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Space Station To Be Deorbited After 2020
astroengine writes "Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, the space agency said on Wednesday. 'After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish,' said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov."
Speaking as someone who both is and works with people doing robotic exploration of the solar system, most of us did NOT get into this because it was our dream to keep making better robots to put into space forever and ever. And I can also assure you it isn't for the rock star salaries, either. Without something to inspire the kids of today, it's going to be harder to find people tomorrow to build and pilot rovers, orbiters, and landers. Yes, I just said it. A good chunk of the purpose of manned spaceflight is PR. That shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention, though.
I agree that we shouldn't ignore remote and robotic systems. They are extraordinarily useful. But they are very limited. My boss is a planetary geologist and a member of the Mars Exploration Rover team, and when the nominal 90 day mission ended, I asked him how long the work we did with each rover would take a competent human geologist to do. He replied, "a hard afternoon's worth of effort."
We shouldn't send people up just for the sake of sending people up; I agree with that too. There needs to be a plan, but I think even more importantly, there needs to be a vision. In the long run, though, we will need both manned and unmanned missions to really improve our understanding.
Establishing a perminnant presence in space is not a reasonable goal at this time. It would cost too much, and it would not be sustainable as a result.
Excuse me for being cynical here, but I do remember the fact that when the ISS was first started but before astronauts started to inhabit the thing, that it was officially proclaimed by various press releases by both Russia and NASA as "the first permanent space station and outpost of humanity". I suppose that "mission" was lost when the "Space Station Alpha" moniker was lost too.
Yes, I know that changed over the years, but I do wish those guys would have been more honest about the issue back then. In theory it could still be a permanent outpost as it was built in a modular fashion, and more to the point it was proclaimed as being so huge that it could never be sent back to the Earth like Skylab and Mir (as well as the several Almaz stations) all had been. The ISS was supposed to be something different. I really would like to know when that changed.