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Russia Aims Towards Mars
Iddo Genuth writes "Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has announced its intentions to build a low-orbit space station which, according to the agency, will support future exploration of the moon and Mars. There's also a suggestion to extend the operational lifespan of the International Space Station by five more years, resetting its retirement date to 2020. The project proposal is already on its way for review by the Russian government. Some Russian sources also reportedly proposed the (rather ludicrous) idea of converting the ISS into some kind of an interplanetary transport vehicle, which would serve as the 'ultimate mother ship' in manned planetary missions to the moon or even Mars."
Moving the ISS is not such a crazy idea at all, and it's been proposed already by some smart people as a way to increase moon mission payoffs and reduce mission risks. A series of orbit boosts could eventually lead to a transfer orbit and lunar orbital insertion. Once in lunar orbit it would be at reduced risk of damage from orbital trash. Yes, sending up resupply and crew swapouts would be more difficult, but remember we would already be doing that for manned lunar operations so it's really not that much of a stretch.
Moving it to mars... Now that's a bit of a stretch but it might be possible with a propulsion efficiency breakthrough that could be powered by existing solar arrays or a bolt-on reactor. Still though, I think the idea of using it to support lunar operations might be an interesting idea especially as an alternative to letting it die after such a slow and expensive build-up with gross under-use as a science platform since it's been manned due to problems with the shuttle program.
The big question is: Once the shuttle is out of the picture, why keep the ISS where it is? Why not just put it wherever it is the most useful?
I suppose *some* people would be upset if a Russian booster rocket took the ISS out of orbit without telling anyone, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it ludicrous. If the U.S. doesn't pay Russia to boost the ISS during the shuttle's downtime, Russia may have no choice but to pull a repo job on it.
In space, no one can hear you... nevermind.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
Russia is ALWAYS announcing things like this - Klipr, manned Mars missions, etc. I've lost track of how many times they've "announced" they're going to Mars, or some other huge project.
The reason why this keeps happening is because in part we in the west are misunderstanding the way the Russian space program works.
They don't announce plans in the way for example NASA would. In Russia, they continually plan these things, then float out the ideas to see if they can get support and funding - and in the last 20 years or so, international investment.
If they DON'T get funders to sign on, it goes nowhere, and in a year or so they trot out another proposal.
This is NOT an announcement of a plan, it's a marketing pitch. They're saying "we could do this, anyone out there wanna pay for it?"
This space available.
Not usefully, the specific impulse is too low.
In general you have a choice between high thrust and fuel efficiency, for the shuttle you need high thrust to boost that huge mass out of the gravity well and up to orbital velocity (Actually really two problems), once you are in orbit, you normally want maximum specific impulse even at the expense of high thrust to minimise the amount of fuel mass you have to carry.
The transfer drive is an interesting trade off between fuel mass and mission duration (with its implied life support mass issues).
The key thing to realise about any space drive is that only two numbers matter: The exhaust velocity and the initial propellant mass fraction, know those and you trivially define the maximum mission delta V you can produce.
The ISS as a ship rather then a platform also has the issue that it can only accommodate very low accelerations simply because of structural issues, I would have thought that ion drives producing small single digit newton thrust levels would be the way to do it, together with a large tank of high atomic mass reaction mass. You might want to use something relatively high thrust to move to a higher initial orbit first simply to cut down on atmospheric drag - maybe stuff an ATV full of fuel and use its thrusters for an initial boost? I don't know, I have not run the numbers.
Thinking about it, boost a series of ATVs on a set of carefully calculated trajectories and have them serve as re supply depots for in flight resupply en route.....
And yea, I know that rocket does not have the thrust to put the things where they would need to be for a mars shot!
Finally, I would note that a lunar orbiting station would inherently require quite a lot of fuel to maintain a stable orbit as all lunar orbits decay over time.
It's quite ironic that it looks like the only thing that will save US manned spaceflight & planetary exploration from becoming a sacrificial lamb on the altar of pork & payoffs by short-sighted, corrupt US politicians may well be a re-emerging, hostile, and aggressive Russia.
It looks like it may be more effective for US citizens who are in favor of NOT letting our manned spaceflight capabilities die from neglect to, rather than contributing money to any US politicians or organizations, donate money to the Russian spaceflight program instead.
It seems that US politicians have so abandoned any pretense of doing the will of the people, of upholding & defending the US Constitution, and acting in the countries' best interests, that we may in future find it much more effective to donate money to our various enemies and rivals like Russia, Al Queda, and Ahmadinejad to preserve our freedom and prevent our politicians from doing things like de-funding NASA and the US military to fund their pork-filled, quid-pro-quo/payoff-laden, "bridge to nowhere" projects and social-engineering experiments designed to increase their voter-base.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Basically, RSA is already not well funded. It is not likely that they will get funding for more when Russia is losing money and their economy is crashing HARD.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why not push the ISS out to lunar orbit? If we retire it in 2020 it will only be 30 years old max, so why not give it a fresh coat of space paint and use it as a rescue station for interplanetary missions. I am sure there are better things to do with it than let it fall back to earth and burn up.