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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."
The US have given up on space. The NASA budget is treated as pork, with no thought of genuine long-term progress.
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.
It would be nice if they could use the existing one as a site-office to begin building an even bigger one with a longer life expectancy. Use better materials, a piece at a time, and start building a replacement.
14 years isn't far from now. So what then? Start from scratch again? Seems a shame when they could begin stockpiling for the next generation and have it well underway by the time it comes to decommission the existing ISS.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Regardless of when the ISS is retired, I can only hope that the powers that be have the good sense to push it into a higher orbit. Someday space travel will be accessible and we will have orbital museums and when that time comes we will regret a good number of historical items the were de-orbited. Honestly we should have kept and boosted into higher orbit one of the last space shuttle launches along with an external tank, since the external tanks are perfectly capable of making it to orbit. Basically wrap them in shielding and stow them away in high orbit until their time as accessible historical artifacts comes. There is a lot that will simply have to be re-created as mock ups, considering the sheer importance of this early age in space travel, it won't be the same but will be better than nothing. In the fifth grade I had the surreal honor of holding a piece of the Berlin wall as it was passed around class. I will never forget the sense of historical understanding that washed over me. If it had been a replica, I would have still found sentiment, but it would not have been the same.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Western Australia July 11 1979
Or if you prefer, the 8th of February 1974 off the coast of San Diego when the last mission finished.
They showed so much of a lack of interest that they threw a working space station away despite having enough Saturn V stages to move it into a higher orbit and five years to do it in.
Actually there was excessive atmospheric heating that brought it down early. But even still, in the post Vietnam era every NASA program was being massively cut and NASA didn't know how to react to that.
This probably explains why Pan Am has been postponing my trip to the station since 2001.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I prefer mega-nation, although stagnation might be closer at this point in time.
It may be sent elsewhere, but the ISS is going to be around for a long, long time. Remember, the Russians own a good chunk of it, and they don't believe in giving up on functional assets. If NASA ever is forced out, watch the US modules being transferred to the Russians for $ 1 or something like that.
The difference between the ISS and the USS Constitution is ease of doing it. The Constitution can be put in dry dock, and you can easily bring workers and materials to it. The ISS is in orbit... which is barely accessible during regular use of it, nevermind using it as a museum money hole. I'd be all for it if there was a practical way to do it, but there likely won't be until long after it deteriorates beyond salvation.
Looking at the track record of the Mir station, the Russian-made parts will probably far outlive ours.
Boeing and NASA are from the USA. The other contributors to the ISS are from other nations
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?
I would assume the risk of catastrophic failure would preclude it's use as an on-site office. However, keeping it up would yield invaluable data as to what components do fail and how, as well as what parts and systems do hold up very well.
Do we seem a little too risk averse these days? I would think that the "risk of catastrophic failure" would be enough to justify not building the damn thing in the first place, given todays risk averse climate.
At the very least, even if a lot of it falls apart, the end of life plan should be to boost the thing to a Lagrange point, rather than deorbiting it.
Do we really need the relics of space age to hang around until they collide with something else and turn into bullets that make space even more dangerous than it already is, just so your grandchildren, if they're lucky and we haven't cluttered up the useful orbits, can have a "sense of historical understanding" like a devout christian looking at the Shroud of Turin?
We NEED space relics!
One "relic" I'm glad is still around is Buzz Aldrin. I still celebrate Sept. 9 every year (the anniversary of him punching Bart Sibrel).
Yeah, and they could call it .. I dunno... OPSEK or something. (Clever idea BTW to have the central Lego pieces be the most multi-functional)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
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.
That's what she said.
If you could put the ISS into a orbit where perhaps future generations (I'm talking a thousand years from now or so) could worry about the refurbishment, I'm sure they could figure out how to turn it into a museum. Assuming that the cost of getting into space would drop considerably over that period of time, bringing workers and materials would not really be a problem and as a historic relic there might even be political rationale or even public sympathy in the form of donations that could perform such a task.
The real trick is simply putting the ISS in a position where such a task could be done. At the moment, it is close enough to the Earth that it needs very regular maintenance simply to maintain its current orbit and can't be left abandoned for very long (about a decade at most... sort of like what happened to Skylab and Mir). Quite literally, the atmosphere of the Earth is going to bring it down to the Earth if nothing else is done.
The only way to push the ISS up to a higher orbit is to attach some kind of thruster pack (likely an ion engine or something with a very high specific impulse but low thrust over a long period of time). It can take a few years to get to its final orbit as it won't be inhabited, but it does need to either go up or down as staying where it is right now simply won't work.
excellent opportunity to develop the technologies for repair in space that are needed for further exploration.
What happened to the NASA/Ad Astra plan to launch an experimental 200 kW VASIMR, strap it to the ISS, and use it to boost the station to higher orbit?
Has it just not happened yet because it doesn't actually work, or because you'd need more solar panels for the required energy, or what?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I would agree with you. A thousand years from now people would be looking at the ISS like we look at a Norse longboat and wonder how anybody put up with such a vessel to cross the North Atlantic Ocean. Such vessels have been found from archaeological digs, or even something much more recent like the H L Hunley and have been restored at huge expense, certainly more than it cost to originally build those vessels.
While a replica may be built too, I think it has some deeper meaning to have the actual equipment there for future generations to see. The cost of pushing the ISS up to a higher orbit certainly is something that is in the realm of an affordable mission in the here and now.
Nonsense. Corporations that make no money are the very definition of not-for-profit. And there are plenty of corporations out there that only earn enough to pay their employees.
It's an engineer's way of saying "it gets weaker if there's cracks in it".
I don't know how long NASA will want to keep ISS in space (hopefully longer than the stated end of mission parameters though) but the Russians have already stated their desire that if NASA does decide they want to shutdown/deorbit ISS they are going to try to detach their modules and start a "new" Russian space complex, OPSEK (Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex). Personally I'm a bit confused, even the oldest parts on ISS are only 15 years old. Does equipment really degrade that fast in orbit? I would think electronics would be the first to go, but they should be fairly modular making most of them easy to replace. Even if an entire module became structurally/electrically unsound, in many cases detaching it from the station and deorbiting it while keeping the rest of the complex active would seem quite easy. The only exceptions to this may be a few of the core modules or nodes, even those would not be out of the question, it would just be a question of sending up a new node or core module and moving unaffected modules to the new core/node.
because they have not had any long term progress
The history of NASA
1 - Go to the moon.
2 - Go into low-earth orbit.
3 - Have no heavy lift capability
What's next, build an optical hand-held telescope to figure out what the big round thing we once thought was cheese is?
Has nobody noticed that at NASA time is running backwards? Assuming that a government entity can accomplish anything at all if its goal is not extremely narrow and we are at war with virtually unlimited budgets, is absurd.
That I am not a communist like you is quite apparent. Did you notice how well the CommBloc did from 1945-1989? Just a real hotbed of innovation, right? Without them the world would be a completely backward place.
The fact that you try to argue that government is able to do anything cheaper shows your naivety. I'm sending you to see Putin for re-education.