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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.'"
Okay, it'll take until 2010 to finish the station then NASA will use it only for five years before pulling out. With all due respect NASA, are you fucking nuts?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Wow blame the republicans. I think it is more of an issue of blaming americans. We have gotten to a point where we no longer Quantify things but Mathitize things. Everything needs a solid number next to it, if not then it isn't there. So for Space we see how much it costs but not the benefit because there is little numbers attached to the benefits. The Russians who are in a far more corrupt nation then we are know the value of space travel. But we just don't we are so focused on the here and now and not to the future.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In soviet russia our space stations lasted 5 years beyond their firm end date....
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
With Bush spending it all on the War Of Futility, we're not going to have any money to send anyone to the station anyways. It shouldn't come as a shock that NASA's already trying to find some budget wiggle-room, even before Bush has departed.
According to the article, US pay 70% of the running cost of the station. Could this be a tactic to make ESA pay a larger share?
Lowball estimates indicate that NASA will spend $53 billion on the ISS from 1993 to the end of its life. This doesn't include the cost of maintaining the space shuttle or R&D from Space Station Freedom (the canned station from the 1980s). So the US will use the station for 5 years after completion -- and what of serious scientific value will be accomplished during that time?
The ISS isn't worth the cost. Think of the probes and orbital observatories NASA could've built using the ISS budget. Those things give us far more insight into the universe. Hell, some of the early ISS literature proclaimed the station would pay for through the leasing of "microgravity manufacturing" compartments to various companies...please.
No one should be surprised about this; the project was a waste before it even started.
At this point, with the deficit higher than its ever been, the dollar falling like a stone, and massive trade deficits, a HUGE debt, and Corporations and Republicans looting the treasury with gusto... with no end to any of it in sight ... I'd say *can't* is at least as accurate as *won't* in this case.
If the U.S. does decide to spend money on space, it'll be financed by Saudi Arabia and China, just like the Iraq war is being financed.
Face it: The U.S. is broke.
Why would you need to replace it for a moon colony? The moon is only a few days away, having a space station stop over doesn't make sense. And as for Mars? Let's take care of the moon first. If we get there and get a colony cooking for a few years before we ever migrate to Mars it will likely be a whole different ballgame as far as landers and transports go. Trying to build a space station for the needs doesn't make a ton of sense yet. And an earth orbiting station may not make sense for Mars but I don't know how the physics and such would work out for a midpoint station. It's a neat question though.
If anyone can think of why a space station would make sense for a moon base let me know. I don't want to speak out of turn here but I just don't see the value of a space station to a colony on the moon. But I've been wrong before.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
OTOH (and I don't have any numbers to back this up, so it's totally a theory) ... maybe the subsidies we're providing their space program, along with money they make from space tourism to the ISS, is actually making Russia money??
Well, the orbit thing worked out, since for a period of two years, the only way up there was via Soyuz.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Being that the US doesn't have an efficient way of getting up to the station anymore, it makes sense.
I doubt that Russia sends up a capsule and has everybody check the outside of it once docked. Kind of counter productive.
"Hey, those Yanks are coming again. When they get here, stop what you doing and let's inspect their hull."
I hope that mankind (meaning free as in beer) benefits from all the research done on the station and not the host countries.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I can think of a couple, mostly around the idea of a lunar transport, which would dock with the station:
* A lunar transport ship should never need to re-enter the atmosphere. Why would you want to drag re-entry heat shields all the way out to the moon?
* A lunar transport ship would save each supply launch the cost of building (and then discarding) another system to soft-land on the moon.
* Scheduling the docking of a lunar transport with shuttle/progress rocket lifts would be very difficult. If you could, instead, stage the supplies at a station, that would make the scheduling of the lunar transport runs and the supply launches more (not completely) independent.
* If you eventually end up with more than one destination (L5? Please?), you don't have to have separate launches to supply each, just launch one set of supplies and split them up in orbit for each destination.
Can you think of better ways to spend a trillion dollars plus? You could double nasas budget, pick up the entire european and russian tab, and still have enough left over to fund mass wide scale deployment of a variety of new alternative energy projects, like millions and millions of solar panels, starting with every governmental building in existence, local community wind farms, etc., finish bringing broadband to the rural areas,fully fund the OLPC project so it really does get down to being a hundred bucks for a decent little machine, heck, throw in reopening a car plant or two and start pumping out some sort of Model A electric cars for the masses, run by all the new juice that would be out there. Hey, how about paying some public school math and science teachers better? how about guaranteed zero interest student loans for engineering and medical doctors?
That's what you can do with a trillion dollars and counting right now. And, they still could have taken out saddam and his sons, just offer a big enough bounty, no strings attached, some goombah over there woulda offed them skunks for a cool billion in tax free cash. Maybe some of them blackwater types might have done it, prove their macho instead of popping off iraqi peasants.
*Instead*, we've alienated half the world, we look like big stupid drunk redneck bullies, and put ourselves into multigenerational debt and destroyed the worth of the dollar and *increased* the likelihood of more "terrorism".
He and his cronies should be bashed on any thread relating to technology, politics or money, because it ain't offtopic at all.
He's a drool, man, get it? Short bus? "Special needs"? He was picked out because he's malleable and the neocon handlers ran him as their controllable spokesperson, but he went far beyond rationality and now their whole party looks like dunces and probably set back their legitimate old traditional and at least somewhat rational policies by 20 years. His administration can be summed up nicely "no bribe, crime or idiocy left behind". We got retired generals now falling out of the woodwork, breaking the traditional military "no criticism of the da chief" silence, saying essentially the same things.
One of the worst mistakes ever in US politics, letting the out to lunch looney tunes cabal of PNAC and AIPAC supporters get so much concentrated power.
It's very human, but if you look at it rationally, it costs a lot less to build the space station (honoring pre-existing international agreements), and throwing it away as soon as you can, rather than continuing to pay to maintain it forever. This is all assuming you have something better to spend it on--I'm of the opinion that the Orion project to return to the moon is just such a "something better."
If you need a facility like the ISS, of course, you're pissing money down the drain if you get rid of it. There doesn't seem to be any use for the ISS on planning timescales, though. And I highly doubt anyone's going to let it fall into the ocean, once it's built--just look at how hard the Russians strived to keep Mir in space. And the Europeans have the money to pay the Russians. It's just not going to have Americans on it.
It's more like having organized the party, invited all its friends, and paid some of the costs, the US -- having finally figured out that the orbiting junk heap is pretty much worthless scientifically -- is strolling off and leaving the party guests to figure out how to pay the band and the caterer. Unless of course they want to call off the party themselves.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Most of its components are rated for 20-30 years. Now, of course, some of its components have already been orbiting for a good while, but even still, judging from the Mars Rovers... ;)
It's idiotic. Basically, the US made a committment to build it, then decided most of the way through that it had new toys it wanted to make. Rather than back out with it almost built and a large fortune spent on it, they're going to spend a small fortune to finish it so they're not breaking any committments, and then when it gets to the relatively cheap phase (maintenance), they're going to ditch it. It's the equivalent of me spending all my time and money building a house, and when it finally gets livable, burning it down so I can use the lot to make a tennis court. Idiotic.
As though we wouldn't do the exact same process with a moon base. It's like the ISS, only... on the moon! We have dirt to play with, plus 1/6th gravity, and for that benefit, it costs ten times more to get people and supplies there and back. Does anyone really think that we won't likewise get almost done with a moonbase and then decide that it's another "boondoggle" and abandon our efforts there, too? People make careers and make the history books by succeeding in their projects, not the projects of the generation before them. So we flap and wave like a flag in the wind.
Sure, the research on the ISS probably doesn't justify it's construction cost. But it certainly justifies its maintenance costs. Building it and letting it burn is a mockery of responsible planning. It also should be a wakeup call that we need new budgetary planning procedures in congress that lets all of the funding for a project be allocated in advance and placed in a trust, with congress and administrators only able to pull out of it if pre-specified milestones fail to be met. I.e., ISS would likely have been cancelled long ago when it failed to meet financial and time milestones, but if it had made it this long, the maintenence funding would already be in place.
Ever since, I've been suspicious of Jesus and very careful around chlorine.
Sure, the research on the ISS probably doesn't justify it's construction cost. But it certainly justifies its maintenance costs.
Not by a long shot. Exactly what earth-shattering research are they goning to do? More high school science experiments?
After I learned about the life and death of Project Orion, I came to the conclusion that we (the US) should give up on manned space exploration.
Without cheaper, easier propulsion, and without the ability to get larger loads into space, there's really no point in it. We can keep playing with satellites and the like, but we'll never gain any economic benefits out of going to the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else. The extra weight needed to transport humans is really unnecessary.
Mankind needs to get over its fear of nuclear power. A hybrid fusion/fission Orion design would not release significant amounts of fallout into the atmosphere (especially compared to all the nuclear explosive testing done in the 50s), and who knows; perhaps after we lifted a few hundred thousand tons of equipment into orbit (and perhaps to the moon) we'll be able to build most of what we need in space, where fallout doesn't matter.
Without significant advances in propulsion technology, or a resurrection of Project Orion, there's no point to manned space exploration. We should redirect these billions to propulsion technology, or just take it out of the doomed space program altogether.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Google should invest in ISS
> The Russians who are in a far more corrupt nation then we are
Are you sure?
Thanks for the numbers. Let's put that in terms of how much we spend in Iraq. According to the Congressional Budget Office, often called the nation's top accountant, we're spending about $9 billion a month (pre "surge" numbers). To date we have put in $533 billion dollars into Iraq. I know some damn big numbers. My eye balls are popping out of my head right now.
So... let's say the Space Shuttle and the ISS has cost us $50 billion dollars over the last 20-years. Shit let's say it's $100 billion dollars. Now do that Austin Powers thing with your pinkie. I know you want to do it. So how many months in Iraq is that?.... 11... haha! Eleven months in Iraq equals 20-years of manned space flight spanning four U.S. Presidencies and creating a mother fscking space station that orbits around the planet Earth from scratch. Whoa! That is a helluva comparison.
JOhn
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