US Not Getting Money's Worth From ISS 217
greysky writes "On the 45th anniversary of his first trip into space, astronaut John Glenn says the U.S. is not getting it's money's worth out of the International Space Station. From the article: "Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to President Bush's goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station"."
John Glenn is Pro ISS (In Case It Wasn't Clear) (Score:5, Informative)
What John Glenn is actually saying is that the ISS should be getting more money so that it can fulfill its purpose and reach its true potential. There's been no follow-up with Glenn, but I'd imagine what he's really saying is that instead of cutting the ISS's budget to pay for manned missions to the Moon and Mars, how about increasing NASA's budget so it can make the ISS successful and also go to the moon?
Re:Time to reevaluate the whole program (Score:3, Informative)
Tm
The Shuttle, ISS, and Galileo (Score:4, Informative)
- The defacto purpose of the ISS is to justify the existence of the space shuttle.
- The defacto purpose of the shuttle is to build the ISS, (and to give fidgety astronauts
something to do with their hands).
Science has nothing to do with it.When I first came to work at JPL in 1987, folks were already gearing up for what they called their "Third Annual Galileo Pre-Launch Picnic", to be held out in the nearby Oak Grove Park (which by the way, has one of the best frisbee golf courses on the planet--but I digress). It might have been the Fourth, but I lost count. Those who worked on the mission would joke about this, but you could always tell that there was some ironic bitterness in their voices. Galileo was neither the first nor the last of the victims of the politically-inspired space shuttle, but for many at the 'lab it became the iconic poster-child for the sacrifice that science has paid on the altar of politics and the almost religious cult of man-in-space hero worship.
This Galileo Page [wikipedia.org] barely scratches the surface of the number of ways in which real scientists, engineers, and mathematicians had to wrack their brains trying to fix, work-around, and ultimately solve technical problems that arose on Galileo -- problems which were entirely avoidable, and were either directly or indirectly caused by the resources that were pulled from the unmanned science missions of JPL, Goddard, and the like.
Galileo was originally supposed to be launched on an unmanned rocket like its esteemed predecessors Voyagers I and II, but JPL was forced to reconfigure the probe to be launched from the shuttle instead, again (like the IIS) to give some justification for building the shuttle. After the Challenger disaster, the cargo bay was redesigned and so again the probe had to be reconfigured. It has never been proved, but was suspected that the reason that the high-gain attenna "umbrella" jammed was due to the loss of lubricant over the many years of storage prior to its final launch. And so it went...
About the only good thing that came out of the decision to launch Galileo from the shuttle was that it forced us to look at new data compression algorithms, so that we could store more data on the mag tape for later broadcast over the low-gain antenna. But, given the choice, I think the unanimous consensus was that if we had to do it all over again, we'd have told Johnson and Kennedy to stuff it, thank you very much, and we'll stick to our plans and launch the damn thing from a nice, reliable, unsexy but technologically sound unmanned rocket.
I feel much better now.
NASA is federal research (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Could see this coming ... (Score:3, Informative)
the idiots chose something that was an idea only over the working prototype.
THAT is their biggest boondoggle.
1st Hand Account of Glenn Talk (Score:5, Informative)
The ISS was discussed in the course of this Q&A. It came about because someone had asked what Senator Glenn thought about the future of spaceflight. Glenn mentioned President Bush's plans for manned voyages to the Moon and Mars, but how there was no funding created for this purpose. Instead, funds were being diverted from other NASA projects, usually research dollars. This was reminiscent of what happened to the ISS, which repeatedly was improperly funding, causing both self-cannibalization of NASA funds and a reduction in the research potential of the ISS. To paraphrase Glenn, currently, there are only two people up there who are tending to systems [maintainence]. The original station design called for six inhabitants and a rigorous course of experimentation.
So Glenn used the mediocrity of the ISS as a potential warning for what can happen to the Moon/Mars initiative if it is not properly funded by Congress, and is instead forces NASA to shift money around internally. IMO, the AP article doesn't really put Glenn's comments in context enough that one can see the point he was trying to make.
Re:John Glenn is Pro ISS (In Case It Wasn't Clear) (Score:3, Informative)
I personally think manned moon and mars missions would be interesting without such a direct practical benefit, but if you want one, there you go.
I'm sorry, but the price of platinum isn't several billion for a few kilograms of it. That's what we'd end up with from either a moon or mars mission. Energy collection is the easiest and shortest term project that has a visible payoff. Long term mining could be profitable. Short term it won't be happening. Heck, you'd have to bring back tons of rare metals to be able to break even. That's not a good ROI. We need solutions and reasons that the average person can see and want to spend money on. A space power station could be "cheaply" built and once built would require some routine maintance. Those routine space flights could be used for other purposes as well. We don't have a developed enough transport industry in space to mine yet. That's sort of like the spanish setting off to conquer and mine gold from the New World without being able to profitable build ships to transport the mined the gold or couldn't sail a ship one way across the ocean. We can barely repeatedly get out the gravity well. We need much better tech before the space age can start.
Re:Sunk Costs (Score:3, Informative)
At least with ISS, we have the option of not repeating that mistake. It's almost done; finish it and then actually fund its maintenence. The dumbest thing you can do is in-between: finish it, then let it crash a few years later. Which looks like what they're planning. The waste of the VSE bothers me far more than what will be the far smaller waste of ISS. As though building a station on the moon will be *cheaper*.