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No One Knows What To Do With the International Space Station (popsci.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2024 the clock will run out on the International Space Station. Maybe. That's the arbitrary deadline that Congress imposed back in 2014, at which point they'll have to decide whether or not to keep funding the ISS. And yeah, that's a whole seven years away. But then again...it's only seven years away. The ISS takes up half of NASA's human exploration budget -- half of the pile of money allotted for things like sending humans to Mars or to an asteroid. And if they want to push further into space exploration, NASA can't keep sinking three to four billion dollars a year into the ISS. Not that it's really their decision. Congress -- specifically the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology -- decides how much money NASA will get. And because politicians aren't experts in space travel, they keep holding hearings to discuss what they could possibly do with the ISS in seven years' time. Let private industry take it over? Let it crash and burn into the South Pacific? Let the program keep running? The latest hearing took place last week. These are hard questions, in part because people have very different opinions on what's valuable about NASA, and therefore about whether the ISS is still useful. Maybe you think that NASA should really be about exploration, about pushing the boundaries of what we know and where we can travel. In that case, the ISS might not be your first priority. That's a huge chunk of the budget that goes toward bringing things back and forth to low Earth orbit instead of venturing to other planets.
That's the arbitrary deadline that Congress imposed back in 2014, at which point they'll have to decide whether or not to keep funding the ISS.
In all likelyhood we will continue to use it beyond 2024, that's not a "hard" retirement date, it's a "let's look at the program and funding" date. Case in point: the B-52 is well past its original retirement date.
The better question is if the money spent to continue ISS is money well spent.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
i have a dream
In 2024 the clock will run out on the International Space Station.
They just need to upgrade to a 64-bit version of Linux, right? Check the HCL, make a backup, and upgrade. Good to go!
to keep aliens out.
Burn, baby, burn.
We should take money away from killing people and fully fund both the ISS and space exploration.
I think this would pair nicely with your SpaceX business, don't you?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
why not create a UN body responsible for it and allow all mankind to use it and pay for its maintenance ?
it would be a lot better than de-orbit it and let russia/china have to invest money to build their own from scratch.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Let's strap a couple rockets to it and move it to lunar orbit. Empty it out of personnel, let it do a nice, slow burn to lunar orbit. Slower is cheaper in space. Let it take however long it does to get there, and then we can start sending unmanned Dragon capsules back out to resupply it and lunar shuttles via SpaceX. This would be a good "next step" toward eventually building a permanent structure on the lunar service, and could eventually serve as a sort of waystation for missions on the way out to Mars.
Bear in mind: The lunar soil is full of O3 and H3, which both make for excellent rocket fuel. An unmanned refinery on the moon could turn Luna into a gas station for any interplanetary mission at a fraction of the cost of lifting all that material out of Earth's orbit.
The purpose of the ISS was to help us learn about how people can live and work in microgravity. It isn't an assembly facility or a staging ground for large interplanetary vessels, and it isn't a permanent settlement. If it has served that purpose, then yes, let's plan to retire the station with the dignity it deserves. Perhaps it, or part of it, could be boosted to a higher "archive" orbit, and left there as a historic monument?
An extra $3B to $4B made available for manned missions to the asteroids (my first choice) or nearby moons or planets, would be a game changer for those programs. A permanent, or at least continuous, human presence on or near another celestial body would certainly be a worthy successor to the ISS, even if it takes 20 to 40 years to establish.
This is why we need to start "Operation Add an A" and try to convince some sneaky congressman to insert a single letter into the budget appropriations bill, and hope nobody notices until all of the NSA's checks start getting routed to NASA instead.
Unless we really increase the science we're getting done with the ISS, then I'd rather have more probes or a new telescope.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I say they stop funding the station and start funding research on a better launch mechanism, like a mass driver or whatever. The main barrier to the development of space is the cost of getting stuff up there. Once we had a launch mechanism with a tiny fraction of the cost-per-launch that we have now, a space station (and everything else) would be far more economical.
When I first came here, this was all empty space. Everyone said I was daft to build a station in empty space, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It fell down on Canada[1]. So I built a second one. That fell down onto Austrailia[2]. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then fell into the Pacific Ocean[3]. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest space station in all of space.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Even if they decide they don't have a use for it, why the hell would they crash it into the ocean. I really don't see why they wouldn't just mothball the bitch and maintain it in orbit.
Best case, it's there if they need it for something. Worst case, it's a valuable study into how an unmaintained craft holds up.
I do also like one of the previous ideas about shuttling it over to the moon. I just question how much energy it would need to overcome earths gravity and break free from it's orbit. It is a bit massive.
Would it be economically feasible? Yes they can make ISS contractor owned and operated but what would the customer base be? I'm guessing the government, or companies reimbursed by the government. There is a website "Rocketpunk" like "Steampunk" where it implies we have dreamed of space stations since the 1950s Collier Magazine series about hundreds of people in space doing various things. However, NASA ruined all that by developments where a few kg of electronics replace people to perform duties of communications, weather, and recon satellites. Von Braun plan is to build a reusable shuttle, then a space station, and with that infrastructure in place we continue outwards. But the Shuttle was cancelled and nobody cannot come up with a compelling reason to have a space station. There are reasons... which is what everyone is arguing about. Shame though after all these years and ISS will probably go the way of Mir.
mfwright@batnet.com
I say we fund the human immortality project. Why? It's so we eventually have enough humans that the level of poop will be high enough for us to stand and reach the stars.
Once we can do that, who needs a launch mechanism?
Space weapons platform.
Glorious orange leader can destroy his enemies from space!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm thinking Watto.
Well, yeah, cheaper launches would translate to more economical space travel. Duh. But we probably want to get people up there alive, too.
Besides getting the Soviet's know-how about long time survival in microgravity (the record is still held by a Mir Cosmonaut), there was the idea that a large space station could be a platform for inventing processes and applications in microgravity impossible on earth.
Alas, no valuable technology was discovered : Not in pharmacetics, or microelectronics, or anything else. Worse, the presence of humans and air and fans for forced air circulation makes the ISS a environment full of vibrations. Real science is made by satellites with no humans presence.
Currently, the only purpose of putting humans in space is learning about how to put humans in space.
As a scientific experiment, little remains to be done in the ISS.
Maybe centrifugal space stations should be tried instead of keeping the ISS afloat. Artificial gravity has huge value for long duration space travel and maybe also for space tourism (a tourist may enjoy a few hours of microgravity, but being able to sleep or pee "normally" could widen the appeal of space travel (besides cheap rockets)).
I definitely am a fan of the idea of doing space exploration in a systematic way. We should build a space station that includes a fuel depot, and use it as the hub of space operations.
I am loathe to just destroy the ISS. It was expensive to get it up there and it should be affordable to keep it going. How hard is it really to just boost it into a higher orbit? If we want to save money we might want to stop having people on board for a while... just turn off the life support and other things, but do keep boosting its orbit to keep it where it is.
We will have a real game-changer once we have a "space pickup truck", a launch vehicle that can take a relatively small amount of cargo to orbit, but can do it affordably and frequently. The biggest problem with the Space Shuttle (aside from the fact that it was only 99% safe) was that it took man-decades of labor after each flight to service an orbiter for the next flight.
SpaceX is really working on the "space pickup truck" idea. Recovering the first-stage booster to be refueled and re-used is part of making launch more affordable.
Additionally I would love to see a mass driver or other sort of "cannon" to fire inert payloads (oxygen, water, fuel, dried food, sturdy electronics) to orbit. I've read about this. The biggest problem is that anything you fire from Earth will return to Earth unless its trajectory can be altered; the two obvious ways to do that are to put jets on the cargo capsules so they can adjust their own trajectory, or to have some sort of cargo capture system (a net? a drone with grabber arms?). I favor the latter because I want the cargo capsules to be as simple and cheap as possible.
Once we have an affordable way to get fuel into orbit, all sorts of things become possible. Make a rugged and simple craft that can shuttle back-and-forth between Earth and the Moon, and Moon visits become dramatically simpler and cheaper. Re-boosting the ISS, re-boosting satellites, launching space probes, all of it becomes much simpler and cheaper. Once you are in orbit you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The same could be said for the other international partners of the ISS. Why are the other nations not leading the charge to maintain this profound achievement? Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA could all pick up the tab to keep it operational and looking at the costs NASA has paid quite a fair share.
Maybe for future space exploration they should see what materials we can produce in space? Like can you make microchips in there? can you create amorphic silicone where those microchips are manufactured after cutting it to discs... Etc... Future of Mars colony will reguire that we master ability manufacture technology in space.
We can rid ourselves of this $1e11 white elephant by entering a few simple commands:
Destruct sequence 1 code 1 1a
Destruct sequence 2 code 1 1a 2b
Destruct sequence 3 code 1b 2b 3
Destruct sequence code 0 0 0 destruct 0
Mind if I dream for a minute?
1. Build a set of solar powered soil processors that can pull the toxins out of Martial soil, including H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide), break down the H2O2 into hydrogen and oxygen and compress the H and O for storage in tanks.
2. Build a set of relay tugs capable of using H and O to launch into orbit from Mars' surface and return in one piece several thousand times without significant repairs.
3. Build a set of zero-gee drones that can handle the H and O tanks.
4. Build a set of Martial surface drones that can handle the H and O tanks.
5. Break the ISS in half. Break one half down and brace it as needed Take one half, attach boosters and a payload containing the soil processors, the tugs, and the drones, and take off for Mars. Unmanned.
[ 2 years later ]
6. Arrive at Mars.
7. Soil processors, tugs, and surface drones drop off, land on Mars near a water deposits + cliff face / lava tube / cave
8. Orbital drones start reassembling the newly relocated MSS (Mars Space Station).
9. Soil processors begin churning out non-toxic soil and shipping rocket fuel up to the MSS.
[ some time later ]
10. Humans arrive.
11. The supply part of their ship detaches, lands on Mars not far from soil processors.
12. The human transport portion of the ship docks with the MSS.
13. The finish reassembling the MSS, including attaching the human transport as a new module.
14. They hop on the tug and head down to Mars.
15. They begin using the detoxified soil to grow crops and start building an underground facility
[ some time later ]
16. Subsequent ships arrive
17. dock with MSS, drop off new modules, and
a. refuel, pick up supplies, continue outward
b. head to Mars' surface.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Somebody will rent it, now and then. It would be advisable also to make an agreement with Uber, so that people renting the ISS will have a discount for the trip.
I was going to comment what you said but then I looked into the numbers
From NASA data:
ISS astronaut 6 months 160 mSv --> 0.66 mSv/day
Apollo Mission 14 astronaut 9 day 11.4 mSv --> 1.26 mSv/day
NASA Career exposure limits at age 35 would allow 2.5 Sv or in low earth orbit 0.5 Sv/year --> 2.7 mSv/day.
Maybe the ISS could be relatively safe in lunar orbit, as long as it is used for short term missions.
And one could argue that adding a radiation shielded module might moderate radiation levels.
The ISS does not look like it should be adapted for a Mars Mission however as the long term radiation exposure would be too high.
in 1972, when congress pretty much killed Apollo, and came up with the Space Shuttle. Oh whooppppiieeee! A "space truck" that goes? NO WHERE. The ISS is "ok" but it's not extending our reach into outer space, just around our own little planet.
"What's to "develop" in a deadly, empty vacuum ..."
All the stuff where the vacuum we can make here on earth is not empty and deadly enough, exactly!
Nailed it, Bubba.
The following reasons.
1) 400 KM is still inside the atmosphere. It doesn't really become vacuum until you hit 500-600 km, which is the beginning of the exosphere. Which means if you want a good telescope, you have to launch it to MEO, rather than simply install it in the ISS
2) Because of the atmospheric drag, they have to keep adding energy to keep it in orbit This is not cheap.
3) 400 KM is well inside the Van Allen Belts (The nearer belt starts at 1000 KM) this means astronauts don't need as much radiation shielding from the sun, but it also means they can't use study radiation exposure above the Van Allen Belt. No study of the Solar Wind, Cosmic Rays, etc.
There are more, but that's the basics.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Well, yeah, cheaper launches would translate to more economical space travel. Duh. But we probably want to get people up there alive, too."
Life is overrated, we have had insurances for that for centuries. (or not)
Ask any miner if you don't believe me, the might explore in the opposite direction but it's much deadlier than space and no glory at all.
Don't be such pussies.
It wouldn't be of any use whatsoever at an altitude where the occupants would be irradiated to death.
This space intentionally left blank
[...]start funding research on a better launch mechanism, like a mass driver or whatever.
So you want NASA to invest in a giant canon that can sling a warhead across the entire globe? And you don't think some other nations might have a problem with that?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Give that AC a cookie.
We need a place to house the people and tools that will assemble, test and prepare a large number of independently launched modules into an interplanetary space craft. We need a place to house the people and tools that will assemble an array of large optical reflectors into a big, orbiting interferometer with two orders of magnitude better resolution than Hubble.
There is an obvious and crucial purpose for IIS when you consider in-orbit assembly and service work. Getting to Mars etc. is relatively easy if you can incrementally assemble and fuel an arbitrarily large space craft in orbit. IIS has all the habitat, power and communications facilities to host the necessary construction crew and equipment.
IIS is a STATION. It is not an end in itself anymore than a gas station has a purpose without cars.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
It's ripe for exploitation for one of those reality shows.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
or to have some sort of cargo capture system (a net? a drone with grabber arms?). I favor the latter because I want the cargo capsules to be as simple and cheap as possible.
One problem with a net is, since you're in space, every time you'll catch a cargo, it'll transfer it's force to the station, meaning that it'll alter the station trajectory.
The good news is that I'm pretty confident that it's possible that the push is in the prograde. So if you need to push back the station a little, you could save fuel by hurling a cargo at him. Kinda neat.
Elok
It will be available as one of the "highest" rent districts. :P
Yes, RCA and Sylvania are just itching to start up triode and CRT manufacturing again.
Send all of congress up to it. Then send it into the sun.
Biological and engineering are the 2 biggie sciences going on. We do have items attached to the iss and should do more. But even the recent Kelly twin studies will show a great about human biology.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Doesn't do much good to get up there, even cheaply unless you can actually go somewhere, when you want.
We need a for real SHIP.
1. Huge power capacity...100 megawatts.
2. Magnetic shielding.
3. Rotating living work compartments for artificial gravity.
4. Banks and banks of Ion or other drives.
5. 100% closed environmental recycling system,
6. Reusable, excursion vehicle...plant to ship and back again that doesn't need to refueled for the return trip.
Many of these technologies are available or could be with some investment. yes, it IS rocket science, but it's not magic.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It is also a good place to test unicellular Martian organisms. Just make sure you have at least four firewall levels, and keep all the sharp objects away from the gloves.
I'm with you on the space pickup truck. Cheap access to space is the cure for many ills.
The problem with keeping the ISS around indefinitely is that the core modules like the Zarya have been there a very long time. They'll be a quarter-century old by 1924, and replacing them effectively means cutting the station in half until the modules are swapped out.
It's non-trivial.
Just auction it off to private corp or at least some country that cares a bit more about science.
Of course, if we have any hope of surviving a trip to another planet and finding out ways of doing so, the ISS is an invaluable asset that should keep going... but as long as we have people in power who cannot understand simple concepts like that, it's just better to let other people take control and give it a better shot.
There's an idea: Stop wasting money watching and making bad films and use it for real exploration.
NASA has a motto: "Faster, Cheaper, Better", the problem is that it does not work very well until you add the words "Pick Two".
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Can someone please explain... how you spend 3-4B /year on something you can't even fly to?
Is that the cost of the Russian Taxi service plus the SpaceX vacuum-friendly FedEx truck deliveries?
But that requires a bunch of electricity, much more than solar panels and batteries can easily supply.
There were plans to put the VASIMR engine on ISS, but they didn't happen. It would have used batteries charged by the ISS solar power to provide 15-minute burns.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
We probably need to establish a more permanent presence in space, either in orbit or on the Moon, before we are able to find a cheaper way to get up there. ISS provides very a valuable micro-gravity environment, but at the moment that is the only motivation for sending things up there, more or less. If we had a permanent base on the Moon, for example, which made valuable products and materials that we can't easily produce on Earth or get off the ground, then there would be a much stronger incentive to develop better launch mechanisms.
Certain vital components of the ISS are already close to their certified lifetime. Some of these, like the seals between modules that keep the station airtight, are very difficult to replace (imagine having to undock the modules in the middle of the station).
So in any new function, the station would last only a few years before a costly overhaul.
SpaceX is really working on the "space pickup truck" idea.
Is this going to be driven by space rednecks with astro-mullets carrying their space shotguns?
Sorry, but that's the image I get from the idea of a space "pickup". Realistically it's going to be more like a space van or lorry.
Space X et al. are really just trying to use current technology, I'm hoping something like Reaction Engine's Skylon gets off the ground. If we want to make space travel economical, we're going to need something better than chemical rockets.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
And you don't think some other nations might have a problem with that?
You say that as if we didn't have enough nuclear weapons already to wipe out nearly any nation on the planet without fear of counterattack. Why should we give a damn about what other nations think about a mass driver? If we wanted to be a serious threat to them it's not like they could do anything about it NOW so a mass driver wouldn't alter anything.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Since it's already up there, fly up a couple of rockets, mount them to the station, then send that sucker over to fly around Mars for a bit instead. Use it as a safe point/refueling station for all the traffic that's going to go there the next few years.
>Realistically it's going to be more like a space van
So instead of space hillbillies it will be driven by space hippies smoking weed and playing bad folk music on box guitars ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Won't work. The ISS doesn't have enough radiation shielding to allow astronauts to survive for long beyond the Van Allan belts. Also, it would take a VERY long time to go anywhere on the "10 Watts in, 10 micro-Newtons of thrust out" that an EM drive provides. The ISS has about 100 kW of solar power capacity - and if 100% of that went into an array of 10,000 EM drives - you'd get 10 milli-Newtons of thrust out. The ISS has a mass of around 400,000kg and needs about 10m/s of deltaV added to it every couple of months just to stay in orbit.
There is no way for EM drives to do anything of use whatever.
www.sjbaker.org
Add boosters to ISS and relocate to a Lagrangian point or Lunar Orbit.
The scientific benefit is tiny in comparison to the money invested. I would support not only using that money for other things, but explicitly using it for non-human space exploration which is scientifically much more interesting and returns a lot more results and insights for the money.
For most scientifically interesting tasks, humans are a very expensive liability. There is nearly no point of sending them into orbit and almost no point to sending them anywhere else in space.
So yes, throw it away or sell it to some billionaire who needs to compensate something.
This is starting to read like the intro to a Neal Stephenson novel. Just need to do almost as much research and development as he does...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
And smoke. And dogs. And flags. And lots of jerky.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's the only way to be sure.
How about a particle fountain? It sounds like this is entirely within our capability to do right now, unlike for example a space elevator which would require materials we don't have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seems like kind of a chicken and egg dilemma to me. A permanent base on the moon with manufacturing capabilities would probably require a massive amount of start-up materials to be launched out there, something that is prohibitively expensive without a better launch mechanism.
It is time to replace the ISS with something larger and circular that can spin and create centripal force to emulate some level of gravity equivalent. ISS has been very useful is testing methods of construction in space, but it hasn't been anywhere near ambitious enough. Too many visionless Republicans in Congress. Get rid of them. They don't even understand today, never mind the future. Climate change is still a mystery to them even when the evidence is staying them in the face. Hopeless.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Is this going to be driven by space rednecks with astro-mullets carrying their space shotguns?
I think the image you are supposed to get is of space contractors throwing their space toolboxes and some space lumber into a pickup truck and driving over to a construction site.
Notice that if you hire contractors to do some work on your house, they are more likely to show up in pickup trucks than giant vans.
Realistically it's going to be more like a space van or lorry.
I didn't invent the term "space pickup truck". I saw others using it years ago in Internet discussions of space.
The idea is that it is specifically not a giant van or lorry. On rare occasions you might need a giant van, but a pickup truck can be something you use every day. That's the metaphor.
The Space Shuttle was metaphorically a lorry. It had a large cargo volume and could carry heavy loads... to low Earth orbit, on rare occasions. It would be much much more useful to have a fleet of vehicles that can each only carry a tonne or so but can do it frequently, economically, with little drama.
Space X et al. are really just trying to use current technology
They are advancing the state of the art, but yes they are only using the known proven technology. I just read the Wikipedia page for the Skylon, and if Reaction Engine can get that to work, then they deserve all the money. I hope both companies succeed but I'm not pinning my hopes on the radical new technology.
The Skylon promises to be a reusable SSTO craft with a 15 tonne cargo capacity. Obviously 15 tonnes is better than 1 tonne. If it can fly routinely, without excessive maintenance, it should be a huge step forward. But it's a lot more complicated than what SpaceX is trying to do, and therefore a lot higher risk.
If the Skylon works, but it turns out that the engines have to be torn down and rebuilt after every flight, and SpaceX can make 20 flights for every one Skylon flight, then SpaceX will win.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I SAY they start spending money in expanding the operation and take it to the point where it can accommodate Congress itself.
Notice that if you hire contractors to do some work on your house, they are more likely to show up in pickup trucks than giant vans.
That entirely depends on where you live.
I live in the UK, builders turn up in Ford Transit vans. The only people who own pickups here in the UK are usually city slickers who want to bully others on the road with their generative member compensation vehicle (usually a VW Amarok which only goes off road when the owner mounts a curb whilst picking up the kids). For obvious reason, tradesmen, builders, delivery drivers, et al. use vans. Its the same reason that it's more a space van than a space truck... unless you're using the exclusively Australian definition of the word truck.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Sell it. If there are no buyers, rent it out. If there are no renters, and occasional use doesn't warrant the ongoing cost, retire it "skylab" style.
Don't forget the space cinder blocks under the space truck axles in the space front yard.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.