Former Rep. Louis Stokes, the Man Who Saved the Space Station, Dies At Age 90

MarkWhittington writes: The Associated Press noted the passing of former Rep. Louis Stokes at the age of 90. Since Stokes was an African American Democrat first elected in 1968, most of the accolades touch on his effect on the civil rights struggle and his lifelong fight against racism. However, as George Abbey, former NASA Director of the Johnson Spaceflight Center and current Fellow in Space Policy at the Baker Institute of Rice University pointed out on his Facebook Page, Stokes can be rightly be said to be the man who saved the International Space Station and perhaps human space flight in America.

Comments

Uh... "Saved it" by flip-flopping

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "Stokes had voted to kill the space station in 1991 and 1992. However, thanks to lobbying by President Clinton, he switched sides and voted to continue funding the NASA project. Since the measure to kill the space station died by a single vote, Stokes, by switching sides, can rightly be said to have saved the project."

Oh, and for the 200-300 Hildabeast drones who are going to put up the usual REPUBLICANS HATE EVERYTHING copy-n-paste, please recall that in 1993 both houses of Congress were completely controlled by the Democrats who could do basically anything they wanted without having to worry about those evil evil Republicans getting in the way.

Re:Uh... "Saved it" by flip-flopping

[dunkelfalke]

Deciding differently after being presented more data is not flip-flopping, it is reasonable.
On the other hand, stubbornly holding on an opinion, no matter what the facts are, is stupid.

Flip-flopping is changing the opinion based on polls, aka being a weathervane - which is an inherently opportunistic behavior.

Did he really save it, though?

[timrod]

From the article, Stokes actually voted twice to kill the ISS, and only switched after political prodding from the Clinton administration. The way the headline is written makes it seem like he was a champion for the ISS the entire time.

Re:Why does it matter that he's black?

[tnk1]

That's true, but you could have also written an piece like that which simply said:

"The man who saved the International Space Station and manned space flight died today."

I agree that might not have been enough for the AP and a general audience, but I'd love to have seen an article where the only way you realized he was black (or white) was his picture. Seems to me that given all of the people who worked on civil rights, he may well have been more of a standout due to his work to save manned flight than his civil rights work. It is difficult to find a black politician from that period who *wasn't* involved in civil rights.

Is this a good thing?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Please do correct me if I'm factually misinformed; but my impression is that 'saving the ISS' isn't exactly a noble cause when it comes to actually doing [i]science[/i] in and about space.

I'm personally very much in favor of NASA's role in aeronautics and space R&D(both the necessary delivery systems and the cool exploratory robots we have probing various bits of the solar system and the assorted satellites focused on earth-surface observation and astronomy work that the atmosphere would interfere with); but the ISS seems like the very worst flavor of man-in-a-can makework nonsense. It doesn't even have the cool-and-unprecedented factor of the sending-men-to-the-moon projects; but it consumes a lot of orbital lift capacity to send a rotating crew of humans; and the supplies to support them to a motly collection of hamster tubes in an orbit so low it barely counts as out of the atmosphere.

Is there any serious defense of the ISS in terms of a results per unit spend or unit lift capacity? It's neat, and it has podcasts, and such; but it had better be a lot of neat to justify all the possible 'send robotic probe to do something' or 'assemble larger telescope in orbit' or other projects that could have been done instead.

Re:Is this a good thing?

[kellymcdonald78]

The problem is like the Shuttle, ISS was pennywise and pound foolish. Congress wasted much of a decade sending NASA back to the drawing board again and again to reduce the cost of Space Station Freedom, ultimately spending more in these redesign efforts than was saved by down scoping the station, and resulting in a station hampered in its ability to do research. Cancelling the Hab module for example means several racks on Destiny are used to provide ISS life support rather than R&D. The Centrifuge module was cancelled, along with the R&D opportunities it could have provided. Most importantly much of the funding originally planned to create an organization to facilitate research on the station and establish network of universities with supporting grants was cut. The original plan was to have something similar to the Space Telescope Science Institute (created for Hubble), in place for ISS operation. Rather we have CASIS which was only founded in 2011, and has been a complete and total disaster.

Re:Is this a good thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any serious defense of the ISS in terms of a results per unit spend or unit lift capacity?

You do realize that ISS has ZERO lift capacity?

As for science, there is science done on ISS.

http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

And no, that experiment would not be possible without ISS because of power demands.

And without ISS, there would be no Americans in space.. This means ZERO US research on effects of near-space and its environment of living organisms. ZERO other research done by these individuals. No experience in on-orbit assembly of structures. Spacewalks that are routine with ISS were "exception to the rule" before ISS... but maybe China should take over leading role in space anyway?? Right?

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...

Finally, without it, there would be no Space X because they would never get contract to supply ISS.

To me it is kind of mind-blowing to even ask if ISS is beneficial. Obviously the answer is YES! Even if the only thing we get from ISS is stroking Musk's ego to get to Mars, it's worth it. Vertical landing of 1st stage for re-use has been something that's been quite unimaginable before SpaceX and probably never tried with Boeing or Lockheed.

Re:Is this a good thing?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The ISS has zero lift capacity; but it demands considerable lift capacity to keep it supplied with rotating crew, their consumables, and assorted bits and pieces. Plus the launch of the original modules. That's the 'per unit lift capacity' I'm referring to. We have transported a considerable amount of mass into orbit to have the ISS. Does it compare favorably to other missions that could have been performed with those resources?

Re:Is this a good thing?

[Toshito]

Oh, not another "but humans in space are a waste, send robots!"

Robots are cool, and they are useful. But if we sent humans to Mars instead of rovers, they would have done all the exploration and experiments in a matter of days, not months and years.

You guys are really depressing. Why bother to explore, to travel, to even get out of your house? You can visit almost any street of any big cities in the world with Google Street view, you can do a video conference for free with anyone on earth, you can work from home... So why waste fuel by transporting humans?

The real waste is not the money spent on the ISS, it's the trillions of $ spent on the defense budget. Adress that problem and you'll have enough money to send robots AND humans in space every day of the year.

Superconducting Super Collider

[snsh]

The Space Station (or "waste station", as we used to call it) helped kill the Superconducting Super Collider by taking away research dollars in 1992-1993.

Manned space flight is ridiculously expensive. The SSC, though greatly less glamorous, would have done a lot more for our understanding of the universe. So I don't see funding the ISS as an accomplishment.

Re:Why does it matter that he's black?

[dywolf]

Because he was a prominent civil rights activist and elected in 1968 from Ohio, the first black congressman from that state, a state that while considered northern, has had its own share of racial animus over the years, including to this day.