ISS to be de-orbited in 2016!

[the.punk]

Why are we going to travel to and find other planets that may harbour life, when we already have the Earth?
>Umm...?

Because today human don't live on one continent. Just as we won't live in the future on one planet.





Back to the ISS...
I think we cannot prognose how NASA will be in 10 years or more. We don't know what the future brings. Maybe NASA won't be there for ever but I think spaceflight goes on.
And I'm also not happy that ISS could be de-orbited in 2016

 

[Eagle]

This may be naive, but can someone explain why a station must be de-orbited?

I understand to keep it in working condition requires people and money. But what would really be the harm in bringing everyone off it it and letting it orbit without interaction for the next 10 years?

Is it a danger to anyone or anything if left alone?

I forget how many years it could stay up without boosting. Of course you could spend $10 million for 2 orbital boots from a progress and give yourself a few more years. (and it will take at least one progress mission to deorbit ISS, I wouldn't be surprised if it took more than one)

And the government owns more than a few facilities that it spends more than $5 million a year just to keep the doors locked.

The deorbiting part is just so you don't have to worry about it crashing somewhere else at a later date. And yes, it would hurt if it fell on you.

So wasteful? It is if you have to build another ISS like station in a similar orbit in the next few decades.

 

[Ark]

Couldn't we just strap some boosters to it and gradually move it into alignment with Moon orbit, and use it as a staging/assembly point for Moon missions? All the science funding is long gone, so we might as well use it to play a genuine support role in further missions.

It seems ironic to me that many of the same people criticizing the station as a pointless waste of money are the ones that advocated cutting off the science funding and MAKING it pointless. They don't really care, they just hate anything that diverts money from their pet projects.

 

[the.punk]

This may be naive, but can someone explain why a station must be de-orbited?

I understand to keep it in working condition requires people and money. But what would really be the harm in bringing everyone off it it and letting it orbit without interaction for the next 10 years?

Is it a danger to anyone or anything if left alone?

A space station must be deorbited because in the altitude of 300 - 400km there is a little atmosphere. And then it is slowed down and could splach down in a habitat zone.

 

[Artlav]

Couldn't we just strap some boosters to it and gradually move it into alignment with Moon orbit, and use it as a staging/assembly point for Moon missions? All the science funding is long gone, so we might as well use it to play a genuine support role in further missions.

Waste of resources at little gain. ISS aligns with the Moon every 15 days or so for an off-plane transfer window anyway. Moving it into Moon's plane will make it less accessible and give minimal transfer savings for lunar missions.

 

[the.punk]

Couldn't we just strap some boosters to it and gradually move it into alignment with Moon orbit, and use it as a staging/assembly point for Moon missions? All the science funding is long gone, so we might as well use it to play a genuine support role in further missions.

It seems ironic to me that many of the same people criticizing the station as a pointless waste of money are the ones that advocated cutting off the science funding and MAKING it pointless. They don't really care, they just hate anything that diverts money from their pet projects.

That with the boosters is a bit difficult because I havent an idea how to grabble them or how to do such thing. And I think ISS was already planned for an parking station for ships to moon. But not algined with the moon.



And yes... I also think that ISS isn't pointless.

 

[T.Neo]

Why are we going to travel to and find other planets that may harbour life, when we already have the Earth?
>Umm...?

Unwise to have all our eggs in one basket. But life-bearing planets are not desirable for human colonisation; there is the issue of environmental impact...

Ideal places for colonisation would be barren planets that could be easily terraformed, or even large asteroid belts/barren moons from which rotating colonies could be constructed.

And, do you think mankind will ever get to the point where we will be able to cross the solar system in days, weeks, months, or even years?
I certainly don't think the Star Wars idea of zipping across to other galaxies in a matter of a few hours will ever exist - we still don't know if it is physically possible to travel faster than the speed of light. Travelling at the speed of light, it could be a thousand year journey just to reach another life-harbouring planet - pretty pointless, considering that no human has ever lived past 114 years old!

I suppose there's always the idea of space colonisation - travel to another planet, then create a new batch of humans, or just keep pro-creating along the way...?

Generation ships.

 

[Eagle]

Couldn't we just strap some boosters to it and gradually move it into alignment with Moon orbit, and use it as a staging/assembly point for Moon missions? All the science funding is long gone, so we might as well use it to play a genuine support role in further missions.

Its probably not worth it. The delta v cost of the plane change isn't much less than the launch delta v. Pretty much the only thing ISS has that's useful in a support role is its life support and maybe its power systems. You might be able to crowd some food and other supplies in ISS's corridor.

Now if NASA had a good launch system that could truck fuel and supplies to orbit you might be able to cobble together ISS as a way station in its current orbit (launch windows to the moon every 14 days, low-mid latitudes of earth every 12 hours). Have the laucher bring up people and supplies to ISS and resupply vehicles that transit from LEO to the moon and back. Of course if we had this nice launch system we could just build annother station designed for that purpose.

It seems ironic to me that many of the same people criticizing the station as a pointless waste of money are the ones that advocated cutting off the science funding and MAKING it pointless. They don't really care, they just hate anything that diverts money from their pet projects.

Aye, there's the rub.

 

[agentgonzo]

Its probably not worth it. The delta v cost of the plane change isn't much less than the launch delta v.

I seem to remember a conversation on the old m6 forums that around plane-changes. IIRC, the most efficient way to change orbital planes from ISS's orbit to Mir's orbit was to go via the moon :blink:

 

[simonpro]

The fact is, the ISS is just not economically viable.

The same can be said of about 99% of scientific endeavors.

Actual science productivity is low, because 90% of the ground control’s and crew’s effort is spent on simply keeping the thing in orbit.

Also, do we really need a 6 person crew???

Yes, and you've answered your own question.

The amount of time doing maintenance won't increase dramatically when there's 3 more people on board, so that means that there's 3 people who can do science pretty much full time.

We would have been better off launching the ISS on 15 or so Proton flights over 5 years, and getting about 10 years of science from it - as opposed to launching it over 12 years, to get 5 years of limited science from it.

Agreed. The only reason we didn't do that is because NASA felt the need to give the shuttle something to do. The Russians weren't happy and ESA wasn't happy, unsurprisingly. The way I see it going is that NASA will leave the ISS project and leave it to the international partners. They spent so much money on the shuttle that it needed to be used for soemthing, and now they've spent so much money on the ISS that they'll need to use it for a few years too, even though it's using up money that they need for their Moon ideas.

I love the ISS for its technical accomplishments, but I also cannot argue against facts.

You can always argue against facts, usually with other facts




As most of you know, I generally can't stand manned spaceflight, I think it's a waste of resources. The ISS project is needed, though, and I'd be happy for it to continue until 2020.

 

[Omhra]

boost it to 400km and leave it there.

 

[T.Neo]

boost it to 400km and leave it there.

Why? It'll still need frequent reboosts.

 

[Urwumpe]

Newspaper in hysteria shocker.

I have to agree. I doubt that the journalist even bothered asking somebody who has responsibility.

---------- Post added at 08:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 PM ----------

boost it to 400km and leave it there.

So it will only drop at 300m per day? 400 km is still normal operation altitude for the ISS. It won't stay there at all.

 

[the.punk]

So it will only drop at 300m per day? 400 km is still normal operation altitude for the ISS. It won't stay there at all.

Yes. I think you must put in 2000 km.

 

[MJR]

GEO. Lol.

 

[SiberianTiger]

I seem to remember a conversation on the old m6 forums that around plane-changes. IIRC, the most efficient way to change orbital planes from ISS's orbit to Mir's orbit was to go via the moon :blink:

I asked people from Moscow Mission Control, and they said that had Mir been left in its orbit, it would align finely with the ISS' orbital plane in about 2 or three years because of natural difference in the ascending nodes movement.

 

[T.Neo]

I asked people from Moscow Mission Control, and they said that had Mir been left in its orbit, it would align finely with the ISS' orbital plane in about 2 or three years because of natural difference in the ascending nodes movement.

I believe agentgonzo is talking about the Orbiter version of Mir, which is in a fictional orbit near the ecliptic.

 

[Hartmann]

Very interesting,

scrap the apolo and the moon program
build the space shuttle
build the iss
cancel the shuttle program
deorbit the iss
Build a copy of the apolo rocket and go to the moon again.

 

[Ark]

Very interesting,

scrap the apolo and the moon program
build the space shuttle
build the iss
cancel the shuttle program
deorbit the iss
Build a copy of the apolo rocket and go to the moon again.

It seems pretty bloody stupid, like we're going backwards.

 

[bujin]

ISN Reporter: Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home?

Commander Jeffrey Sinclair: No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us.

It'll take Marilyn Monroe.

And Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes… and all of this… all of this… was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

That's a great answer. Much akin to Sagan's reflections on the Pale Blue Dot photo taken in 1990 from Voyager 1:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.