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.

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: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.