The International Space Station, failure of dreams
The idea of a permanent American Space Station occurred after a series of Soviet space stations sparked the idea, and our experience with SkyLab gave us the understanding of some of the problems. In a classic series of events, the idea for the form of the space-station morphed from its original cold-war inception of two counter-rotating rings and a crew of sixty, to the current version that can limp along with two crew and .5 crew available for science missions.
The recent news that the death of the shuttle program has effectively killed ISS as of 2010 is just another slide of a long slide. The ISS was build and planned around regular shuttle flights, as only the Shuttle is capable of delivering the heavy Logistics Modules on which arrive science racks and certain components. The Russian Soyuz and Progress can deliver enough supplies to keep the ISS in orbit, so long as nothing really big breaks. The use of Soyuz also means that crew is capped at 2 for logistics reasons. Since the Shuttle program will be mothballed effective 2010, we're stuck.
What has struck me as interesting is the costs of the Iraq war. The numbers being quoted for how much it has cost us jibe very closely with the numbers cited in the past as the 'total cost' for the Space Station. The concept with the ring had a price in the low three figures (i.e. $115Bn), where the current model was said to have cost $5bn (but actually closer to $15bn in the way of things). As with any other person who thinks that the billions spent making the lives of Iraqi's miserable could have been better spent elsewhere, I can't help but think where NASA would be if funded like that for a few years.
Right now the ISS has been pared down so close to the bone that the very science it was built to house has to take a second place next to mere station-keeping. It is very true that the station, as it exists now, is not living up to it's mandate and is a big hole in space in which to throw money (right now, Russian money for the most part). This is a very sad state, as this was not meant to be.
Had the Crew Return Vehicle and associated Habitation Module programs not been scuttled in a fit of cost cutting the crew on the station would have been high enough to get serious science. Safety rules demand that any person on the Station have a seat in a re-entry vehicle (i.e. lifeboat), and the CRV was to have been that very lifeboat. With a CRV and a Soyuz docked, it would have been possible to have a permanent crew of 7. Since 1.5 crew are required for station-keeping, this would have permitted the science-only crew of 5.5 to run the experiments. With the additional lab-modules the additional crew would support, this would have allowed a lot more science than is being supported now.
The recent news that the death of the shuttle program has effectively killed ISS as of 2010 is just another slide of a long slide. The ISS was build and planned around regular shuttle flights, as only the Shuttle is capable of delivering the heavy Logistics Modules on which arrive science racks and certain components. The Russian Soyuz and Progress can deliver enough supplies to keep the ISS in orbit, so long as nothing really big breaks. The use of Soyuz also means that crew is capped at 2 for logistics reasons. Since the Shuttle program will be mothballed effective 2010, we're stuck.
What has struck me as interesting is the costs of the Iraq war. The numbers being quoted for how much it has cost us jibe very closely with the numbers cited in the past as the 'total cost' for the Space Station. The concept with the ring had a price in the low three figures (i.e. $115Bn), where the current model was said to have cost $5bn (but actually closer to $15bn in the way of things). As with any other person who thinks that the billions spent making the lives of Iraqi's miserable could have been better spent elsewhere, I can't help but think where NASA would be if funded like that for a few years.
Right now the ISS has been pared down so close to the bone that the very science it was built to house has to take a second place next to mere station-keeping. It is very true that the station, as it exists now, is not living up to it's mandate and is a big hole in space in which to throw money (right now, Russian money for the most part). This is a very sad state, as this was not meant to be.
Had the Crew Return Vehicle and associated Habitation Module programs not been scuttled in a fit of cost cutting the crew on the station would have been high enough to get serious science. Safety rules demand that any person on the Station have a seat in a re-entry vehicle (i.e. lifeboat), and the CRV was to have been that very lifeboat. With a CRV and a Soyuz docked, it would have been possible to have a permanent crew of 7. Since 1.5 crew are required for station-keeping, this would have permitted the science-only crew of 5.5 to run the experiments. With the additional lab-modules the additional crew would support, this would have allowed a lot more science than is being supported now.
posted by Corwin at 9:11 AM
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