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

it's a threat

[acidrain]

Err, my read was the Americans are trying to get Russia and Europe to pick up more of the tab, and using an early withdrawal as a threat. Of course the EUA is already refusing to admit it could scrape together a few more dollars. Regardless the relative financial clout between the partners has changed a lot since the Americans promised to pick up 70% of the tab.

Re:it's a threat

[Zeinfeld]

***Err, my read was the Americans are trying to get Russia and Europe to pick up more of the tab,***

You are all making a major error in considering this in nationalist terms. The space agencies have a common interest in screwing as much money as possible out of as many governments as possible. It is the agencies versus their governments.

Meanwhile the motives of the governments are pretty murky. Each government has its own pro-ISS and anti-ISS factions. And amongst the pro-ISS factions there are a range of motives: pork for congressional districts, making sure that their country is not embarassed by withdrawing from existing commitments, etc.

The reason that such projects are international collaborations is not that they need the money so much as they need to create a situation where nobody can withdraw without breaking a commitment.

So the statement by the US can be seen as a signal that maybe the anti-ISS faction has gained the upper hand and wants to signal to the others 'hey lets snip this thing'. To which the Russian faction might be responding 'hell no we want to stay' or more likely 'how much is it worth to let you out of this'.

The ISS is an utter waste of time and money. The original purpose of the ISS was to have something for the Shuttle to visit. The purpose of the Shuttle was to build the station. Both are merely staging posts for a manned trip to Mars that is not going to happen. We can do so much more with unmanned probes.