I mean, this thing was supposed to make the Russians our friends, make exotic alloys, research new drugs, etc. But yiu never hear about the great things being accomplished-why not? Was the $123 billion we blew on this worth it? And, if the shuttle fleet gets permanently grounded, what will we do with the thing? :smack:
The problem with it is the same problem with manned orbit in general. It is very hard to work in that environment, extremely expensive, and only a limited number of applications that benefit from that specific environment. I assume that scientists figured that we would find new uses for an orbiting station once we got it up but it really hasn’t happened. The things that space is most useful for is satellites of all different types and you don’t need people aboard those.
Humans are a burden more than they help for most things that you could do in that environment.
Its orbit is so low, and the ISS is so large, that IIRC it’s necessary to give it periodic boosts of acceleration to fight orbital decay. Space shuttle or no, if we don’t have a way of reaching it to do that, it will soon crash and burn in the atmosphere.
Which is too bad. As expensive as it is, it has in many ways been done on the thinnest of shoestrings, and could suffer the ultimate penalty for it.
Reagan’s star castle has been running on a skeleton crew of 2 to 3 astronauts since the destruction of Columbia in 2003. That and a shrinking budget have lead to troubles in actually getting any science done up there. Here on earth, NASA’s Space Station Science Web Pages Are Evaporating.
The last six trips to and from the ISS have been accomplished with the Russian Soyuz launched from Kazakhstan. The next three missions are also scheduled to go via Soyuz, also. So it’s not as if the space station has been dormant while the shuttle fleet is grounded.
However, ralph raises a very good point. The Russian option is fine for moving crew members back and forth. However, many of the future modules scheduled to be added require the larger payload capabilities of the shuttle fleet. Several of those modules have already been constructed, such as the fluid science lab constructed by the European Space Agency.
As for whether there have been any tangible benefits from the ISS, that’s a subject of considerable debate within the scientific community. I’m a critic of the program, but I do think it’s fair to look at the question in the context of the broader issue of space exploration. And also, I think it’s probably unfair to render a final verdict when the thing is only about half done. In a project this size, you have most of the expense on the front end and most of the benefit on the back end.
According to NASA, there are only 17 more shuttle missions required to complete the U.S.‘s obligations to the ISS. As noted, this is primarily to put up modules that were built with the shuttles’ cargo bays in mind and which no other vehicles are equipped to carry. After these 17 missions and a possible 18th to service the Hubble, the shuttles are done for good. All of these missions are on the drawing board, i think in the next three years. So while the ISS needs the shuttles, it only needs them 17 times.
–Cliffy
But can’t the ENERGIA booster deliver the stuff? I thought it had a huge lift capacity?
It had, but the Energia will never fly again. The production line was shut down, and after eyars of neglect the roof of the assembly building collapsed and destroyed the only working hardware. Energia is as dead as the Saturn 5.
Bush effectively gutted the ISS program in 2001 when he canceled key components of the station, including the Centrifuge Module (which would have allowed long-term simulation of low-gravity environments), the Habitation Module (which was to have provided quarters for the stations full crew cpapcity of 7) and the Crew Return Vehicle (which was to have been a 7-person “lifeboat” for emergency evacuation, and upon whose development NASA was hoping to lay the foundation for the next-generation space shuttles).
The Columbia Disaster further crippled the station’s capabilities by eliminating one of the main crew transport vehicles, as well as the only vehicle capable of launching certain modules such as ESA’s lab and Japan’s lab.
Without the US, the only hope the station has is the other member countries, none of whom (except Russia, who’s broke) had planned on any such heavy investment. If they did, that would, by the agreement that set up the coalition in the first place, leave the US with fewer and fewer rights to a station that was our idea in the first place and which we built most of.
I meant to add that without these key components, there is no way to ever fully utilize the station for lack of housing and transport, in case that wasn’t already clear.