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Panel Advises Longer Life For Space Station

Posted by samzenpus on from the if-it-isn't-broke dept.

suraj.sun writes "A presidential panel reviewing the US space program has found that the United States needs to boost NASA's budget by $1.5 billion to fly the last seven shuttle missions and should extend International Space Station operations through 2020. The panel also proposed adding an extra, eighth shuttle flight to help keep the station supplied and narrow an expected 5-7 year gap between the time the shuttle fleet is retired and a new US spaceship is ready to fly."

6 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. No they didn't. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Shuttle/ISS subcommittee headed by Dr Sally Ride has presented three options:

    1. Do nothing, let the shuttle stop flying at the end of 2010 and let the station be de-orbited at the end of 2016.
    2. Fly 1 more mission, and still de-orbit the station at the end of 2016.
    3. Extend station operations through to the end of 2020 and fly more shuttle missions to support it.

    The options explain how to do it, what funding will be required, and the consequences on other programs.

    The President and the new NASA Administrator will take these options and decide which to implement, depending on what funding they can get from Congress.

    The committee is not chartered with making any recommendations, and the options are not final until the report is released, around Aug 31.

    You can give your opinions to the committee via the website: http://hsf.nasa.gov/

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:No they didn't. by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Informative

      Isn't there a fourth option? Namely- use Soyuz to transport people from now on

      Without Shuttle to provide the cargo upmass and reboosts - there isn't a fourth option. Soyuz and Progress can't do it, ATV won't fly often enough, and HTV is still largely in the vaporware category (and even if it was flying, wouldn't add sufficient performance).

  2. Re:Nope by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ISS is the most amazing laboratory ever built. Vast amounts of awesome science is done on it. Thing is, NASA is so completely inept at communicating this to the public that even space geeks, like myself, have no idea what the hell they do up there.

    The ISS program people will occasionally say "I could talk to you all day long about the great science we're doing on the ISS" and THEN THEY DON'T. Maybe if they talked "all day" about it now and then people wouldn't refer to their project as "busy work" for the space program.

    But if you don't care about science, maybe you only care about exploration, then I guess you have to go with the argument that the lessons we've learnt about maintaining space systems on the space station will be invaluable for going to Mars.. and we're definitely not ready yet.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Re:Decommission Shuttle at the station by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Informative

    It'd stop working about about a month or two and that'd just be more facility for the Russians to spend time repairing.

    The Shuttle simply isn't speced for long term exposure to space. The fact that it doesn't fall apart for the 14 days that it is typically on-orbit is a result of constant care and attention on the ground.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. VASIMR by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 5, Informative

    Near the end of 2008, Ad Astra and NASA signed an agreement to build a 200kw flight article and test it at ISS.

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  5. space shuttle cost by David+Jao · · Score: 4, Informative

    the incremental cost for a shuttle launch is ~$60M.

    NASA says the cost per shuttle launch is $450 million.