Since the International Space Station (ISS) is now completely reliant on Soyuz manned and unmanned rockets, one of which recently crashed, astronauts may have to abandon it:
Even if unoccupied, the space station can be operated by controllers on the ground indefinitely and would not be in immediate danger of falling out of orbit.
[…] Some experiments like the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics experiment installed last year, would continue operating without human oversight. But other research would get short shrift until the full crew of six returned to the station.
The ISS has cost $100 billion mainly to provide a destination for the shuttle and a continued human presence in space. I’m not going to mourn if it has to be shut down, as long as the money we’re pouring into it is re-appropriated for robotic space exploration.
Pee Cee
It won’t be. Bank on that.
Pococurante
Manned missions can be overrated.
Ron
I think it’s a nice idea (as would be bigger and/or better satellite telescopes). Eventually I have to admit I think a manned mission to Mars would be cool. Whether it would be possible to do so in my life time is another story.
Gromit
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Without human space exploration, I strongly doubt there would be any significant robotic space exploration. We are on the brink of a double-dip recession, with the idiot aristocracy selling the more gullible of the commoners on belt-tightening, and you are rooting for stripping the last vestiges of an emotional connection to space exploration, as if any of the savings will get passed on to what most people probably see as putting glorified Roombas on Mars to snap grainy pictures of rocks (an endeavor I wholeheartedly support, mind you, but one that only the geekiest among us can get excited about).
No ultimate vicarious thrill, no space probes. I really think it will be that simple.
calipygian
The money wasted on the ISS would pay for 50 next generation Mars rovers or 30 Cassini-Huygens probes or 50+ Galileo probes. For a fraction of the cost, we could have a submarine looking for life around volcanic vents on Europa AND rovers on Mars probing ancient sea beds for stromatolite fossils.
Sigh.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
Silly man! The money “saved” will be poured into DoD and tax cuts for people worth billions so they save .003 cents which they will use to create the sorts of jobs that have sustained the current economic dynamo that is the United States of America!
redshirt
Fret not! One project that will get drowned in the bathtub will be the James Webb telescope, replacement to Hubble.
What do Repuglicans need with Science anymore, since they’ve vowed (snark) to cut pork, and Sagan knows the only reason they once supported any science was to bring home the bacon.
We had a good run. The Chinese will pick up the slack.
cleek
BFD.
we spent that bouncing the rubble in Afghanistan, last year alone.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
$100 billion flushed into the great black void? Even if we were flying the shuttle still, at it’s high cost per flight, it would only cost $1 billion/year (for 2.5 flights per year).
I don’t know why people are so ready to get this far and then say “screw it all, let’s quit”. If you ever want to make it further than the moon, you’re gonna need the ISS.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
Also to: The shuttle was never intended to further manned exploration. It was designed to carry military hardware into space but became so expensive and unreliable that the DoD used it much less that they originally envisioned. Nixon chose the shuttle because it was a military expenditure at a time when the nation expected defense spending to decrease with the end of the Viet Nam war. NASA had several, much better, programs on the drawing boards. These were abandoned to focus on the shuttle.
Reagan fell on the idea of the space station at a time when people were noting the total uselessness of the shuttle program. It allowed him to pretend he had “that vision thing” and to continue to subvert NASA funding to DoD ends.
Scientists inside NASA fought against the space station & for years tried to get funding for real research and exploration but the “smart” people, those who saw a career of climbing the organization, fell in line and pissed away the huge leap we made in the 60’s into the DoD toilet.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
@cleek:
We spent more to air condition the tents in Iraq and Afghanistan last year then the entire NASA budget.
barath
If you haven’t read it already, John Michael Greer’s post on An Elegy for the Age of Space this week was brilliant.
redshirt
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: I disagree. The ISS is basically useless for any further space exploration. It’s main function seems to be to keep people in space, just because.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a space nut, I just think overall the ISS is a poor use of limited resources.
Poopyman
Hahahahahahahaha! Silly man! Re-appropriated? That money is gone! Your Republican overlords deem space exploration a waste of taxpayers’ money, so no exploration for you!
And even if (please, FSM) the Dems retake the House, I’m afraid they’ve bought into this whole austerity meme, so I doubt things will change.
Too bad, because I wanted to end my career back at Goddard where I spent my best years.
Maude
@redshirt:
Let’s abandon the space station and put wingers there.
redshirt
@Maude: They could film Zero-G pornos on the ISS. Generate some damn revenue like Americans are supposed to!
Pee Cee
@Gromit:
Or to put it another way: No Buck Rogers, no bucks.
(Yeah, I know the movie had it the other way around, but it seems to fit 2011 better this way…)
Grumpy Code Monkey
One thing to remember is that the US doesn’t own the ISS, at least not in full. It is a partnership between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada, and Europe. The US does provide the lion’s share of the funding, though, and without that funding I’m not sure the station could continue operations.
The combined COTS-2/3 F9/Dragon mission has a launch date of Nov 30; depending on the success of that mission, we’ll have a US unmanned solution almost immediately afterward, with a manned solution sometime in 2014 (hopefully).
Amanda in the South Bay
So…the ISS and Space Shuttle are boondoggles, so lets abandon manned space exploration completely? You know, about a decade ago, I remember reading a National Review editorial that said the same exact fucking thing.
Seriously, what is it with liberals and manned spaceflight? The connotation of manned spaceflight with the Air Force/Cold War/SAC?
Judas Escargot
Some things the ISS has taught us: How to construct large structures on orbit. How to sustain human life in space for months at a time. Long-term effects of zero-g on the human body. Coordination/management of a large program across multiple space agencies. And all for the cost of 5-10 months in Iraq and Afghanistan (depending on whose figures you use).
These are all things that need to be studied and perfected if people are ever going to get serious about space exploration. And it’s not stuff that’s going to be learned ‘on the fly’ in a couple of months when the time comes.
Gromit
Um, some of us liberals see great value in manned spaceflight.
Sheesh
As others already said… fat fucking chance. Americans are too stupid to give a shit about exploration, unless the word ‘oil’ is in front, and the destination is pristine national parks, and the sales pitch is “Drill baby, drill!”
Since borrowing money to invest in greater rates of return is DEAD in this country you can kiss NASA good-bye. Just like NOAA, just like NIH, just like — well just about everything that doesn’t boost the next-quarter profits of a billion dollar lobby. Hell, I bet Reps are aiming to gut ARPA unless some one deviously sticks the D back on before the axe falls.
Wait, I’ve just uncovered the solution to our science funding woes: DNASA, DNIH, DNOAA, DARPA!
singfoom
I just don’t get why people don’t think the ISS isn’t incredibly important. Listen, I hear the arguments that unmanned space exploration is more effective. However, can you not see the immense value of an orbital platform in furtherance of that goal?
Why design/build something to explore space that ALSO has to escape the Earth’s gravity?
Design/build it for space exploration, launch the parts up to the ISS and assemble and launch the unmanned vehicles there. If we as a species are ever going to really get off this rock, we’re going to need all of the space exploration we could use.
While it is expensive, it is a joint international effort. We need to keep the effort going.
Plus, the ISS will be instrumental in the human race’s survival in case of any apocalypse, at least that’s what zombiepocalypse/robopocalypse/germapocalypse fiction novels tell me.
ETA: Is != Isn’t
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Do you really think, mistermix, that people are going to look up at the sky for robots? When the Mars rovers give out, that division will be shut down.
catclub
@Judas Escargot: Those are great reasons to have a space station. Too bad they were barely mentioned when it was being proposed and run.
‘Science in space that just cannot be done on earth and also requires a people to monitor it (in order to justify the space shuttle, too.)’!
Too bad those people rocked the boat too much and UNmanned was the right way to do actual science in space.
Hungry Joe
@singfoom re “If we as a species are ever going to really get off this rock”: I doubt we will, in any number much beyond double or at best, triple digits. Life-support systems for large-ish mammals are simply too bulky and too expensive, not to mention that the less-than-homey rock we call Mars is a long, LONG way away. (As for FTL … yeah, I like science fiction, too.)
Cermet
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: Wrong – a single shuttle flight was well over a billion – you are only counting direct costs – sorry, but in the real world all costs that the shuttle flights cause are counted. That is how the real system works. NASA says 1.4 billion per launch and many others say higher. Also, remember to count replacing a shuttle after it breaks up and kills the crew – that is still a very high possiblity, too.
As for the ISS not having experiments being done – no loss at all. These are mostly about the ISS and deep space safety relative to people. None address the critical issue: cosmic ray shielding. No long term deep space manned mission is safe until that deadly issue is addressed and why do that anyway? Who needs people in orbit much less deep space? Until there is a real reason instead of the joke about ‘getting off this rock’ we are wasting money. If possible life is found on Mars, yes, sending people to find life/prove it might make good sense depending on what is needed – but manned space just to put monkey’s up into orbit to waste time/money and risk their lives is pointless.
Probes make far, far more sense. So does energy R&D now that peak oil is threatening.
Cermet
@singfoom: Sorry but you don’t understand the idea of launching space vehicles into LEO (low earth orbit.) To launch parts into space using rockets (even smaller ones – which would be worse than using larger ones, by the way) and assemble the probes in LEO with the added costs (read mass which equals massive expense) of launching people, air, water, fuel, food, tools, habitat, misc. supplies to then relaunch the probe into deep space would add far more mass and many, many times more cost. Safety is a big one with booster fuels. You need to look at a problem like real people do and even they f-up badly. The shuttle uses the wrong propellant! NASA missed that and they have really good people trying to solve the issues (They should never have used hydrogen but should have used kerosene. Made a 2-3% loss in to orbit mass – dumb.) Worse, one crew would be alive today if they had done that right.
redshirt
@singfoom: I’m sympathetic to your passion – I want mankind to spread across the stars, stat! And I am hippy enough to say/think that if we could re-direct a portion of our defense spending towards space exploration, we would be able to do it in short order.
That said, I’ve been convinced that the Shuttle (RIP) and the ISS are not the way to do it. The ISS is in the wrong orbit to provide an “orbital platform” for anything useful. Furthermore, it’s not in a real orbit anyways, but technically still in the sky, and needs to be adjusted all the time.
As mentioned above about shielding, it does not even attempt to address the two biggest issues with long term human spaceflight – radiation, and the effects of no gravity.
I’ve also somewhat soured on landing men on the Moon or Mars as part of a long term effort. For one offs? Sure. Glory seeking missions? yeah! Specific scientific goals? Go for it. But unless we have some major breakthroughs in getting to orbit, permanent colonies on the moon or mars are incredibly expensive/complicated.
Far better to build a real space station, using an asteroid for materials, and put it in a stable Lagrange spot – that would be our orbital platform which could be the launching point to everywhere else.
Jinchi
It won’t be. We just freed up billions of dollars decommissioning the shuttle, to praise of people like mistermix, who argue that it will provide money for “real” space science missions. Now I read that Congress is trying to kill the next generation space telescope – the one that would replace Hubble when it gets decommissioned.
So mistermix is happy about a future with no shuttle, no space station, no space telescope, where NOAA climate missions are already being slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars, and in which we’ll inevitably see the cancellation of deep space missions. Why don’t you point out evidence that any of this money is being redirected to better use.
It’s one thing cheer on the end of the manned space program if you don’t think space science is worth doing, but don’t pretend that cancelling it will be a boon to space science. Any extra money will go to finance the next war or a Koch brothers tax cut.
redshirt
To be fair, and grim, the inevitable militarization of space all but guarantees the USA will be heavily involved in all kinds of space related research. It will just be DOD run, and not NASA.
Scamp Dog
As someone who was simultaneously smart enough to get advanced degrees in aerospace engineering, and stupid enough to think that was a good idea, I agree with mistermix that I wouldn’t mind having the station shut down and the money spent on robotic exploration…and with @Pee Cee, @Poopyman, @Sheesh and others, that the money won’t get redirected to unmanned projects.
Democrats will largely ignore space projects, and Republicans will make a few noises about missions to Mars, but without allocating any actual money to it. The punditocracy doesn’t care, except when program cancellations like the shuttle or Constellation give them a cudgel to beat up a Democratic president.
wrb
The tablets that reveal that climate change is a hoax are buried on Mars.
There.
The space program is saved
Arclite
Bag the ISS already and fund the damn James Webb space telescope already. 100x more powerful than the Hubble space telescope, it will provide incredible images of the cosmos and allow us to see back almost to the beginning of the universe. It will provide orders of magnitude more information than the ISS ever did.
steve
Former friend of mine was an SF junkie who romanticised human exploration. I’m a former physicist who values science. I told him we’d get 10x as much done if we put all the manned travel money into robotic exploration. He knew this, in a sense, but refused to accept it.
steve
I think that’s more or less the answer to the Fermi Paradox. Living off-planet, in bulk, sustainably, is next to impossible. Shit, it’s hard to do that in antarctica, and space is about 1000 times harder.
Like it or not, and I don’t, we’re just not going to colonize space in any nontrivial manner. We can’t.
steve
Jihchi, putting words in Doug’s mouth, that he wouldn’t agree with, is pretty douchey.
Jinchi
@steve:
Who’s Doug?