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International Space Station Mission Extended To 2024
An anonymous reader writes with news that funding has been secured for the ISS through at least 2024. From NASA: "'...We are pleased to announce that the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the International Space Station until at least 2024. We are hopeful and optimistic that our ISS partners will join this extension effort and thus enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory for at least another decade. ... A further benefit of ISS extension is it will give NASA and its private-sector partners time to more fully transition to the commercial space industry the transportation of cargo and crew to low-Earth-orbit, allowing NASA to continue to increase its focus on developing the next-generation heavy-lift rocket and crew capsule necessary for deep-space exploration."
Yes! Thats All.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
"If you like your space station you can keep your space station."
Let's hope Obama wasn't kidding this time.
Thanks for spending my money on something I actually can get behind instead of just spending it on tracking my phone calls, funding terrorist organizations and god knows what else.
Maybe you can keep this up and we can have a real science budget in the USA.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Too bad, I was hoping to buy it and become Waldo.
On a more serious note, I don't see the ISS as a single "thing" that can/should be abandoned or destroyed. It is a collaborative effort of many people and many nations and is designed to be built upon and "developed". Like a new community. I'm hoping that we as a species find the right combination of profitability and marketability from it to ensure it is still in the sky long after I'm dead and buried. Perhaps we should start thinking of it as more of a "place" than a "thing".
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The Space Station is a huge pork barrel; it is a way for NASA/Houston to siphon funds that would better spent on real science. The billions wasted on this would be better spent on robotic missions to Europa and other icy moons plus a Mars Sample Return Mission. The Terrestrial Planet Finder mission would also be a much better use of the money. The real excitement and discovery is happening with robotic probes such as the MSL (Curiousity), not the manned pork.
The Galactic DMV also requires a flasher fluid flush, a new windshield wiper belt, and a tachyon emissions filter for the flux capacitor before it passes inspection.
Disappointed
I was looking forward to the Taco Bell promotions when this thing crashed back to earth
NASA should move into a role of supporting commercial space flight. Let players like SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace create the technologies needed. Let the lawyers figure out how to grant property rights on the Moon, Mars, etc. At this point, I'm inclined to view the ISS as a LEO flying turkey.
So what do we really get out of the space station? Is it ever going to turn a profit? Has it ever helped produce anything?
I'm not trying to be critical. I've heard of things like experiments to see whether spiders can still spin webs in 0 G and whether the webs look different. But after many years of hearing about stuff like this, I've never heard a strong explanation put forward as to what is its real tangible benefit. If it is simply to work with other nations in a unique environment, call congress. I've heard they have some pretty unique and expensive parties. No doubt, there's a cynical meter reading very high right now. But I do know a number of the companies providing major support for the space station are well connected politically and get a lot of money for it.
So what to do? I don't know. If it is a waste of money, I don't think it is the worst the federal government has dreamed up. That's because it's a cool project. But me-thinks more could be accomplished for less money in private industry.
I agree that all participants have to say yes. But the Ruskies, Europeans and the 'Muricans are the three largest investors, and therefore it is a step in the right direction that Obama made the money available.
They where already planning for the demise of the ISS. They where going to salvage parts that they owned and create their own orbiting platform for deep space exploration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Piloted_Assembly_and_Experiment_Complex
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Japan is somebody you shouldn't write off either. They did build the Kibo module and have paid a substantial part of the costs involved too. If you would ask anybody involved, I would dare say that Japan is an equal partner in terms of decisions like this. The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, is making plenty of progress on their own as well and certainly deserves to be recognized as a space faring nation, including having an astronaut corps of its own.
You'd still have to rocket whatever you need to build into LOE. So you'd still be spending the same energy either way.
Everything will need to be launched from Earth until you have a base that can produce it's own equipment and fuel. You're not going to have that in LOE.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's a commons. Like the National Parks service, it's something you run at a billions-of-dollars-a-year loss for in exchange for being able to have those things available as a shared good.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
...because the energy involved in launching an Earth-assembled probe directly into deep space is by physical necessity equal to or less than launching that probe's parts into space, stopping them, assembling them, launching the probe's fuel, then launching the probe into deep space.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Another way to look at it is that it is only $3B dollars per year. For the USA this is pretty meagre spending really and entirely necessary. Many other spending initiatives such as seriously failed wars in the middle east that destabilize the whole region cost way more and don't endear the USA to the rest of the world. The ISS and similar things are necessary, because without them that country would be hated around the world for what it does in other areas and might come to bite it in times of local crisis (i.e. possibility of threats of economic sanctions such as when the Soviet Union collapsed in reverse). Plus you get science promoted in the media and access to space-based research.
down the tubes.. or into the vacuum as the case may be. The ISS has no major accomplishments other than being a gravy train for aerospace contractors. Is there research going on up there that provides sufficient return to justify a cost of $8.2 million per day if it were not funded through tax dollars? Now that the station is being serviced commercially it is time to pull the plug. If IBM or Intel or Merck or Pfizer or whomever want a research lab in space let them form a consortium with Boeing et al and build one that suits their needs. And if they are really in love with the existing station, sell it to them and get some tax money back.
This is going to be inflammatory, but I have good karma to burn.
You sad sick fuck. The world is not beholden to the economic views of market capitalism. Science and knowledge expansion requires the expenditure of resources that are NOT tied up in making the elite more elite. It's your viewpoint that has destroyed what was once the greatest scientific community and left nothing but a corpse picked over by weasels and hyenas.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
The US being virtually bankrupt, I wonder where the money will come from.... but then again:
*slap on forehead* of course. The Fed will just print some *slap on forehead*
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
If you launch them with just the right amount of energy, you don't NEED to "stop them". They'll end up in an orbit around earth. Not as if we had not been already doing that for decades.... Back to school, dude !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
The US is too far in debt for this to make any difference.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
This is the typical issue with those that purport that the free market solves everything people. A) it is simplification, and B) it isn't real.
For example, were do you think big pharma or Boeing would be without government contracts? Broke, and non-existent. What do you suppose ratio of business is for a company like Boeing between selling commercial items to other commercial entities, just like a good old free market is, to its business of selling military and other goods to various levels of government.
Anyway as an ideal, it is something, however in practice it doesn't really exist in any meaningful way, and exists only to help enrich a few while keeping the rest down. Which oddly enough everyone was talking about when the Soviet Union fell.
Things like regulation, particularly regulation that is paid for by commercial interests to give themselves an unfair advantage by lobbying government, or simply groups of large commercial interests cooperating together to game the system (monopolies, consortiums, associations, price fixing, etc...). Certain projects take National type funding, or they will not happen. Getting competing interests to somehow come together, to spend profits on something that may not turn into more profit in the next quarter is not happening.
While I am broadly sympathetic with curtailing government spending and privatizing what is possible, I would like to make the following points
1) I'm going to guess that your assessment of ISS accomplishments is incorrect.
I'm going to channel Louis CK here a little but, basically, we have a _hotel in space_. People can live there and not die. That is _amazing_.
Instead of constantly pissing in their pants because there is no gravity, because cosmic and solar radiation are trying really hard to kill them, and because there is no native air, food, or water for over 100 miles, and your body has to explode and be burnt into nothingness if you want to go in that direction to get them -- these guys are up there laughing, doing flips and shit, and still getting work done.
That's awesome. How cynical are you, that we've got a floating laboratory orbiting the earth at one hojillion miles per hour, and you're like "meh. Not impressed".
What kind of awesome james bond shit is going on your life? Can you even hang drywall?
2) Ok. Lets say you're right. They're not doing anything new or awesome up there.
You overlook the value of what they are doing.
2a) the ISS allows the US to have meaningful scientific cooperation with Russia and the rest of Europe, both symbolically and pragmatically. This is a lot better than a hot war between these factions. What price do you put on symbolically maintaining good will?
2b) Even if you're right, and there is no new science nor engineering being done on the ISS, the current and future missions are still valuable.
It turns out, Space is Hard. The way you get good at it is with practice, and the way you stay good at it is with practice. You may have read, from time to time, claims that it would be difficult or impossible to recreate the Apollo program now because so much of the expertise and operational excellence of that era is now gone.
It is very easy to stop going to space. It is very hard to get back once you've stopped going.
I would characterize the spending level required for a manned space program something like the maintained dosage level vs. drug effect for many medications. Specifically, it takes much more of a drug to _start_ observing the desired effect (e.g. reduction in felt pain) than it does to maintain that effect once it has been achieved.
We're going to want to do manned space flight again some day. If we take what we know and stop doing it for 10 years, when we need to go back its going to cost more and take longer. We may not have that luxury.
2c) this relates to item 2b, but despite Kennedy's demand for the non-militarization of space, space is a military consideration.
If there must be a nation (and currently, we've got one), and it is going to do things it decides are in the public interest (like strategic defense, public education, or having a deep pipeline of basic research available royalty free) , it should seek to get a good return on investment from those activities.
We've established that manned space flight has both operational and technology advantages that are relevant for national defense, and the private economy at large. I think we get a good return on our $3B/year.
But lets cast a wider net.
Perhaps you've heard of the Halo Effect. GM builds a $100k car. Most GM customers don't buy the Corvette ZR1. But the ZR1 is a hell of a car; it is a masterpiece of engineering, styling, etc. It shows the world what GM is capable of. The thinking goes, Halo cars are effective products as a form of brand management, marketing, and advertising. It inspires people about what GM can do; it gets them thinking about GMs other products. Etc etc.
Is it possible that manned space programs have the same impact? And if so, on what group of people?
Perhaps manned space flight has an impact on kids?
The federal department of education budget is $32 billion a year.
Everyone agrees that there aren't enough Americans going into STE
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I hear this all the time about how the ISS is supposed to evolve into this orbital "gas station" for future missions to the moon, Mars, or beyond. The problem with that is the ISS is in the wrong orbit for doing that. To get the ISS project off the ground the orbit was shifted from it's original low angle orbit to a high angle orbit. This higher angle made it cheaper and easier for supply missions from existing Russian launch sites.
I won't pretend I understand all the physics but I get the general concept. To reach the ISS from Russia easily means that the orbit had to deviate quite a bit from the equator. Any spacecraft bound for a destination within the solar system requires a trajectory very close to the orbital plane of the planets.
I understand that every orbit is a compromise since the Earth's rotation and other motions of objects in the solar system means that there is no one perfect orbit for an orbital platform to use as a filling station or assembly point. I do recall that ISS has an orbit far from anything close to ideal as a stopping off point for a destination within the solar system. A spacecraft stopping at ISS on its way to any other point in the solar system would burn far too much fuel in getting there that there is just not enough fuel that ISS could transfer to the craft to make the stop worth it.
It was also explained to me that moving the ISS to a more suitable orbit would be exceedingly expensive. It would just be cheaper and easier to build another station in this more suitable orbit. I'm just angered a bit when people claim that the ISS is going to be our gas station in the sky for our future manned mission to Mars.
I am pleased a bit that we (speaking as an American citizen and a member of the human race) are not abandoning manned missions in space. I'm hoping that at some point we see multiple manned orbital platforms, some made specifically as a stop off point for manned missions beyond low Earth orbit. If NASA could get its act together then maybe we could see an American flag painted on such a station before China or Russia beats us to it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You sad sick fuck. The world is not beholden to the economic views of market capitalism. Science and knowledge expansion requires the expenditure of resources that are NOT tied up in making the elite more elite. It's your viewpoint that has destroyed what was once the greatest scientific community and left nothing but a corpse picked over by weasels and hyenas.
Consider that the above complaint is made in the face of the greatest expenditures ever made on scientific research in the history of the world. If the "greatest scientific community" is being destroyed, then it must be by something other than mere economics.
I think Lawrence_Bird nailed the fundamental problem. Programs like the ISS aren't scientific programs but rather corrupt transfers of wealth to various elite which happen to do a minor bit of research. Too much research is not about producing something of value either for today or the distant future.
Please state the scientific accomplishments of the ISS. I get marked as troll yey it is you who offers nothing in rebuttal. Where are all the groundbreaking publications? Can you name one without a google search? Perhaps because there have not been any.
As to science funding in general again it is you who is the ignorant troll. Govt funding is at record highs. If anything has "destroyed" science is that it is now completely dependent on govt largess. In effect scientists are nth more than civil servants.
No they would be a lot smaller and not relying on corpratism
1-hotel skylab
2-cooperate on something with real results
Let the military do as they need
Business is good at finding solution$ for problems people want solved.govt is not