Space Station To Be Deorbited After 2020 572
astroengine writes "Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, the space agency said on Wednesday. 'After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish,' said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov."
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why couldn't they nudge it out of orbit instead? Send it off to roam deep space? That would make a far more romantic end, rather than being designated space junk and dumped into the ocean.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
It would take a large amount of energy for it to reach escape velocity.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then there's VASIMR [wikipedia.org], which is an electromagnetic engine more powerful than ion engines. A test unit will be flown to the ISS in 2014. According to this Wikipedia article, fuel for station keeping will be cut by a factor of 20, if this works. That, plus possible improvements in the VASIMR design that may come with space testing, could make boosting it to another orbit viable. So, in principle you take up the VASIMR engine, and a couple resupply vessels containing only fuel...this engine is re-usable. So, we've got between 2014 and 2020 to test, propose, and implement this. It only took us 8 years to go to the moon, we can do this, right?
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Physics + economics.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
ISS doesn't deserve a romantic end. Bring it back down so that we can piss on it. It was a money sink that did very little of anything valuable, and robbed funds from other far more deserving projects. I'm not even one of those "We shouldn't have manned exploration!" people, but seeing this thing still receive funding while the James Webb Telescope is about to have funding dropped just makes me want to puke.
If we really had wanted to move forward, we should have set-out to create a permanent presence on the moon, not in LEO.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
If we really had wanted to move forward, we should have set-out to create a permanent presence on the moon, not in LEO.
I disagree.
The ISS is intended to do zero gravity research. The moon doesn't have zero G, and is completely unsuitable for the job the ISS is built for.
You're just dreaming about traveling to the stars. The ISS however is conducting ordinary research. Some of that research can later be used if we travel to the stars, btw.
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The ISS is intended to do zero gravity research.
Naah they cut all that to save money, but didn't have the guts to cut the whole thing. International contractual obligations and all that. So they orbited something pretty much useless. Oh well.
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Research doesn't work like Sid Meier's Civilization. You don't know what you're going to get before you try it, and not finding something new when you look in a new place is news.
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If we really had wanted to move forward, we wouldn't obsess on locally-manned systems when we must have superb robots to interact with the utterly hostile off-Earth environment. That environment will NEVER be friendly, which makes humans essentially tourists and remote manipulatos.
The idea that we should ignore remote-manned systems and robotics because we "NEED HYOOMANS in SPACE NAO!" is shortsighted.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who both is and works with people doing robotic exploration of the solar system, most of us did NOT get into this because it was our dream to keep making better robots to put into space forever and ever. And I can also assure you it isn't for the rock star salaries, either. Without something to inspire the kids of today, it's going to be harder to find people tomorrow to build and pilot rovers, orbiters, and landers. Yes, I just said it. A good chunk of the purpose of manned spaceflight is PR. That shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention, though.
I agree that we shouldn't ignore remote and robotic systems. They are extraordinarily useful. But they are very limited. My boss is a planetary geologist and a member of the Mars Exploration Rover team, and when the nominal 90 day mission ended, I asked him how long the work we did with each rover would take a competent human geologist to do. He replied, "a hard afternoon's worth of effort."
We shouldn't send people up just for the sake of sending people up; I agree with that too. There needs to be a plan, but I think even more importantly, there needs to be a vision. In the long run, though, we will need both manned and unmanned missions to really improve our understanding.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
The Space Station is in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and will fall to the Earth without its regular altitude boosts
Getting the Space Station in a Geo synchronous orbit, let alone deep space (that means outside of the solar system), is a totally different league in terms of needed energy to overcome the gravity well called Earth and mainly the Sun. I can't be bothered to do the calculations but the amount of energy needed for a massive object as the ISS will be staggering.
Also question is for what? Most of the ISS is build for local gravity experiments maintained by manned personel. It has communications optimized for a LEO, etcetera. It won't be able to do much which can't be done by much cheaper ways with a new space probe.
It's like saying you can reach your local California supermarket with your bike, so hey you should be able to go to Hawaii with it as well!
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In truth, you will want to try to establish resources on and under the surface of the Moon over time. Cheaper than either in terms of the energy budget needed to do what needs to be done. In many cases, the crucial resources past a critical point are on the Moon itself and the ISS isn't really a good Geosync base of operations. You need something quite a bit bigger there in one of the Lagrange points for it to be useful for what you're talking to.
They're not kidding about energy budgets. It's going to "
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is that eventaully we will want a station in Geo synchronous orbit and that its cheaper to move this station from LEO to GSO than luanching parts up from earth. Not sure if this is true though. You would still have to launch the fuel up from Earth.
You'd also have to launch up a full machine shop and foundry, as none of the parts will work at geo. Not the comm systems, not the non-existent radiation shielding, not the cooling system, not... uh... pretty much everything but the cheap light empty shell, where nothing new will fit anyway.
Oh and the solar panels are probably only radiation rated for LEO not GEO which is a bit harsher; or maybe they are hardened to GEO levels.
Its kind of like taking the wright flyer and turning it into a B-17 by replacing all the parts one at a time.. it would be a heck of a lot easier and cheaper just to build the B-17 outright. Even the times in my example are about right, a bit more than 30 years separates each design.
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Put it into a lunar transfer orbit and use it as a "shuttle" to the moon. you'd just need to send a small capsule (like a dragon) to dock with it and hitch a ride.
I know, i know, ISS isn't in the right plane, and plane changes are expensive (fuel-wise), not to mention the energy needed to boost to a transfer orbit.
But it is a good reason why we shouldn't deorbit it. it's probably cheaper to send up the fuel to do this than it is to send up a dedicated lunar tranfer shuttle the size of the ISS
Why? - Kessler syndrome (Score:3)
Space around Earth is already a lot crowded (Score:3)
Why couldn't they nudge it out of orbit instead? Send it off to roam deep space? That would make a far more romantic end, rather than being designated space junk and dumped into the ocean.
Because they think for the future. Even a iron-screw-sized debris, if plunged against your craft at hundreds of meters per second, can leave a hole bigger than your fist, side-to-side. Depressurization of the environment is one of the possible issues that might happen because of it.
You really, really, really want to limit the amount of debris you leave in space, or you're gambling with Lady Luck. There's a big enough mess with all the satellites we put up there. A salvage operation would cost an awful sum o
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You have a strange definition of "nudge", that usually implies something small not probably the largest space venture ever attempted.
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"Romance" is for housewives. We won't move forward if we are distracted by nonsense like "romance".
Space exploration is at the most primitive stage. We should get the habit early on of expecting rapid system life cycles, shitcanning legacy systems, and not getting sentimental about dead metal.
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Oh, pity. We couild start a collection? What about these sling-shots they manage in the movies?
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Yes, but all it needs is a push, no finese needed... surely there must be a cheap way of pushing it? A bomb for example?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Get yourself a toy boat and some fireworks. Float the boat in some body of water. Now use the firecrackers to get it to move.
Its not that easy to use a bomb as a propulsion device.
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Vs.
ISS [wikimedia.org]
In other news: Apples != Oranges
Where to deorbit (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone have a suggestion as to where we could land this thing? It's kinda heavy and sure to crush anything in its path. I mean we COULD land it in the ocean but wouldn't it be better to land it on someone's house that we don't like?
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I got a pretty big field out in back of my house. Y'all can use that if you want.
Re:Where to deorbit (Score:5, Funny)
Michael Bay's house perhaps? He could have his very own simulated cometary impact. I'm sure he'd approve of the pyrotechnics and flying dirt and debris when he is crushed. We wouldn't even have to move the thing, just leave the twisted metal and smoking craters as a monument to bad movies and their inevitable consequences.
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"How much of it is going to survive re-entry?"
Enough to crush a house, at least.
Isn't that a given? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was my understanding that the ISS *can't* maintain its orbit without periodic boosts (I could be mistaken there). So since when it leaving it as "space junk" even an option? If you stop maintaining it, it's going to deorbit one way or another. It's really only a question of whether or not it's a *controlled* deorbit.
It's really only a question of whether or not it's (Score:5, Informative)
exactly. uncontrolled deorbit leads to debris.
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exactly. uncontrolled deorbit leads to debris.
To be fair, a controlled de-orbit leads to debris as well. It's just a matter of controlling where that debris winds up: mid-Pacific vs New York, for example.
Personally, I'd like to see them bring it down on land somewhere. It would make a great experiment. Also, any toxic material would be retrievable for proper disposal rather than polluting the ocean. The problem is that there probably isn't an empty enough piece of real estate to serve the purpose... well, the Sahara would work, but politically it'
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Unless your back garden is enormous, the crater made from an IIS module might change your opinion.
I suspect the impact of something like that would cause one hell of a lot of damage.
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I'd guess that it would start tumbling first and fling off a whole bunch of debris before plunging into the atmosphere.
You want to bring it down in one piece. It's the debris that's worrisome. The big pieces they can track. It's the nuts, wrenches, and other bits that give the controllers fits. A nut travelling at 3 km/s is a pretty deadly proijectile (even if your speed is pretty close to that....) A .22 rifle bullet travels at what, 300 m/s, weighs a lot less than a nut, and will kill you. A delta o
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Real or just political maneuvering? (Score:2)
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silly asses (Score:2)
"oops, we don't have the launch capability to boost the station before it falls flaming from the sky"
Re:Real or just political maneuvering? (Score:4, Informative)
It is in a harsh environment. It was not built to last forever. It needs periodic boosting to stay in orbit.
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"As of February 2010, a 2011/2012 launch of an Ad Astra VF-200 200 kW VASIMR electromagnetic thruster is planned for placement and testing on the International Space Station. The VF-200 is a flight version of the VX-200.[33] though it may be later.[34][35] Since the available power from the ISS is less than 200 kW, the ISS VASIMR will include a trickle-charged battery system allowing for 15 min pulses of thrust. Testing of the engine on ISS is valuable because ISS orbits at a relatively low altitude and exp
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> it seems like a huge waste to deorbit it in just 9 years.
A lot can happen in nine years, another war(s) can happen in nine years. We could also acquire new partners and ideas, however. But it seems ridiculous to de-orbit the station with nine years of use even though it took 25 to build it. But maybe that's why: Companies are not going to make more money because there is nothing more on ISS to build (there is but ain't got nothin' to carry more modules to it).
I understand the logic... (Score:2)
Yeah right (Score:3)
Seriously, what the hell? Does the ISS really have no use beyond 2020, who are these unnamed 'partners', and do they really think they have the final say as to what happens to the billions worth of international moneys that have been invested in the ISS?
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Well, one of them does. The other one's keeping quiet.
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The ISS is a partnership between a few nations. They collective decide its fate. Considering its of questionable utility in the first place and an incredible drain of funds, I wouldn't mind seeing it die earlier. That money could be spent on a whole bunch of space missions or pay for a Mars or asteroid mission.
Most likely a lot of the design and maintenance had a end date. The engineers built it to last x amount of years. Going beyond 2020 might make it more economically unfeasible than it already it. Not
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The ISS was conceived as a symbol for international cooperation in space. With war being what has tightened the budget so, I hate to think what smothering this baby in its crib means for mankind.
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Heh... As much as I'd like to think we're "better" than this, there's thousands upon thousands of years of "development" towards this reality. What we do with it remains to be seen- but we're deluding ourselves if we think that warfare won't be present in some form for many millennia to come. How we direct it, form it, will determine if we're actually "better" now. Those that claim that we're "better than this" delude themselves into thinking you can just simply deny the impulses and give them NO outlet
"Defense" (Score:3)
Defense spending (which is where the money comes from for paying for those wars...) is at 25%
Don't play their semantics game. Defense spending is at perhaps 1.3%. Military adventures and corporate welfare for "defense industry" contractors are at 23.7%.
Most people don't have a problem with the 1.3%.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they could auction it off to one of the billionaire's space adventure companies. If they get any money for it and it keeps the station in orbit, that's a win/win!
ISS == special olympics in space (Score:3)
Honestly, we could have spent the money on actual science. Makes one wonder if the teabaggers don't have a point about useless gubbamint waste.
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Hell, the ISS doesn't have a purpose now. It's sole purpose was justification for the shuttle program.
Not really true. ISS would have been cancelled before it even flew, but it was pushed as a means of funnelling money to Russian rocket scientists so that they wouldn't go to work for Saddam Hussein or some other wacko dictator. Hence why it's in an orbit that makes it difficult to reach from America and is pretty much useless for anything.
ISS was basically a US-funded Russian jobs program, so it's probably fitting that the only way for US astronauts to reach it now is on Russian rockets.
GOING ONCE! GOING TWICE... SOLD!!! (Score:2)
It would make for a hell of an orbiting hotel - and I can count half dozen emerging space companies who'd bid on it.
The Ocean, really? (Score:2)
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Don't we put enough crap into the world's oceans? I mean we literally have an island of garbage [wikipedia.org] floating around, why add to the pollution? Why can't we, as another poster said, thrust it off into space, or, thrust it toward the sun and let the sun's gravity suck it in and destroy it?
Do you really want to pay all those extra taxes just to push all that mass into a much higher orbit? You have to push it a long way up the gravity well for it to be in an orbit that doesn't meaningfully decay, and a lot more than that to get to Earth's escape velocity. Dropping it back to Earth is much simpler and cheaper, and the Pacific's a better target than the vast majority of the land surface. (Of course, a lot will burn up on reentry anyway.)
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What if we land the ISS on the island of garbage?
Then we'd have a habitable island of garbage!
Another shot at a free taco? (Score:2)
Waste, waste, waste... (Score:2)
NASA is sitting duck for budget cuts (Score:2)
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Substation? (Score:4, Interesting)
We've always said we wanted to go eventually do a permanent structure on the moon - why not the next best thing? Hook a Dragon up to it, turn on the thrusters, and aim for Luna. Let's put the ISS in orbit around the moon when its lifespan here is up, and voila, we have a permanent structure to study the moon, serve as a waystation / bathroom break rest stop for future interstellar travelers, and it doesn't cost us anything but the fuel of an unmanned rocket. Seems like a no-brainer.
Getting the amount of propellant necessary into space isn't a challenge. We did it in 1969. Yes, we're moving something a little bigger. Fortunately, nice, low gravity and no air resistance means you can move the ISS, very, very slowly, with almost no propellant needed for anything other than getting momentum started, and course corrections. If it takes a month to get there, unmanned, who cares? It took longer to build it than we're letting it run for - why destroy it now?
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Moving the ISS to the moon would be much harder than you'd think. Not only do you have to accelerate the structure out of the Earth's gravity well, but you also have to decelerate it to get it into orbit around the Moon. Not only that, but is it even possible to orbit the Moon, which has a very low gravity? I don't know if there's even a point to have something orbiting the Moon as opposed to just directly landing on the Moon because the gravity well and lack of atmosphere makes it very easy to leave the Mo
Lots of power, use ion engines! (Score:3)
Yes it would take a lot of energy to get to the moon's orbit and yes you'd need to expend some more to put it into orbit AROUND the moon. If you made judicious use of the "interplanetary expressway" (I think that's what it's called), you could use the chaotic nature of orbits to trade time for energy but you're still going to need a good deal of delta-V.
So why not hook up an ion engine?
Nobody will be living on the thing (it has to go through the Van Allen radiation belts) so all the power for life support
Re:Substation? (Score:5, Informative)
*A* Dragon? More like several thousand Dragons. The ISS is big and heavy and will take an enormous amount of energy both to put into a translunar trajectory and then to brake in into lunar orbit.
Um, no. While an object in motion tends to stay in motion - it only does so until subjected to an opposing force. In this case, that opposing force is Earth's gravity, and all a "little propellant" buys you is a slightly higher orbit.
But obtaining the required energy to put it on a translunar trajectory is just the beginning of your problems. Once it gets high enough, it'll encounter the high radiation of the Van Allen belts - and since it's electronics are not shielded against that radiation (being built for the far lower levels of LEO), they'll be fried if they spend more than a few hours there.
Oh, and did I mention that the ISS isn't structurally strong enough to take the thrust needed to ensure a quick passage of the Belt?
Nor does the fun stop there! The ISS' thermal control systems are based around having a nice warm Earth filling almost half it's "sky". They won't be able to handle the load of being in a translunar trajectory or in lunar orbit.
Not to mention stopping in Lunar orbit on your way to or from other destinations is like driving from Atlanta to LA via Seattle. Sure, you can do it if you want to... But it eats a lot of fuel getting into and out of Lunar orbit for no particular gain. On top of that, ensuring the Moon is in the right position for arrival or departure places huge constraints on when you can do so. I haven't worked it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if an Earth/Moon/Mars trajectory window only opened every ten or twelve years - as opposed to the every nineteen months or so for Earth/Mars trajectories.
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And how much is 2.64 billion dollars, compared to the cost to construct the ISS in the first place, that instead will become the next palm tree on the Pacific Garbage Island? How much is it compared to trying to form another international coalition to fund and construct a lunar station? It's peanuts. We're talking about cuts of 2.6 TRILLION dollars on C-SPAN like it's small potatoes. As a question of scale, that's what Barack Obama finds in the White House sofa cushions. It's a bargain at twice the price. W
how long after? (Score:3)
The title and subject could be spun to state. "ISS to remain in orbit until at least 2020". When we reach 2020 we can decide what to do with it. At that point we can either keep sending people to it and ships to boost it, or bring it down, replace it, or whatever. The US has already committed to keeping it up until 2020, so with both major partners it will go for that long. (Of course the US changes its policy completely every 4 years, so who knows?)
NO, NOT AGAIN!!! (Score:3)
Someday we will have manufacturing capabilities in orbit -- the ability to melt down metals and forge them into new structural components for vehicles, habitats, etc. But where will the raw materials come from?
Solution: at the end of its useful life, boost the ISS into a low-maintenence parking orbit. When the manufacturing capability finally arrives -- whether that is 15, 50, or 150 years from now -- we'll have 920,000 pounds of aerospace-grade titanium, aluminum, and steel to work with.
Remember, it costs $10,000 per pound to put "stuff" in orbit. (Hopefully the cost will decrease in the future, but it will never be cheap.) At that rate, think about how unbelievably wasteful it would be to spash all of that highly-refined metal into the drink.
I made the same argument before Mir was deorbited. Alas, nobody listened. Deorbiting ISS, 3.2 times more massive than Mir was, would be 3.2 times more of a cryin' shame!
Lunar Oxygen to move ISS to lunar orbit (Score:3)
History repeating itself... (Score:3)
SKYLAB de-orbited while we had no manned space program, we were between Apollo and the Shuttle when Skylab fell to Earth.
Now we have the ISS, and guess what? We now have no manned space program, because the Shuttle has been retired.
My guess is that we still won't have any manned space flights by 2020 (ONLY 9 years from now), so they will let it fall to Earth again.
Then, some years later (maybe 2025), they will want a space station again, and we'll have some manned flights, and then they will convince taxpayers to spend a few trillion on some other station, only to deorbit that too, after a decade or so.
We are we so foolish as to allow this over and over again?
I swear, I get more life out a car that costs $4,000 than NASA does out of a space system that costs $100 Billion. (I have a 1979 Diesel Rabbit that took to the roads before the Shuttle ever flew, and will probably *still* be on the road after Dragon/Orion has been retired).
Re:"Russia and its partners"?! (Score:4, Funny)
'After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, and those blasted Americans on-board periodically broadcast Vogon poetry,' said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov."
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Why doesn't the US get a say in it? Because the US either agrees to Russia's demands, or they get denied passage on the Soyuz, plain and simple.
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don't forget the point of view, it depends on the sender of the message.
compare those two statements:
In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft
Right now we've agreed with our partners that the station will be used until approximately 2020
I don't see anything disrespecting in both sentences, but the second one is evil because a Russian said it? And the first one great as it was spoken by an US American?
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As others have pointed before and probably after me, boosting it out of the decaying orbit it's in is too expensive, while leaving it there to crash is too dangerous. Hence the controlled deorbiting.
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How expensive? VERY!
It's orders of magnitude more expensive to put something into lunar transfer than into LEO, and the ISS is at the lower edge of LEO, where it can only stay up with regular boosting. It would take one rocket most likely bigger than the Saturn-V (going by the seat of my pants and allowing for the generous margins NASA loves(d)), and even that one was almost twice the size of the Shuttle assembly...
LEO is by far the most expensive part (Score:3)
It's orders of magnitude more expensive to put something into lunar transfer than into LEO, and the ISS is at the lower edge of LEO
That's only true if you're comparing a trip from the earth surface to LEO, to a trip from earth surface to lunar orbit. And then the reason why it's exponentially more expensive is because everything you're planning on sending from LEO to the moon also has to be lifted to LEO, and whatever you're using to lift that has to be lifted, etc.
That's why the Saturn-V had to be so huge while the return vessel could be so small -- the return vessel got to do the LEO to earth surface transition for "free".
But if you're going to lunar transfer from LEO, then you're already most of the way there! In fact, once you're in LEO, then you're almost halfway to Mars. And I don't mean Mars orbit; I meant the surface.
From Ye Olde WP [wikipedia.org], Delta-v for:
Earth surface to LEO: 9.3-10 km/s
Delta-v for LEO to LL(unar)O: 4.8
Delta-v for LEO to LM(ars)O: 6.1
Delta-v for LMO to Mars surface: 4.1
This is why Saturn-V, Constellation, and other ultra-heavy lift vehicles intended to be used to lift things from earth to some destination beyond LEO make no sense -- for the future, that is. It made sense for Apollo because they didn't want to spend the time developing infrastructure in LEO for a two-step mission.
But that's what we should be doing. When we think of going anywhere beyond high earth orbit, we should be thinking of it as two distinct steps: Earth to LEO, and the LEO to the rest of the solar system. If you can use cheap and efficient commercial lift vehicles to launch pieces of the inter-planetary mission into LEO, assemble and refuel it there, then you can have vastly expanded missions at vastly reduced prices.
That's part of what NASA's new plan involves, if it survives Congress. And it sounds like the Russians are planning to do this with their parts of the ISS.
Of course this still doesn't mean it's necessarily economical to boost the ISS to Lunar orbit... :)
Re:"Russia and its partners"?! (Score:4, Insightful)
With all the effort that has gone into building it up, it would be a shame not to get a much longer lifetime out of it. We've given many power plants life extensions, why not this? Is there some bigger threat from extending the life of the space station or is it just about money? I bet many around the world would be willing to make donations to keep it going. Learning how to produce things that last for extended periods and that approach or become self-sustaining, seems like an important mission in itself. Sure they've managed to recycle some pee, but what about things like producing food in space? Can the biomass be recycled efficiently enough to be self-sustaining. How well can plants and people do longer term with the elevated radiation? Much attention has been paid to locating frozen water on the moon (some was found in an always cold area), Mars maybe even an asteroid. A colony on the moon or elsewhere would have to cope with occasional things that might poke holes. Maybe we should be experts on coping with that.
They've got quite a bit of electrical power from the solar panels at the station. Couldn't there be enough energy for recycling and manufacturing of other (non-organic) goods? As time goes on, people of Earth will increasingly need to recycle more and more do it from sustainable energy sources. Maybe practice in space where supplies are little or limited is good practice? I doubt anyone will suggest that they grow corn for fuel...
The world needs things that excite young people to learn and become highly skilled scientists. If they rarely hear of activity in the space program, what will they get interested in?
I'm not sure if an interest in games and robots is a good combination... what usually happens in those games?
Re:"Russia and its partners"?! (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the modules were designed for short term use, and simply were never intended to operate for well past 2020. One of the first Russian modules is actually planned to be detached and de-orbited later this year, replaced by a newer module. The solar panels are very expensive, very high efficiency arrays, however the same lack of atmosphere which gives them a boost versus ground based plants, also causes them to degrade from radiation faster.
The station is not going to be scrapped entirely. This new Russian module being installed later this year, and a few others, will be detached from the ISS before the ISS gets scuttled, and will be used as the basis of a new space station called the OPSEK. It is to be the first orbital dockyard in support of extra-planetary missions, where deep space craft will be sent up in individual modules, and then assembled on site, rather than being sent up in one big shot.
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Well, how about the completely idiotic idea of clamping some ion thrusters on the thing and moving it to lunar orbit. Mothball it, park it in orbit around the moon, then you have a place to go if you just happen to be in the vicinity of the moon.
It certainly won't generate a lot of space junk that would worry anyone.
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"Establishing a perminnant presence in space is not a reasonable goal at this time. It would cost too much, and it would not be sustainable as a result."
Yup. Just that 'give up', 'pack it in', 'it's too expensive', 'it's too hard' defeatist attitude that defines the US nowadays.
We ARE toast, and we don't DESERVE space anymore.
Re:People misunderstand space exploration. (Score:5, Interesting)
Establishing a perminnant presence in space is not a reasonable goal at this time. It would cost too much, and it would not be sustainable as a result.
Excuse me for being cynical here, but I do remember the fact that when the ISS was first started but before astronauts started to inhabit the thing, that it was officially proclaimed by various press releases by both Russia and NASA as "the first permanent space station and outpost of humanity". I suppose that "mission" was lost when the "Space Station Alpha" moniker was lost too.
Yes, I know that changed over the years, but I do wish those guys would have been more honest about the issue back then. In theory it could still be a permanent outpost as it was built in a modular fashion, and more to the point it was proclaimed as being so huge that it could never be sent back to the Earth like Skylab and Mir (as well as the several Almaz stations) all had been. The ISS was supposed to be something different. I really would like to know when that changed.
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And of course that means that we in Europe and the UK will have to protect the US. Every single war you've got yourselves into, we've had to come and pick you up and give you a cuddle when you've burned your little fingers on something too hot.
Thanks for helping in World War 2, though. You stopped helping the Germans at just the right time.
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Because America "won the space race" of course,
I detect some sarcasm there, but I didn't know until recently after clicking around for a while on Wikipedia, that the USSR not only sent the first man, satellite, and space stations into space, but still holds the record for longest solo flight (Bikovsky I think?(which was apparently cut short due to toilet malfunction)), first woman in space (who made a whole career of the space program and is still involved in space today), and that Mir was their final space station (before the end of the political entit
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Would you prefer they dumped the ISS on land...? I assume they'll make efforts to collect it when it comes down.
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let's dump more garbage into our oceans. Its not like they're struggling to survive against the onslaught of man already!
Get with the program: it's called "creating an artificial reef to encourage wildlife" :-)
Actually, we mammals did pretty well the last time something big dropped out of the sky and wiped out the dominant species.
Sadly, the ISS is just too tiny to make a sufficiently large bang to pass on the favor to the next up and coming class of lifeforms (although the news media will probably act like it is).
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We purposely sink ships and subs to create artificial reefs.
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Engineers are pretty much trained to have an end-of-life plan for everything they design and build nowadays. Doesn't mean it will happen that way. In my company we are still using equipment that we planned on scrapping years ago.
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Hey, I know they're just VB developers, but it's still not cool to talk about them as if they're objects that you can just scrap.
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That's an interesting idea.
You'd first have to remove anything that would get broken very easily, and depressurize the station, so it didn't contribute to the mess if something were to go poorly.
Then you'd need to maneuver it all over the place over a fairly long time, because that "shell" is... forgive the expression... astronomically large. Think about the volume of that space you want to clean up, and compare to the volume of the space station. That's an awfully small broom for an awfully big place. Car
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That's just sad... it should be landed on the moon. It it's too big in one piece, dismantle it and land the components. Even refurbishing as a "robot station" with just that robotic arm and the solar sails and some positioning systems for satellite repair or something would be better, than letting it all crash and burn. how about parking it in a different orbit... maybe around the moon?
Sure, we'll put it in orbit around the moon. You work out how to get about 6,000 tons of propellent up there and I'll take care of the rest.
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What a lovely person you are.
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That would be fun, but it costs money, and we, as a species, already spent it all on wars and cocaine-n'-hooker parties for our corporate overlords.