How Long Can the ISS Last?

R3d M3rcury writes with the story that "NASA and Boeing, along with other nations, are studying the feasibility of keeping the International Space Station in orbit until 2020 and possibly until 2028 — the 30 year anniversary of the launch of the first module." From the article: "To assess the long-term structural health of the station, Boeing engineers developed detailed computer models based on NASA's projected use -- the expected stresses caused by future dockings, reboosts, crew activity and thermal cycles -- and combined that with actual data from on-board accelerometers and strain gauges. ... "What we're looking at is theoretical crack growth," Pamela McVeigh, the engineer in charge of the Boeing structural analysis in Houston, told CBS News. "So the failure mode would be you'd have a crack beginning, probably (at) a bolt hole, and the crack would grow to another edge. So you'd lose like a flange on a C-beam, or an I-beam. The stiffness of your structure would then change, the bolt hole you that you were growing the crack out of, now that bolt wouldn't be effective."

Comments

I seriously doubt we'd build the ISS now

[Anonymous Coward]

The US have given up on space. The NASA budget is treated as pork, with no thought of genuine long-term progress.

Re:I seriously doubt we'd build the ISS now

[Teancum]

I seriously doubt that a Sea Dragon launch could have sent up the ISS, but I would agree that sending up 5-10 Saturn V launches would have most certainly done the trick. If anything, shutting down the Saturn V program was a huge mistake... when viewed in hindsight.

Every single mission that was accomplished with the Shuttle program (including sending up 7-man crews) could have been done with a Saturn V and done by far and away cheaper as well. Improvements in materials, guidance computers, and an evolutionary design change over time as has happened with the Soyuz rocket and spacecraft would have made the Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft a very modern and versatile platform to continue a real space exploration program and maintained at least the capability of going to the Moon as an option instead of having to re-invent the wheel again now that that capability has long since been lost.

What would have been lost, perhaps, is the need for international cooperation that went into building the ISS, but even that is not certain. Much of the basis for building the ISS came from the Apollo-Soyuz mission, where exchanges of technical information already were happening between the Soviet space program and NASA.

Even funnier is how the test stand originally built to handle a production run of over 100 Saturn V vehicles is now being used by SpaceX in Texas for testing the Merlin engines. That was the projection done by Werner Von Braun, and contracts were signed to have a contingency of building that many vehicles.

I do think the ISS would look quite a bit different than the current structure had it been built using Saturn V/I/Apollo hardware, although the modular approach would likely have been done still. It would likely have been an upgraded version of the Skylab modules, and I would even dare say that the Skylab backup that is currently in the Smithsonian very likely would have been a part of or even would have become the core American module for the ISS. It definitely would have been much roomier for the astronauts in the ISS with Saturn V launched modules.

Unfortunately, that is not the path that history took.

Urgh.

[dnwq]

God, we're going to keep that thing up there until it disintegrates and kill everyone aboard, aren't we? Just because no politician wants to be the one to pull the plug, even though they would hardly vote for an ISS today. Then we'll pat ourselves on the back for humanity's heroism and then go right back to fighting over the pale blue dot.

Re:Regardless of longevity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, how? This "shielding" you speak of, of "high orbit"... that sounds like it takes more work than building the thing in the first place! The cracks they speak of are just thermal fatigue cracking that exists in all materials, just in Earth orbit it is extremely rapid.

Re:Regardless of longevity.

[CohibaVancouver]

There was no reason to bring the shuttles back once we knew they weren't going to be used again

And what about the little matter of the crews on board the Orbiters? We weren't bringing the Orbiters back, we were bringing the CREWS back.

keep it going as long as possible

[usuallylost]

Hopefully they continue to work on it and refurbish it. If we are ever going to have a robust long term presence in space we are going to have to learn how to build reliable structures that can be repaired and maintained over the long term. The IIS seems like a perfect test bed for that sort of development and we already have a huge sunk cost so why not use it?

Re:Why not use it as a site to build the next one?

[Dereck1701]

Sadly no, they are not going to be attaching a BA-330 to the station they'll be attaching a BEAM module. Basically a closet for storage & testing built on Bigelows inflatable designs. I initially held out the same hopes when it first hit the news that a Bigelow module was going to be attached to ISS, but in hind site it was obviously never going to happen. First off if Bigelow was able to nearly double the volume (Ok 40% increase, still a lot) of ISS with a single launch and a few hundred million dollars NASA would have to answer a whole lot of unpleasant questions regarding the costs for ISS's construction. I imagine that even if Bigelow offered them a BA-330 free of charge (which isn't as crazy as it sounds, think of the PR) I doubt they would have accepted it. Second of all NASA is crazy careful, they won't allow a bag of potato chips without 3 months of testing and redesign. So I highly doubt they would allow a technology that has never had on orbit testing to be attached to ISS, their flagship manned space mission.