NASA has said they must, this year, retire the Space Shuttles due to their age and normal flight stress. How will we put new satellites in orbit when the old ones wear out or break? THIS is how we’ve been launching satellites into orbit. Obama doesn’t seem interested in the pursuit into space and wants to use NASA money for “making nice” to the Muslim world (even though the terrorists we’ve had to worry about are Muslim…). Wondering how use of money for NASA for this is a logical use of space exploration-don’t forget all the medical and practical inventions/knowledge we’ve gotten from the research. :rolleyes: :dubious:
If the Space Shuttles are now obsolete(too old to be safe) how will we send up NEW satellites when t
The military have their own launchers for some of the stuff. Some is being outsourced to private enterprise, like Falcon. Then there’s ESA’s Ariane. And then there are the Russians.
Ummm… many satellites are launched on rockets designed for this purpose. The Space Shuttles have not carried every satellite into orbit.
The launch of new satellites usually involves a Titan V or a Delata IV. Neither uses vitriol as fuel.
When was the last Shuttle mission that actually DID launch a satellite? Most of the ones from the last 10 years have been ISS assembly, supply and crew-exchange missions with a hubble repair or two thrown in.
I think the last one was STS-93 back in 1999. It launcded the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
After Challenger NASA was pretty much ordered out of the commercial launch business, and the Shuttle was only used for missions that absolutely required it. Which meant spacecraft that were already designed for shuttle launch. Since Columbia NASA has been removing those too. The simple answer to our simple minded questioner is: the same way as they have been doing for the last 20 years, plus the same way as they did five years before that, and the same way as every other nation has always done it.
Actually, the Obama administration proposed a budget increase for NASA. And the termination of the Shuttle program was planned before Obama took office.
I can’t quite parse this sentence…what’s your point?
Great. Now we have Obamaspace to go along with Obamacare.
damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t
There’s very little useful medical research on the ISS or the Shuttle aside from “how do human bodies degrade in space and how can we prevent that?” There’s some occasional biology experiments as well, but those tend to be “how does easily transportable critter x respond to lack of gravity?” Nothing that’s going to lead to terrestrial medical breakthroughs.
Some of the very early research on the space program taught us a lot about physiology, but that was over half a century ago.
Ugghh.
And we already KNOW (well, have a damn good idea) how to fix that. “Artificial gravity” you can create by spinning the ship/station.
The only real question is do you need 1.0 G or 0.5 G or 0.1 G to solve the problem? And there are some minor side issues but still.
I about explode everytime I hear “we cant go to mars because you’ll be in zero G for a couple years and the human body can’t take it”. You don’t HAVE to be in zero G.
IMO the “what amount of G does it take” experiment (and associated details) is probably one of the most important experiments that NEEDS to be done if we ever expect to do anything other than hang out in low earth orbit a few months at a time.
But NOOO, we keep hanging around in LEO documenting how bad zero G is for you.
Sorry, rant over.
Sadly the value for money for medical research the space programme provides is about the worst way you could ever imagine spending the money. You do yet a few neat tricks - like very high quality crystal growth, or some neat fluid dynamic trick that allows an otherwise difficult or impossible experiment to be done. But considering that the experiment has a real cost in the tens of millions of dollars, there no way anyone would ever pay their own money (full value that is), or get a peer reviewed grant to do it if the shuttle wasn’t already a sunk cost and going to fly anyway.
Amen to that, billfish. We already know how to make artificial gravity. It’s easy. The only reason the ISS is in zero-g is because they want to study how people react to zero-g, but the only reason how people react to zero-g is interesting is because the ISS is zero-g. But the longest anyone’s ever been exposed to a non-zero gravity less than Earth’s is the astronauts who walked on the Moon for a few days. The dearth of data is simply inexcusable.
So after the shuttle retires, is the ISS getting abandoned? I mean…are there other ways of getting people to and from space yet? Do the Russians or Japanese have their own manned space vehicles I just haven’t heard about?
Edit: I guess they have to, since Russia had MIR at one point…but are they more like the older style rockets where most of what goes up is discarded and doesn’t come back?
The Russians never stopped launching their Soyuz craft. They’ve been updating it every decade, so it’s got modern technology and materials, but in concept it’s the same vehicle that was launched almost 50 years ago. ETA: Several Soyuz missions have carried astronauts to the ISS. There’s even a spare Soyuz crew module or two docked to the station to allow quick return to earth in case of emergency.
Soyuz is definitely an old style rocket, and yet it’s still far cheaper and more reliable than the Shuttle. Most NASA concepts for a replacement manned spacecraft are going back to the old capsule design. Basically the Shuttle was intended to be easily and cheaply reusable, but almost the whole damn thing had to be rebuilt between every flight which negated any of the possible advantages.
Please elaborate on this a bit (pretty please). No snark meant at all. If I remember correctly, their is no way that the entire ISS could be ‘rotated’ for gravity-sim, and the ISS was not built for singular purpose of human zero-g study. I think there was a centrifuge- containing module that was to have been sent up for little critter micro-g study (mice? I forget), but it now sits in a parking lot in Japan
I am wondering if there actually was ever an intent on making the ISS capable of giving micro-g environment to a habitable-by-human compartment/module. If so, what module was to be doing this? I am very interested in learning about this as I have never heard of any plans, past or present, to have rotating/accelerating modules (so to speak). It appears that ISS as a whole, is zero-g by design from the beginning.
Chances are that ISS will make a big splash in an ocean in not too many years from now due to no heavy-lift US rockets, and the US has a controlling portion of hardware/software that would likely not be given to another country. Or so folks involved/employed with NASA has said over and over in past year or two at a different NASA-employee based Forum. ISS will splash, sorry to say. Spend the money on better pursuits (not in LEO, for damn sure!! give that to Elon et al)
It wasnt DESIGNED to be rotated to provide “artificial gravity”, hence spinning it would just fling it apart.
But, on the flip side, there is no reason a space station could not be designed to do so. Yeah, its not trival, but NOTHING with space travel IS.
When we first started to explored space with humans there were some big and very basic questions to be answered.
One, did we have the technology required to actually do it? Yes.
Two, was zero G surviveable (short term)? Yes.
And not long after those two questions were answered we found out zero G was bad for you. And ever since then we’ve spent decades and trillions trying all sorts of stuff to make it not bad for you except the most obvious one, get rid of the zero G environment.
IMO we derailed shortly after question 2 was answered.
People LOVE to talk about colonies on the moon or mars where people live for years. But we STILL have no idea whether humans could live there under those gravity conditions.
As mentioned already, the Russians have been sending Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS about twice a year, and have been ever since the first crew went up there. Following the Columbia accident the Shuttle fleet was grounded for 2.5 years, and the ISS was completely dependent on the Soyuz for crew replacement. And even when the Shuttle is operational, the ISS is dependent on the Soyuz for its function as a “lifeboat” - i.e. a way for the crew to get back to earth in case of an accident or medical emergency.
In addition, there are several unmanned spacecraft capable of carrying supplies to the ISS. The Progress is basically an unmanned variant of the Soyuz, and it has been in regular use since the ISS was first crewed. More recently the ESA has developed the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) (the first one was called Jules Verne), and the Japanese have developed the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV); they’ve each had one successful launch so far.
Beyond that, SpaceX has successfully tested their Falcon 9 rocket recently, and they already have a contract with NASA to send supplies to the ISS in the near future. SpaceX is also developing a manned capsule.
I wonder, are the Chinese designing their spacecraft to dock with the ISS?