14 replies to this topic

[kismet]

http://www.dailytech...px?newsid=15680
Michael T. Suffredini, the NASA space station program manager, has announced that despite the fact that the ISS is only now nearing completion, there are already plans to de-orbit the station. The last of the components for the ISS are set to be in place next year and according to Suffredini, the station is currently planned to crash back to Earth in 2016.

Good to see there's always enough money for one or two wars per decade, but not for the exploration of space which over the long term is unavoidable and necessary. Dog Bless America.

[Cyberbrain]

Unfortunately this is true.

If funding is not meet by 2015, NASA was given responsibility for de-orbiting the ISS by 2020 the latest.

However, there is some good news. Russia has plans to detach their modules and use them as a basis for a new space station: the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex.

Overall, it seems like a great waste to spend 26 years and over $100 billion dollars to build this marvel of engineering ... only to destroy it a sort while after completion.

[Mind]

Wars cost money. I would rather see that money go to space exploration and science, but don't forget that in the current budget, defense spending is much smaller than other new spending. No harm in asking where all the other money is going as well.

[Lazarus Long]

Actually this is all about money. If they had the money to boost the fuel they could move the station into a higher orbit. The technology is already on board.

Another issue has been during this period of global warming the atmosphere expanded more than anticipated when they designed these projects. The ISS is not the only object slowing down faster than expected and falling from the sky.

The ISS was kept as low as it was considered possible originally to conserve launch costs and maximize load but once completed it could be boosted by a variety of approaches actually.

[gregandbeaker]

Another issue has been during this period of global warming the atmosphere expanded more than anticipated when they designed these projects. The ISS is not the only object slowing down faster than expected and falling from the sky.

That's fascinating. What else is set to fall from the sky due to an expanding atmosphere?

[Lazarus Long]

Most satellites today and for the last decade have all been launched to higher orbits so are not adversely effected but there have a been a few spy and older sats that have fallen over the last few years as well as other objects, like booster sections that were supposed to stay aloft a lot longer.

Here are a few sites that are used by trackers to keep track of what's up there. Some are dealing with predicting when objects are falling too.

http://www.n2yo.com/

http://science.nasa....ealTime/jtrack/

http://www.satsignal...are/wxtrack.htm

Everyone can find their favorite orbital object here http://science.nasa....d/JTrack3D.html

Some news on this phenomenon.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22857051/

http://www.guardian....eball-satellite

http://www.timesonli...icle1582379.ece

More on the sat decaying orbits due to atmospheric expansion
http://www.nature.co...l/394615a0.html

http://www.stormingm...90/A529024.html

[niner]

Overall, it seems like a great waste to spend 26 years and over $100 billion dollars to build this marvel of engineering ... only to destroy it a sort while after completion.

It was a great waste to spend 26 years and over $100B on it period. Has any good ever come of it? Of course something good will have come from it, but how would it compare to deploying $100B on the ground for "small science"?

[Lazarus Long]

Actually something very good came from it; it helped put the Cold War in the grave with the realization that Russia and the US as well as Europe had much more in common and more to gain from working together on projects just like this than trying to accomplish them separately. It was a part of that "Peace Dividend" we squandered in Iraq.

[kismet]

It was a great waste to spend 26 years and over $100B on it period. Has any good ever come of it? Of course something good will have come from it, but how would it compare to deploying $100B on the ground for "small science"?

This can be said for every single NASA project which does not involve communication satellites and such. Do you propose to can every single one of them? One could argue that the government's money shouldn't be spent on such things and that it should be funded privately, but there's definitely nothing wrong with doing things just for the joy of doing them. Although, I'm sure designing and operating the station was very important to help advance the whole field; if we're always going to stay on earth because going into orbit is "too expensive" and "useless", we'll be dead in the water without any functioning technology when we need to explore orbit for whatever reasons arise.
Don't forget the government actually exists to fund inefficient projects which are a "waste" of money and cannot be effectively privatised. That's exactly the reason why they take your money.

Furthermore, it stands to reason that exploring space is not such a colossal waste of money, like, let's say, waging an aggressive war and could have been financed if that inhumane BS was forgone? It's still one of the smallest government blunders and inefficiencies in comparison.

Edited by kismet, 15 July 2009 - 03:36 PM.

[lunarsolarpower]

Actually this is all about money. If they had the money to boost the fuel they could move the station into a higher orbit. The technology is already on board.

I wish they'd pull a page from science fiction and convert it to electric power. Then it could stay up until the earth's magnetic field disappears.

[niner]

This can be said for every single NASA project which does not involve communication satellites and such. Do you propose to can every single one of them? One could argue that the government's money shouldn't be spent on such things and that it should be funded privately, but there's definitely nothing wrong with doing things just for the joy of doing them. Although, I'm sure designing and operating the station was very important to help advance the whole field; if we're always going to stay on earth because going into orbit is "too expensive" and "useless", we'll be dead in the water without any functioning technology when we need to explore orbit for whatever reasons arise.
Don't forget the government actually exists to fund inefficient projects which are a "waste" of money and cannot be effectively privatised. That's exactly the reason why they take your money.

The Mars Phoenix mission was $457M. That was not a waste. That was one two thousandth the cost of the ISS! Most of NASAs unmanned exploration missions have returned a lot of knowledge for the dollar. By the time we need to do large scale manned projects, we will have much better technology with which to exit earth's gravity well without spending absurd amounts of money on it.

Furthermore, it stands to reason that exploring space is not such a colossal waste of money, like, let's say, waging an aggressive war and could have been financed if that inhumane BS was forgone? It's still one of the smallest government blunders and inefficiencies in comparison.

The US wastes colossal amounts of money on wars, agreed. $100+B is still a lot of money. Imagine if just ten percent of that had been spent researching life extension.

[kismet]

The Mars Phoenix mission was $457M. That was not a waste. That was one two thousandth the cost of the ISS! Most of NASAs unmanned exploration missions have returned a lot of knowledge for the dollar. By the time we need to do large scale manned projects, we will have much better technology with which to exit earth's gravity well without spending absurd amounts of money on it.

I've been wondering if 100B is the total or just the US investment?

The US wastes colossal amounts of money on wars, agreed. $100+B is still a lot of money. Imagine if just ten percent of that had been spent researching life extension.

It's just astonishingly poor judgement on their side to (plan to) can this project instead of even more wasteful projects and undertakings. And depending on the cost of running it (assuming it's comparably low, but probably it isn't), it may be indeed prudent to keep it up after having wasted so much money on it.

I've thought about the point you make to some degree (why not just postpone it until we can do it cheaply?), but aren't there challanges that we would need to face and solve either way and which cannot be overcome by money and technology alone? If it is a matter of experience, we would be simply behind the times, even when the technology is there.
Another issue is that at this rate there won't be any safe or cheap manned missions in the first half of the 21st century anyway. There does not seem to be much progress when it comes to space exploration (I guess the reason is twofold, space exploration is pretty damn hard and NASA [research] is extremely underfunded).

Edited by kismet, 16 July 2009 - 05:30 PM.

[Cyberbrain]

It was a great waste to spend 26 years and over $100B on it period. Has any good ever come of it? Of course something good will have come from it, but how would it compare to deploying $100B on the ground for "small science"?

That could be debatable. We waste a lot more every month just on defense. Did the ISS make any scientific progress? Sure it did. But that's not what I think it's main purpose was. It served as inspiration to millions of scientists and engineers and people as proof to where the human spirit can take us. People looked up and said, hey there is someone up there! It also helped unite governments and bring people closer. And I say that was better well spent then small science (being a student researcher I know that most small science ends up no where anyway). However, had that money been directly invested in something like SENS, that's another story.

[Cyberbrain]

Anyway, Obama approved a couple months ago $50 billion for the NSF to give to small science

[Lazarus Long]

There is no comparing costs between manned and unmanned missions, put a human on board and the costs for space missions go up by orders of magnitude. Basically it costs somewhere around $10,000 a pound to loft payload. Do the math; that makes for the most expensive dinners daily imaginable.

I am also unclear if the 100 billion is just the US or total mission cost but it wouldn't surprise me if it was just the US contribution however the spin offs from this program to industry should not be underestimated. This project has created viable advance space engineering industries in many nations without any launch capability of their own. The Europeans in particular have advanced greatly on their contributions.

What began as targeted service contracts have expanded into budding aerospace industrial sectors.

The politics have been all good about it, the science has been significant, the practical applications of learning how to build in space has been invaluable as well as field testing and proving the tools to accomplish such missions in the future. My point is there has also been tech and economic spin-offs that are not fully appreciated by many.

The ISS can be saved and it, like the Hubble (albeit on a vastly different scale) should be saved. It is a waystation to the moon and could dramatically reduce the costs of creating full time manned Lunar based development