Why would we ever de-orbit the ISS? It took far more money and effort to get it there than it takes to operate it. The long-term value of ISS is unclear, but so is the long-term value of going to the moon or Mars.
Imagine if the people who founded Jamestown said, "hey, we're ready to start moving deeper in the continent, so let's burn Jamestown and push it into the ocean first." Why give up a beach head?
Our reach on single missions is constrained by our rocket size. Therefore to do bigger missions, we will need to assemble and supply spacecraft in space over multiple launches, as we have assembled the ISS. If nothing else, the ISS would be useful for "worker housing" during such assembly projects.
For the same reason that they de-orbited MIR it will eventually outlive it's purpose.
The modules have a life span, the ISS's mission has already been extended beyond it's original scope, eventually it will come to a point where you can not maintain it and it actually becomes a risk to the astronauts (we didn't had major incidents with the ISS, MIR had a few including a fire, but no major casualties, but after nearly 20 years things can start to break down and a catastrophic failure can very likely result in loss of the entire crew).
The ISS is also limited in terms of what you can bring to it, what type of experiments you can run and how can you extend it so in some sense it limits our capabilities.
When something outlives it's purpose sometimes it's best to discard it because having it and investing resources into it prevents you from expanding and building something new.
We'll eventually have to build a bigger station that could be used for bigger experiments like micro gravity sustainable agriculture, industrial manufacturing and more. As well as potentially actually simulating gravity and other things.
Ideally you'll also want a space station quite further away from earth like maybe a 1/3rd of the distance to the moon which can be used as a launch platform and a future space dock.
Projects like that are going to be very expensive and giving up on the ISS could actually release quite a bit of funding as well as drive the need for a new space station because "well we got the ISS do we really need a new one?" is quite often used as an excuse just like orbiter development was hindered due to the shuttle being in operation for so long.
A better analogy would be if the Jamestown settlers had spent 10 years floating in the English Channel being resupplied by rowing boat rather than actually getting on with the business of crossing the ocean and settling somewhere. The whole programme is frankly a total waste of time and money which is a huge distraction to actually making any progress in manned space exploration.
"During the advisory council meeting, in response to questions, Gerstenmaier also made it clear that NASA didn’t require a vibrant commercial presence in low-Earth orbit as a staging point for missions deeper into space."
It also sidesteps the partners operating the ISS; NASA isn't the only one (albeit possibly the largest one) on the station.
> If nothing else, the ISS would be useful for "worker housing" during such assembly projects.
Interestingly Russia plans to take some of their part from the ISS to build another space station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Piloted_Assembly_and_E...) that will exactly have this role of an intermediary "gas station" between earth and space exploration
ISS takes up about 15%-18% of NASA's budget. It's slated to cost NASA about $3 billion per year, at least, through the rest of its life.
Is that cheap, as far as hundred billion dollar space stations are concerned? Or is that expensive as far as moving on to new projects is concerned (and having budget drag from a legacy program that will be ~30 years old in 2024)? That's part of the debate. Personally I'd rather Congress give NASA another $3 billion in funding just to keep the ISS until we (hopefully) begin replacing it.
Just keeping the ISS in orbit would require at least one mission every year or so to boost it into a higher orbit and re-stock some of the consumables.
These missions cost something like half a billion each.
I think NASA should capture an asteroid and place it into a stable Lagrange point. The mass of the asteroid could provide resources, radiation shielding, and additional gravitational stability for other facilities/assets at the same Lagrange point.
If suitable engineering is done, stations could undock from the radiation shield and updated stations docked in place, so the investment in delta-v and materiel could be preserved.
Lagrange orbits aren't that great in the long run, and come with their own unique set of challenges (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point#Mathematical_details):
"Although the L1, L2, and L3 points are nominally unstable, it turns out that it is possible to find (unstable) periodic orbits around these points, at least in the restricted three-body problem. These periodic orbits, referred to as "halo" orbits, do not exist in a full n-body dynamical system such as the Solar System. However, quasi-periodic (i.e. bounded but not precisely repeating) orbits following Lissajous-curve trajectories do exist in the n-body system. These quasi-periodic Lissajous orbits are what most of Lagrangian-point missions to date have used. Although they are not perfectly stable, a relatively modest effort at station keeping can allow a spacecraft to stay in a desired Lissajous orbit for an extended period of time. It also turns out that, at least in the case of Sun–Earth-L1 missions, it is actually preferable to place the spacecraft in a large-amplitude (100,000–200,000 km or 62,000–124,000 mi) Lissajous orbit, instead of having it sit at the Lagrangian point, because this keeps the spacecraft off the direct line between Sun and Earth, thereby reducing the impact of solar interference on Earth–spacecraft communications. Similarly, a large-amplitude Lissajous orbit around L2 can keep a probe out of Earth's shadow and therefore ensures a better illumination of its solar panels."
By shielding, do you mean that astronauts could live inside or behind the asteroid, just using its mass between them and the sun? That would be pretty dark and cold. As far as I know, no asteroids have major magnetic fields.
I am totally with you on using the asteroids for materials, but I am not sure that they would provide useful gravity either. Even one of the largest near-earth asteroids, 433 Eros, only has a surface gravity of 0.0059 m/s^2. Is that useful?
The largest thing NASA has moved above low earth orbit since the early '70s is, what, Galileo? How many orders of magnitude are there between G and your asteroid?
There are many reasons, but one key reason is solar radiation. The current orbit of the ISS means that is mostly protected from harmful radiation by Earth's magnetic field. If you moved it away from Earth, you would not have that protection and the station would become very dangerous.
Another reason is resupply. The station can only run for a few months or a year without resupply, and the further you move it away the more difficult and expensive resupply becomes.
There are a host of other reasons, but they all stem from the fact that the ISS was engineered to always be close to Earth, and the space environment elsewhere is sufficiently different that the ISS basically can't work in a dramatically different orbit.
Used where and for what? The international space station was originally intended as a low earth orbit base for human space activity, then gradually morphed into a low-gravity laboratory.
"'We’re going to get out of ISS as quickly as we can,' said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s chief of human spaceflight, last week."
If NASA gets out of ISS, it will not longer have a manned spaceflight program. It's not going anywhere without a launch vehicle, which it doesn't currently have.
We need to move on from NASA anyway. As a government organization it is always going to be somewhat capricious and compromised by the needs of politics (eg: part of the reason the Space Shuttle was so expensive is that it was spread out all over the country so each politician could claim jobs from it.)
NASA needs to get out of the way, and congress needs to get out of the way. Yes, some civilians will die in private spacecraft, but that doesn't mean that space tourism is not a valid thing. Civilians have died on cruise ships!
We need sub orbit, then orbit, then hotels, then a base from which trips to the moon can be considered. When all of this is an economically viable industry, then the civilization can consider the possibility of visiting another planet and not having all of our eggheads in one gravity well.
Government will not get us there, and at this point, given the hurdles put in front of Virgin Galactic, they are a hinderance-- at least part of the time.
> As a government organization it is always going to be somewhat capricious and compromised ...
That applies to every large organization. I've never heard of or worked in one that was otherwise.
Contrary to the conservative myth, the U.S. government's large organizations have a pretty good track record of innovation and getting things done. Consider the U.S. military, NASA (did you see those photos of Pluto?), most science funding, my highways are safe and very functional, my water and food supply are clean, prisons effectively hold prisoners, dams don't burst, my lights turn on, etc.
Of course they are very imperfect, like all large organizations, and constant vigilence and improvement is necessary. But I reject the idea that government is somehow innately incompetent and private business is innately superior. It's almost a rejection of the idea that democratic self-government can be effective. Really they are different tools for different jobs.
The space shuttle was about half as efficient as the Saturn it replaced. And that's only if you count low earth orbit. If you count beyond that, it is infinitely more efficient since the space shuttle couldn't go further.
The Saturn was given to us by basically empowering a dictator to run the program and get things done, a lot like a CEO. The Space Shuttle was given to us by typical bureaucracy, and lies. Lots and lots of lies told with a straight face to the public.
I don't know that private companies can ever compete with NASA on the scale of spending, but given NASA's current relatively tiny budget, it doesn't seem out of the question.
And I like to daydream about a future where the space shuttle never happened and the Saturn XX single stage super rocket takes vacationers to the moon and then lands itself on its landing pad ready for a quick refuel and return trip.
I'd disagree on politics making the space shuttle more expensive - the shuttle would have cost about the same no matter where the factories went to built it - it was a deeply flawed concept from the start, and one borne largely out of politics.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|10 years ago|reply
Imagine if the people who founded Jamestown said, "hey, we're ready to start moving deeper in the continent, so let's burn Jamestown and push it into the ocean first." Why give up a beach head?
Our reach on single missions is constrained by our rocket size. Therefore to do bigger missions, we will need to assemble and supply spacecraft in space over multiple launches, as we have assembled the ISS. If nothing else, the ISS would be useful for "worker housing" during such assembly projects.
[+] [-] dogma1138|10 years ago|reply
The modules have a life span, the ISS's mission has already been extended beyond it's original scope, eventually it will come to a point where you can not maintain it and it actually becomes a risk to the astronauts (we didn't had major incidents with the ISS, MIR had a few including a fire, but no major casualties, but after nearly 20 years things can start to break down and a catastrophic failure can very likely result in loss of the entire crew).
The ISS is also limited in terms of what you can bring to it, what type of experiments you can run and how can you extend it so in some sense it limits our capabilities. When something outlives it's purpose sometimes it's best to discard it because having it and investing resources into it prevents you from expanding and building something new.
We'll eventually have to build a bigger station that could be used for bigger experiments like micro gravity sustainable agriculture, industrial manufacturing and more. As well as potentially actually simulating gravity and other things.
Ideally you'll also want a space station quite further away from earth like maybe a 1/3rd of the distance to the moon which can be used as a launch platform and a future space dock.
Projects like that are going to be very expensive and giving up on the ISS could actually release quite a bit of funding as well as drive the need for a new space station because "well we got the ISS do we really need a new one?" is quite often used as an excuse just like orbiter development was hindered due to the shuttle being in operation for so long.
[+] [-] maxerickson|10 years ago|reply
The nails aren't a completely tortured analogy to repurposing the operation/maintenance budget.
[+] [-] tokai|10 years ago|reply
https://www.rt.com/news/iss-bacteria-mir-mutation-765/
[+] [-] _paulc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josefresco|10 years ago|reply
"During the advisory council meeting, in response to questions, Gerstenmaier also made it clear that NASA didn’t require a vibrant commercial presence in low-Earth orbit as a staging point for missions deeper into space."
[+] [-] rakoo|10 years ago|reply
> If nothing else, the ISS would be useful for "worker housing" during such assembly projects.
Interestingly Russia plans to take some of their part from the ISS to build another space station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Piloted_Assembly_and_E...) that will exactly have this role of an intermediary "gas station" between earth and space exploration
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
Is that cheap, as far as hundred billion dollar space stations are concerned? Or is that expensive as far as moving on to new projects is concerned (and having budget drag from a legacy program that will be ~30 years old in 2024)? That's part of the debate. Personally I'd rather Congress give NASA another $3 billion in funding just to keep the ISS until we (hopefully) begin replacing it.
[+] [-] phire|10 years ago|reply
These missions cost something like half a billion each.
[+] [-] stcredzero|10 years ago|reply
If suitable engineering is done, stations could undock from the radiation shield and updated stations docked in place, so the investment in delta-v and materiel could be preserved.
[+] [-] akira2501|10 years ago|reply
"Although the L1, L2, and L3 points are nominally unstable, it turns out that it is possible to find (unstable) periodic orbits around these points, at least in the restricted three-body problem. These periodic orbits, referred to as "halo" orbits, do not exist in a full n-body dynamical system such as the Solar System. However, quasi-periodic (i.e. bounded but not precisely repeating) orbits following Lissajous-curve trajectories do exist in the n-body system. These quasi-periodic Lissajous orbits are what most of Lagrangian-point missions to date have used. Although they are not perfectly stable, a relatively modest effort at station keeping can allow a spacecraft to stay in a desired Lissajous orbit for an extended period of time. It also turns out that, at least in the case of Sun–Earth-L1 missions, it is actually preferable to place the spacecraft in a large-amplitude (100,000–200,000 km or 62,000–124,000 mi) Lissajous orbit, instead of having it sit at the Lagrangian point, because this keeps the spacecraft off the direct line between Sun and Earth, thereby reducing the impact of solar interference on Earth–spacecraft communications. Similarly, a large-amplitude Lissajous orbit around L2 can keep a probe out of Earth's shadow and therefore ensures a better illumination of its solar panels."
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|10 years ago|reply
I am totally with you on using the asteroids for materials, but I am not sure that they would provide useful gravity either. Even one of the largest near-earth asteroids, 433 Eros, only has a surface gravity of 0.0059 m/s^2. Is that useful?
[+] [-] mcguire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiep|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binarymax|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptoz|10 years ago|reply
Another reason is resupply. The station can only run for a few months or a year without resupply, and the further you move it away the more difficult and expensive resupply becomes.
There are a host of other reasons, but they all stem from the fact that the ISS was engineered to always be close to Earth, and the space environment elsewhere is sufficiently different that the ISS basically can't work in a dramatically different orbit.
[+] [-] nickff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broabprobe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|10 years ago|reply
If NASA gets out of ISS, it will not longer have a manned spaceflight program. It's not going anywhere without a launch vehicle, which it doesn't currently have.
[+] [-] MCRed|10 years ago|reply
NASA needs to get out of the way, and congress needs to get out of the way. Yes, some civilians will die in private spacecraft, but that doesn't mean that space tourism is not a valid thing. Civilians have died on cruise ships!
We need sub orbit, then orbit, then hotels, then a base from which trips to the moon can be considered. When all of this is an economically viable industry, then the civilization can consider the possibility of visiting another planet and not having all of our eggheads in one gravity well.
Government will not get us there, and at this point, given the hurdles put in front of Virgin Galactic, they are a hinderance-- at least part of the time.
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
That applies to every large organization. I've never heard of or worked in one that was otherwise.
Contrary to the conservative myth, the U.S. government's large organizations have a pretty good track record of innovation and getting things done. Consider the U.S. military, NASA (did you see those photos of Pluto?), most science funding, my highways are safe and very functional, my water and food supply are clean, prisons effectively hold prisoners, dams don't burst, my lights turn on, etc.
Of course they are very imperfect, like all large organizations, and constant vigilence and improvement is necessary. But I reject the idea that government is somehow innately incompetent and private business is innately superior. It's almost a rejection of the idea that democratic self-government can be effective. Really they are different tools for different jobs.
[+] [-] merpnderp|10 years ago|reply
The Saturn was given to us by basically empowering a dictator to run the program and get things done, a lot like a CEO. The Space Shuttle was given to us by typical bureaucracy, and lies. Lots and lots of lies told with a straight face to the public.
I don't know that private companies can ever compete with NASA on the scale of spending, but given NASA's current relatively tiny budget, it doesn't seem out of the question.
And I like to daydream about a future where the space shuttle never happened and the Saturn XX single stage super rocket takes vacationers to the moon and then lands itself on its landing pad ready for a quick refuel and return trip.
[+] [-] Aloha|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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