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.

Comments

Why do thei retire the ISS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Why do thei retire the ISS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The materials are not radiation rated for much longer than 2024, and we simply don't know how long some of the seals will last.

Re:Why do thei retire the ISS?

[buchner.johannes]

Sometimes you just need to build from the ground up.

That's gonna be difficult for a space station.

The official Russian position:

[duckintheface]

"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.

Re:The official Russian position:

[Luckyo]

Out of interest, what do you then call US leaders who reacted the way they reacted and continue to act when Castro took power in Cuba in an overthrow of massively unpopular US-supported dictatorship then? Or when he took USSR nuclear missiles?

That country didn't even have direct ground access to US, nor had been used as staging ground for assault on US heartland several times before in the history. Let me remind you of an obvious fact: all countries do things that Russia does and much worse when they feel their survival is threatened.

The best part is that you're massively anti-democratic with that statement - overwhelming majority of Russian people specifically support the current policy of Russia. Not the leader but his policy. Even pro-Western organisations doing polling in Russia are in full agreement with this. How would you feel about comparing US leaders to North Korean ones in terms of "sanity"? Because one could easily make the point that they are far more crazy. Whereas North Korean leaders are quite logical in their actions being driven by survival of their dictatorship in their country, US leaders are often driven by severely conflicting interests that end up hurting the country itself as they feud with one another.

Please remind yourself that "insanity" and "not being pro-Western" are only synonyms in propaganda.

Re:Why does it need to be replaced?

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Why does it need to be replaced?

[DerekLyons]

As an engineer I want to reuse and expand and not throw anything away.

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.
 

NASA can't build tin cans that can survive in space for a hundred years? There are planes from WW2 that are still flying and those rattle.

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.
 

Things get at least a hundred times cheaper when they don't have to survive the stresses of liftoff.

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.