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Additional Lab To Be Added To the ISS
Matt_dk writes "Apparently the International Space Station is going to get bigger. NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) are preparing to sign an agreement to add another laboratory to the ISS by using a modified multipurpose logistics module (Raffaello) during the final Space Shuttle mission. It will be attached in September 2010 during Endeavour's STS-133 mission. The idea had originally been rejected, but earlier this year ISS program manager Michael Suffredini said using an MPLM for an additional module was being reconsidered."
The point is to get other countries to <3 the USA by showing "global leadership" in space. It's all about "soft power" and, like most political things, it really doesn't matter if it is actually pointless.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't know why they didn't open up bidding on the last module slot (for this revised construction proposal) to a hotel chain and start luring consumers to spend the weekend in orbit in luxury. What a missed opportunity, they could have been working on testing sheets and bathrobes for orbital space-worthiness.
I don't get why we're not planning to dock the shuttles to the ISS and leave them up there, too, with their useful engines, robotic arms, and so forth.
Duct taping the remaining shuttles to the ISS, arkansas style up on concrete blocks, has the following problems:
1) There's not enough space on the truss to leave them bolted on and still have space for resupply missions to dock.
2) They will rapidly permanently break down and become more or less useless. Either leave the fuel cells running, in which case they run out of H2 in about a month with no was in space to refuel and no in-orbit liquid H2 transport available (at least they "could" refill the O2 tanks, in theory), or shut them off and let the electrolyte and water exhaust freeze in place, cracking the lines. When the freon leaks out of the coolant system, no way to refill... Most of the onboard systems are like that, limited on-orbit lifetime and no on-orbit maintainability, at all.
3) So, they're deadweight, whats the loss? Well, they need to boost the station so it doesn't reenter, and boosts are expensive. Plus it adds surface area to speed reentry so you need MORE reboosts but just BIGGER reboosts.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Makes sense, the MPLMs are built like modules anyway, and are going to be useless without the shuttle. Leaving at least one on orbit is the best use possible, marginally usable or not. As for the talk of decommissioning, quite frankly it's not going to happen. It may well get effectively turned over to ESA and the Russians, but giving the station to Russia isn't politically feasible, the Russians aren't going to abandon it any time soon and we can't deorbit the station unilaterally. Actually, I would not be at all surprised to see the other two launched as permanent modules at some point in the future; having a premade pressure hull does save quite a lot over a new build, and some kind of joint ESA/Russian lab would be a nice replacement for some of the stuff cut by the Russians and the abandoned joint capsule project.
It's going to be decommissioned in 5 years. Maybe they should be planning the lab for the next generation space station.
AIUI, there are plans afoot to extend the station's life. I've heard suggestions that it could be in orbit for around 10-15 more years. And as far as I know, there are no plans for a replacement station.
Plus, there's no reason _not_ to do this. The module is already built. It's designed to be used with the shuttle, so after the last shuttle flight it will be useless if it isn't left up there. So why not leave it up?
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