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."

Comments

Moving ISS not a crazy idea at all

[eagl]

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?

Re:Moving ISS not a crazy idea at all

[EdIII]

It is better to use ISS in any way, but destroying it burning down the Earth atmosphere.

Send around moon with full systems working and fulled with fuel etc,
it can serve as life boat or even one of the stations supporting Moon exploration.

If it could be sent to Mars orbit, it could be used upon human arrival on Mars orbit.

It's just not a good idea. I can see that you value efficiency and find waste distasteful. However, you are just not considering the situation carefully.

Let's say you are some place near the U.S and Canadian border where it gets near freezing. You have an older space heater and a bunch of blankets and warm clothes. Generally, the space heater is serving you well. It's malfunctioned a couple of times, but you were able to use more blankets and some warmer clothes. In short order you were able to use some tools and some parts obtained from a local supply store and fix your "trusty" old space heater. One time you were just too tired and went over to a friend's house for the night.

Now, let's say you are are lot farther north of the equator. You are literally 1,000 miles away from the nearest warm shelter and local hardware store. If the space heater breaks down, you cannot find another heat source before you freeze and die.

In space, this situation is thousands of times worse. Reliability and redundancy are not just mission critical considerations, but life critical situations. This MUST be your primary consideration at all times. My tax dollars paid for parts of the ISS and I would want it to get the greatest amount of use before it is decommissioned. However, I don't want to risk the lives of astronauts just to keep using a piece of equipment.

AFAIK, there have been problems with the ISS where the situation could have been far more serious had it been orbiting around the Moon, or worse Mars.

Re:Moving ISS not a crazy idea at all

[Civil_Disobedient]

Hence the complete craziness of throwing away all those shuttle primary fuel tanks.

Many of them are still in orbit, still being tracked by ground stations. But you're right, most of them are actually ditched over the Indian Ocean. The irony is that the shuttle could actually be more efficient if they knew they were going to re-use the tank in orbit, because they wouldn't have to waste the fuel necessary to perform the MET ditch maneuver.

Each fuel tank weighs more than the total shuttle payload. That's an enormous amount of raw materials that are already up in space to work with. But this is not an original idea... people have been talking about converting main fuel tanks into crew habitats for years.

The first mention was back in 1979 by a group of undergraduate students writing for a competition at the International Astronautical Congress. It was entitled, appropriately enough Space Shuttle External Tank Used as a Space Station.

They ended up winning first prize, but naturally nothing was ever done about it.

Stop misunderstanding Russian space announcements

[Jafafa Hots]

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?"

Russia Saves US Manned Spaceflight?

[BlueStrat]

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

2 things in the way

[WindBourne]

1. Prices of Oil have plummeted, though at this moment, EU is screwed and paying top dollars for Natural Gas. But EU will be working hard to get themelves unhitched from the Russian Pipeline over the next couple of years. But Oil will remain low.
2. At the moment, it appears that NASA is going to fund RSA by the ridiculusly high price of ~50M/seat (when they were getting 20M). But more likely than not, NASA is going to fund SpaceX and try to get SpaceX to carry the bulk of the humans for less than half the price.

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.