight, over budget, late and lame? Again, no clue.