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Russia Wants To Work With NASA On a New Space Station
HughPickens.com writes with news that Russian officials are talking about working with NASA to build a new space station as a replacement for the ISS after its operations end in 2024. Igor Komarov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, was unambiguous in his support for such a partnership. He added, "It will be an open project. It will feature not only the current members of the ISS." NASA, while careful not to discourage future cooperation, was not so enthusiastic. They said, "We are pleased Roscomos wants to continue full use of the International Space Station through 2024 -- a priority of ours -- and expressed interest in continuing international cooperation for human space exploration beyond that. The United States is planning to lead a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, and we have advanced that effort farther than at any point in NASA's history. We welcome international support for this ambitious undertaking." They reiterated that there are no formal agreements in place as of yet. These comments come as three crew members arrive at the ISS, two of whom will be up there for an entire year.
Why do they retire the ISS? Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to keep it in orbit and expand/maintain what we already have up there?
"I propose that the United States delivers its astronauts to the ISS with the help of a trampoline." Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin
http://bit.ly/1BSlzlo
That's why the US can't trust the Russians to be part of a future joint space project. As soon as they have some leverage, they will use it.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
A seagoing vessel is probably a better analogy (boats fall apart just floating around) - while there are ancient boats still floating, pretty much everything in them has been replaced at one point or another. In a dock - which is a pretty benign environment. It may be impossible to disassemble the ISS and replace the bad parts in orbit. Look at how much effort goes into just putting a new refrigerator on the outside of the thing. We just don't have the technology to uncouple a module, re weld a section and bolt / weld it back together again.
We likely should be working on that ability but this sort of construction and repair isn't sexy enough, I guess. Space is hard. Very hard. Budget constraints have made it so the US and Russia are really just jogging in place on the ISS - very little real research (such as in orbit assembly) is even being contemplated.
ISS-2 will be put together on the ground and boosted into segments and snapped together in orbit, but it won't be 'built' in orbit. There won't be any machining, welding, wiring, insulating or any of those types of functions done in space. We are no where near being able to do that past the sound stage.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If the US wants to go to Mars for more than a single short mission, it's going to need the ISS or a replacement. We'll need to be able to build ships in orbit so they aren't limited by the constraints of the first hundred or so miles of the trip (lifting the ship up from the surface to Earth orbit), that's the only way we'll be able to build them large enough for the crew, supplies and equipment needed for a mission of more than a week or two. And if we want this to be a sustained thing, sending more than a couple-three missions, we're going to need to be able to build ships without shipping the majority of their components up from surface.
And the ISS will help how, exactly? The entire ISS came from the Earth's surface. Unless you have a really fancy plan to do asteroid/lunar mining, that's where all future materials will ultimately come from too. The ISS is way, way down in Earth's gravity well so if you could do mining you wouldn't build it there anyway. We can assemble a ship in orbit with or without the ISS, nothing really gets easier. What we're building must have a crew module, so any astronauts working on assembly can just live there. Not that I really see the need, the assemblies could dock like spaceships do and just interlock with bolts.
Star Trek has ruined a generation's sanity when it comes to space stations. The only reason you'd want a space station is so you can have a ship come in for maintenance, repair, upgrades or refueling in orbit so they don't have to go down the gravity well. If all you're doing is sending ships out never to return, it's a total waste of time. Unless you get to the point where you have a shuttle taking things from Earth orbit and Mars orbit and returning for a refuel it doesn't make sense. And it probably doesn't make sense unless you can refuel in Mars orbit. Which means it's not happening in this century.
Space stations are not like gas stations where you just drop by as you pass one by. Unless you're planning to be in Earth orbit, entering Earth orbit to dock with the ISS and deorbiting to get to your destination costs a helluva lot of fuel. And that is the crux of the issue, it almost never makes sense to build a waypoint into your route as opposed to just going to whereever you were planning to go in the first place. If possible you might not even want to assemble in oribt, just launch multiple rockets on the same trajectory and have the bits assemble in zero g before firing off to their final destination.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you were truly an engineer (a real one, not just someone with an overinflated title), you'd know that things age and wear out.
A real engineer grasps the impact of parts count and complexity. Not only is the ISS not just a "tin can", those planes are orders of magnitude simpler than the ISS.
Not to mention that those planes take hundreds of man hours a year to maintain in flyable condition - and man hours in space cost tens of thousands per.
Sure, as any engineer knows, you can easily manufacture things given enough infrastructure. Since you're an "engineer", you should be able to estimate the cost of developing a (currently non existent) weightless capable factory complex, and the costs of placing hundreds to thousands of tons on orbit, and the ongoing costs of logistics, support, and maintenance needed to produce those "hundreds of times cheaper" parts. You'll also be able to understand that a space craft is made of hundreds of different kinds of materials, only a few of which are amenable to recycling.