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How Long Can the ISS Last?

Posted by timothy on from the delaying-the-heat-death-of-this-part-of-the-universe dept.

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."

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Where on earth? I'll tell you where by dbIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where on Earth did you get the idea that NASA wasn't interested in a space station?

    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.

  2. Re:I seriously doubt we'd build the ISS now by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why did it have to be assembled in tiny pieces instead of using big components with heavy rockets like Skylab was? If the ISS was made of big components with a heavy lift rocket, it could have been assembled in only 5 Saturn V launches (at about $1 billion a launch) or 1 Sea Dragon launch. Reviving a heavy lift rocket program would have paid for itself.

    The whole point of the ISS was to give the space shuttle something to do. Using heavy lift rockets would have defeated its purpose.