International Space Station Mission Extended To 2024 104
An anonymous reader writes with news that funding has been secured for the ISS through at least 2024. From NASA: "'...We are pleased to announce that the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the International Space Station until at least 2024. We are hopeful and optimistic that our ISS partners will join this extension effort and thus enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory for at least another decade. ... A further benefit of ISS extension is it will give NASA and its private-sector partners time to more fully transition to the commercial space industry the transportation of cargo and crew to low-Earth-orbit, allowing NASA to continue to increase its focus on developing the next-generation heavy-lift rocket and crew capsule necessary for deep-space exploration."
Yes! (Score:2)
Yes! Thats All.
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Good news for the Russian Space Agency. They get to ferry Americans up to space for at least another 10 years.
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Good news for the Russian Space Agency. They get to ferry Americans up to space for at least another 10 years.
I wouldn't be so quick [wikipedia.org] to make that assumption [wikipedia.org]. There are certainly other vehicles [wikipedia.org] which can take people to the ISS besides the Soyuz spacecraft, and one of which will be flying within the decade. I would even suggest all three will be flying routinely.
If you like your space station you can keep... (Score:3, Funny)
"If you like your space station you can keep your space station."
Let's hope Obama wasn't kidding this time.
Thanks Big O! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you can keep this up and we can have a real science budget in the USA.
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I have a serious question – what science is the ISS doing that can be done better with humans and not by remotely? Grew up in Houston, big Sci-Fi fan, love science. It seems to me that the ISS is a highly capable piece of equipment in search of a mission.
Most of the science that I hear about is about studying the effect of long term space flight so we can go to the Moon, Mars, etc. Which would be all fine and dandy if there were a real program to go to the Moon, Mars, etc.
Where should I be looking?
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My guess it'll be at least another two decades until Mars has a serious manned mission attempt. Even when W was in office their best guess at getting people back to the moon was something like 2018 and that's when going back to the mo
Re:Thanks Big O! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the science that I hear about is about studying the effect of long term space flight so we can go to the Moon, Mars, etc.
... and even those studies are just a rehash of what was done on Mir and Skylab decades ago.
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You see that does not cut it for me.
Take a look at the space program between JFK announcement that we were going to the moon to landing on the moon. There was a clear goal. Each step of the program was a clear, logical, step to expand our abilities to meet that goal. An excellent example of project management.
You can’t say that about the ISS. Is what they are doing helping us to Mars or a asteroid? Maybe yes, maybe no – one can’t tell until you have set the goal. For example, if we just wa
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Is what they are doing helping us to Mars or a asteroid?
My assessment is: Not really.
There is a very exciting goal in human spaceflight: Long-term habitation outside of Earth's biosphere. I think this is what everybody gets excited about when they think of humans in space. And there are good practical reasons to build off-world colonies, in terms of resource utilization and species risk.
This is an enormously difficult goal, because humans are fragile and it's hard to support our needs in a completely self-contained way. If our Mars colony requires supply ships f
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Re: Thanks Big O! (Score:2)
Guessing they've got a dedicated acronym guy as part of the PR department.
Tell a congressman you're sending a refrigerator into space and they think they know as much about it as you do, and therefor why should it cost more than $299 at sears? Instant budget cut.
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NASA has determined that research on ISS is necessary to mitigate fully 21 of the 32 human-health risks anticipated on long-duration missions.
It helps when you RTFA.
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I think that part of the benefit is having experience living in space, and dealing with the technical and psychological issues of a long term presence in space. A bonus seems to be that the shuttle being canceled seems to have given a boost to private spacebound freight transport. All of this is valuable experience for other projects, be they other near-earth habitats or travel to other planets or the asteroids.
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This is not real science; it is just pork for NASA/Houston. The real science in space is happening at NASA/JPL with their robotic missions such as Curiosity And the O'Admin is trying to kill off all the other planetary missions.
Yes. Curiosity has been playing in the dirt on Mars for two years now. Please do tell what ground breaking "real science" has been done.
Meanwhile the ISS has been used to grow protein crystals [nasa.gov] which have helped our understanding of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. This type of research will be helpful for stroke prevention and cancer as well as treatment for emphysema and immune system disorders.
The Materials Science Lab [wikipedia.org] is giving us insights into making better alloys here on earth. There are other experime
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All the stuff could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes in orbit. The ISS and manned spaceflight is pork for Houston.
I would say this is utter bullshit.
Yes, there can be some interesting things done with robotic probes, and it is possible that some of the experiments done on the ISS could be operated remotely and doesn't need constant attention by astronauts (like many of the experiments on the ISS do anyway). Still, I think you take for granted how difficult it is to build a spacecraft designed to meet a specific research objective and also dismiss out of hand what value there is to having astronauts being there with th
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All the stuff could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes in orbit.
[citation needed]
There is no all purpose robot that I am aware of that is flexible enough to be able to replace the general purpose abilities of a human. There is R&D cost involved in building these robots. It's not as simple as going down to "Space Robots 'R' Us" and charging it to your credit card. Mars Curiosity cost $2.5 billion. [nasa.gov]
The space shuttle [wikipedia.org](which was a terribly expensive program compared to what it should have been) ran from 1972 until 2011 at a total cost of $450 billion or a little ov
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An intangible benefit is it has the potential to produce something like this which will make a young kid say "WOW" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo [youtube.com]
Getting the next generation interested in space is something that I see as nothing but a positive
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I was going to post exactly this comment. A single video like that could be (indirectly) responsible for countless discoveries made down the line by the next generation of kids who get interested in science because space is awesome.
-AndrewBuck
Waldo (Score:2)
Too bad, I was hoping to buy it and become Waldo [wikipedia.org].
On a more serious note, I don't see the ISS as a single "thing" that can/should be abandoned or destroyed. It is a collaborative effort of many people and many nations and is designed to be built upon and "developed". Like a new community. I'm hoping that we as a species find the right combination of profitability and marketability from it to ensure it is still in the sky long after I'm dead and buried. Perhaps we should start thinking of it as more of a
Re: Waldo (Score:3)
The problem with that is that space is a bitch of an environment to maintain something as complex as the ISS over time. Unless you're only looking at another decade or two of life, you'll probably see it reach the point where it's cheaper and easier to build a new space station, moonbase or Mars base than it is to continue maintaining the ISS. There's also few practical options for preserving it as a piece of history, no matter how cool that would be.
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Having a moonbase is so much cooler than the ISS that I could live with that. Otherwise I'm 100% with lazarus, don't let it die!
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Yeah, a moon base is really cool... until an EXPLOSION sends it hurtling through SPACE.
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... until an EXPLOSION sends it hurtling through SPACE.
at which point we'll essentially just have a new (unintentional) version of the ISS anyway...so it's all good.
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The problem with that is that <insert market space> is a bitch of an environment to maintain something as complex as the <insert product> over time. Unless you're only looking at another <insert product development lifecycle> or two of life, you'll probably see it reach the point where it's cheaper and easier to build a new <insert product>, <insert product alternative> or <insert alternative to product alternative> than it is to continue maintaining the <insert product>. There's also few practical options for preserving it as a piece of history, no matter how cool that would be.
That's how I read your post.
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But if Waldo goes to the ISS, it will just become easier to find him [whereswaldo.com]!
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The US just needs to just sell its ownership share of the station to other governments (and maybe commercial ventures), and let them take it over. Maybe the Chinese would like to buy our part of it. They'd obviously do a much better job with it, since they actually have the ability to think about things more than 4 years ahead, unlike us. Otherwise, we all have to worry about them deorbiting the thing and sending into the atmosphere every 4 years because the US government would rather spend money on NSA
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Why would a commercial venture buy a chunk of the ISS? I have a hard time thinking anything commercial coming out of it. It is set up to do basic science.
Government is the customer. Yes, they can contract out to the private sector for things, such as ferrying stuff, but they are the ones ultimately footing the bill.
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The Russians have sent tourists to the ISS, so why not Virgin Galactic?
The company to look at is Bigelow Aerospace [bigelowaerospace.com]. FYI, this company is partnering with Boeing to build a spacecraft [boeing.com] that will carry passengers at a fraction of the price that Space Adventures [spaceadventures.com] is currently charging for that opportunity.
As for a microgravity lab, note that NanoRacks [nanoracks.com] already provides this service. They are literally open to anybody willing to use their checkbook to purchase a flight spot. This is no longer the time for theoretical rants, but a time to act and do something as the opportunity is h
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It is a collaborative effort of many people and many nations
Yes, it's a collaborative international effort and three quarters of the budget has come from the US.
Spend this money on science, not pork (Score:1)
The Space Station is a huge pork barrel; it is a way for NASA/Houston to siphon funds that would better spent on real science. The billions wasted on this would be better spent on robotic missions to Europa and other icy moons plus a Mars Sample Return Mission. The Terrestrial Planet Finder mission would also be a much better use of the money. The real excitement and discovery is happening with robotic probes such as the MSL (Curiousity), not the manned pork.
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Ah, yes, because the unmanned probes are doing such a great job on the experiments where humans are the test subjects. At least those probes, carrying a dozen experiments each, are getting a lot of science done. After all, the ISS crew isn't busy [wikipedia.org] or anything, right?
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If it's between funding a thousand MSL-style probes and funding ISS, I'd vote for shutting down ISS. I was never a big fan, it sucks research cash but doesn't actually do much science. It's so bad, ISS people need to find people doing very stupid experiments on it when you can't get time on any of the scientific probes since they're so crowded with research. Just a comparison of the papers released from experiments from ISS vs experiments from any other probe (say, a fringe experiment) like Galex, I'm not e
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DMV (Score:2)
The Galactic DMV also requires a flasher fluid flush, a new windshield wiper belt, and a tachyon emissions filter for the flux capacitor before it passes inspection.
Pissed (Score:2)
I was looking forward to the Taco Bell promotions when this thing crashed back to earth
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I agree that all participants have to say yes. But the Ruskies, Europeans and the 'Muricans are the three largest investors, and therefore it is a step in the right direction that Obama made the money available.
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Japan is somebody you shouldn't write off either. They did build the Kibo module [wikipedia.org] and have paid a substantial part of the costs involved too. If you would ask anybody involved, I would dare say that Japan is an equal partner in terms of decisions like this. The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, is making plenty of progress on their own as well and certainly deserves to be recognized as a space faring nation, including having an astronaut corps of its own.
Facilitate Commercial Space Flight (Score:2)
NASA should move into a role of supporting commercial space flight. Let players like SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace create the technologies needed. Let the lawyers figure out how to grant property rights on the Moon, Mars, etc. At this point, I'm inclined to view the ISS as a LEO flying turkey.
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It's a commons. Like the National Parks service, it's something you run at a billions-of-dollars-a-year loss for in exchange for being able to have those things available as a shared good.
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Another way to look at it is that it is only $3B dollars per year. For the USA this is pretty meagre spending really and entirely necessary. Many other spending initiatives such as seriously failed wars in the middle east that destabilize the whole region cost way more and don't endear the USA to the rest of the world. The ISS and similar things are necessary, because without them that country would be hated around the world for what it does in other areas and might come to bite it in times of local crisis
Re:What a waste $3B every year (Score:5, Insightful)
down the tubes.. or into the vacuum as the case may be. The ISS has no major accomplishments other than being a gravy train for aerospace contractors. Is there research going on up there that provides sufficient return to justify a cost of $8.2 million per day if it were not funded through tax dollars? Now that the station is being serviced commercially it is time to pull the plug. If IBM or Intel or Merck or Pfizer or whomever want a research lab in space let them form a consortium with Boeing et al and build one that suits their needs. And if they are really in love with the existing station, sell it to them and get some tax money back.
This is going to be inflammatory, but I have good karma to burn.
You sad sick fuck. The world is not beholden to the economic views of market capitalism. Science and knowledge expansion requires the expenditure of resources that are NOT tied up in making the elite more elite. It's your viewpoint that has destroyed what was once the greatest scientific community and left nothing but a corpse picked over by weasels and hyenas.
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This is the typical issue with those that purport that the free market solves everything people. A) it is simplification, and B) it isn't real.
For example, were do you think big pharma or Boeing would be without government contracts? Broke, and non-existent. What do you suppose ratio of business is for a company like Boeing between selling commercial items to other commercial entities, just like a good old free market is, to its business of selling military and other goods to various levels of government.
A
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No they would be a lot smaller and not relying on corpratism
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You sad sick fuck. The world is not beholden to the economic views of market capitalism. Science and knowledge expansion requires the expenditure of resources that are NOT tied up in making the elite more elite. It's your viewpoint that has destroyed what was once the greatest scientific community and left nothing but a corpse picked over by weasels and hyenas.
Consider that the above complaint is made in the face of the greatest expenditures ever made [rdmag.com] on scientific research in the history of the world. If the "greatest scientific community" is being destroyed, then it must be by something other than mere economics.
I think Lawrence_Bird nailed the fundamental problem. Programs like the ISS aren't scientific programs but rather corrupt transfers of wealth to various elite which happen to do a minor bit of research. Too much research is not about producing someth
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Please state the scientific accomplishments of the ISS. I get marked as troll yey it is you who offers nothing in rebuttal. Where are all the groundbreaking publications? Can you name one without a google search? Perhaps because there have not been any.
As to science funding in general again it is you who is the ignorant troll. Govt funding is at record highs. If anything has "destroyed" science is that it is now completely dependent on govt largess. In effect scientists are nth more than civil servants.
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While I am broadly sympathetic with curtailing government spending and privatizing what is possible, I would like to make the following points
1) I'm going to guess that your assessment of ISS accomplishments is incorrect.
I'm going to channel Louis CK here a little but, basically, we have a _hotel in space_. People can live there and not die. That is _amazing_.
Instead of constantly pissing in their pants because there is no gravity, because cosmic and solar radiation are trying really hard to kill them, an
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1-hotel skylab
2-cooperate on something with real results
Let the military do as they need
Business is good at finding solution$ for problems people want solved.govt is not
For what purpose (Score:1)
So what do we really get out of the space station? Is it ever going to turn a profit? Has it ever helped produce anything?
I'm not trying to be critical. I've heard of things like experiments to see whether spiders can still spin webs in 0 G and whether the webs look different. But after many years of hearing about stuff like this, I've never heard a strong explanation put forward as to what is its real tangible benefit. If it is simply to work with other nations in a unique environment, call congress
Re: For what purpose (Score:1)
ISS is a research platform for studying humans living in spacecraft environment and a training ground for wider industrialization of space. It is an investment in future economy.
If there was no ISS in LEO, private space industry would have no easy goals to meet. For instance, there would be no demand for cargo spaceships and they would have to build something much more complex and sensitive, like passenger carrying, or satellite-launching crafts as their first products. When they accumulate experience and k
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What it's doing is unprofitable, but at least it's getting used. The DoD's spending on advanced weapon systems with no practical applications beyond fighting a land war with an inexplicably reassembled and equivalently armed USSR would probably pay for it several times over.
However it's not something private industry would get into, ever. "Less unprofitable" isn't a business model.
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I'm just saying that it's funny that human spaceflight gets as much heat as it does given that the DoD has the economic equivalent of a dozen Apollo programs gathering dust because they were built for a scenario that's never going to happen without a time machine and some sort of Robo Lenin.
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Re:For what purpose (Score:4, Insightful)
When does INL turn a profit? Los Alamos? Amundsen-Scott? Those are all major laboratories doing basic research. The ISS justifiably fits right in there with all of those facilities, and I"m glad that it is treated as such.
Part of the problem is that the ISS really is incomplete to be able to support the personnel needed to make it really thrive as a research lab. It was supposed to have a crew of six astronauts on board full-time (that was the original design) where two of those astronauts would deal with station keeping duties (at least trading off the equivalent of two astronauts doing that work) while the other four would be doing basic research.
That hasn't happened The TransHab module [wikipedia.org] in particular is needed to provide additional berthing arrangements (aka sleeping quarters) for the astronauts or at least another lab module that can expand the occupancy as well as one of the other partners (either ESA or NASA) needs to develop another spacecraft to bring astronauts up and down. NASA is working on that [wikipedia.org] so it is just a matter of time.
Regardless, the ISS is doing some tremendous work right now, and it is disingenuous to suggest that spider webs are the only thing being studied. The number of experiments numbers in the hundreds that have already been completed. You can debate the merit of that research based upon the funding being done, but far less has been done with far more money in other endeavors of government activity. The entire ISS program, including all shuttle launches and training and all of the maintenance costs, is still less than the amount of money spent on air conditioning equipment used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
As for private stations going into space and trying to duplicate the features of the ISS, I would bet that Robert Bigelow [bigelowaerospace.com] would be willing to help you out if you had a good idea and some funding sources to consider. I agree it would be done much cheaper by private industry, but it already is built... so do you really think it needs to be thrown away and splashed in the Pacific Ocean?
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Good points. And I realize you may be aware of other experiments you believe are more useful than spiderweb studies, but there really isn't room to list them. One problem is few of these experiments receive much public coverage so people don't know about them. Couldn't NASA list the experiments, what they are trying to find out and if they have been successful? I've considered that there might be some 'National Security related' experiments they aren't going to report on. But I wouldn't think a spacela
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Couldn't NASA list the experiments, what they are trying to find out and if they have been successful?
NASA does list [nasa.gov] the experiments. They are sorted in multiple directions too (by date, mission, researchers, and alphabetically). None the less, your point that media outlets don't really pay attention to this list is a good one and something that should be done to smack some of these journalists into reality.
Another really interesting company who is currently sending experiments up to the ISS is Nanoracks [nanoracks.com], a for-profit company partnering with NASA on the ISS who is willing to put literally anybody's exper
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None of this stuff I've mentioned would be possible without the ISS.
I don't know about whether this stuff would be possible, but it'd certainly be cheaper without the ISS, when it were done.
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None of this stuff I've mentioned would be possible without the ISS.
I don't know about whether this stuff would be possible, but it'd certainly be cheaper without the ISS, when it were done.
Treatiing the existing ISS structure as sunk costs with the exception of any additional maintenance issues for ongoing development, what kind of costs are we talking about for similar kinds of research currently done on the ISS but performed upon other platforms? I simply disagree with you in regards to the cost being even orders of magnitude cheaper.... and much of that research simply can't be done with single purpose built spacecraft. Even for those experiments which are largely automated, the ISS stil
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Treatiing the existing ISS structure as sunk costs
Can't because the ISS costs almost $2 billion a year just to keep operational. Also, the same sort of bad decision making that led to the Shuttle and the ISS leads to more recent bad decisions such as development of the Space Launch System.
There's the matter of political hygiene. Let's say I have an apartment and I leave the place a serious mess, with food and stuff lying around. It won't be long before rodents, bugs, and other vermin are squirming through my apartment. But by cleaning up the apartment a
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I had forgotten the 'experiment in a cube' thing that they were doing now. In some ways ISS has already been "merchandised." Some might want to pay for an experiment in space. Others might want to take a multi-million dollar 'vacation' in space. So I stand corrected in under-estimating the uses they have put ISS to. And glad to hear of it again, really. Thanks!
A relative of mine used to work at NASA and I became familiar with its budgetary challenges. That NASA could go a long way on a fraction of
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When does INL turn a profit? Los Alamos? Amundsen-Scott? Those are all major laboratories doing basic research. The ISS justifiably fits right in there with all of those facilities, and I"m glad that it is treated as such.
Indeed, the US has a great tradition of money sinks be it research or the occasional interminable war. Imagine, if you can, how bad it would be if the US were to actually use that money for something useful rather than misemploying eggheads or bombing brown people.
Regardless, the ISS is doing some tremendous work right now, and it is disingenuous to suggest that spider webs are the only thing being studied.
I'm sure there's useful stuff being studied. Who knows? It might even some day approach within an order of magnitude of the original cost of the station.
When I read posts like the above, I have to remind myself that not everyone realizes the ex
The Russians will have to wait a bit longer (Score:4, Informative)
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Everything will need to be launched from Earth until you have a base that can produce it's own equipment and fuel. You're not going to have that in LOE.
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...because the energy involved in launching an Earth-assembled probe directly into deep space is by physical necessity equal to or less than launching that probe's parts into space, stopping them, assembling them, launching the probe's fuel, then launching the probe into deep space.
FAIL (Score:2)
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You have to perform orbital insertion, or the payload will return directly to the launch site by simple physics. That costs energy.
Ah. With what money will this be done, praythee ? (Score:2)
The US being virtually bankrupt, I wonder where the money will come from.... but then again:
*slap on forehead* of course. The Fed will just print some *slap on forehead*
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The US is too far in debt for this to make any difference.
It's in the wrong orbit! (Score:2)
I hear this all the time about how the ISS is supposed to evolve into this orbital "gas station" for future missions to the moon, Mars, or beyond. The problem with that is the ISS is in the wrong orbit for doing that. To get the ISS project off the ground the orbit was shifted from it's original low angle orbit to a high angle orbit. This higher angle made it cheaper and easier for supply missions from existing Russian launch sites.
I won't pretend I understand all the physics but I get the general concep