Russia May Be Planning National Space Station To Replace ISS

An anonymous reader writes with news that Russia may be building its own space station to replace the ISS. Russia may be planning to build a new, independent national space station rather than prolong its participation in the $150 billion International Space Station (ISS) program beyond its current 2020 end date. The U.S. space agency NASA proposed last year to extend the life of the ISS — the largest international project ever undertaken by nations during peacetime — beyond its currently scheduled 2020 end date to at least 2024.

Comments

Peace Time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Peace time! The countries have been involved in almost constant war the entire ISS programs existence.

Re:What would happen?

[Hadlock]

It was designed with a 10 year service life, then re-rated for 20 years. Current plan is 2024 but after that is really stretching things and major modules need to be replaced due to stressed placed on them by boosting the orbit (the ISS is actually in the upper atmosphere and loses about 2km (1 mile) altitude per month due to atmospheric drag. It gets reboosted by Soyuz and Progress spacecraft periodically.
 
Yes you could keep it going indefintiely but eventually the safety factor drops below an acceptable point. Based on what's there right now, that safe point is 2024-2030.
 
A next generation space station could possibly exceed a 25 year design life, but really, 25 years is pretty damn good given this was the first try since Space Lab for the US. For the Russians this is old hat, their segment(s) are just repurposed MIR 2 parts.