International Space Station may face a fiery demise in Earth's atmosphere in 2020
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
http://news.yahoo.com/international-space-station-really-last-beyond-2020-222429165.html
While discussions are underway to extend the lifetime of the $100 billion-plus International Space Station beyond 2020, there is concern about the station's overall usefulness and price tag to operate, so much so the station may face a fiery demise in Earth's atmosphere at the end of the present decade.
Also at issue is whether an unraveling of the 15-nation partnership driving the space station program is afoot a collaboration that is being viewed by cash-strapped countries as too costly and politically a hard-to-sell project.
Comments
Ewww, M_H. Them's fighting words! Finally you and I disagree on something. Puttering around in low earth orbit would be mighty fine by me. I had my astronaut application in before the wife & kids came along. I'd spend a few years training for a shot at a visit aboard the ISS. I'm pretty fit (and much fitter back then) and I thought I'd make a good test subject/guinea pig for long term zero-G tests. But alas, I was a mere civilian Cessna pilot, and they tend to favor military fighter jocks. Alas, what might have been. The first Basic Stamp in space?
Come on, Pal. Weren't you inspired by the recent "Major Tom" video?
And wouldn't experimenting in zero-G be the bomb?
Or space suit or whatever.
I do get your point though. Endlessly growing bean sprouts in micro-gravity to see what happens does not really capture the imagination.
I don't disagree.
When I was 12 years old Neil was stepping on the moon. Everything has been kind of disappointing since then.
Seems there are some thousands of volunteers for a one way trip to Mars that feel the same way.http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/09/tech/innovation/mars-one-applications
Capital idea! That's one way this ersatz erco could visit the ISS. A custom gift from last Christmas.
Google is not helping in this case.
I think there is a growing realization that, unlike the Europeans floating off to the New World after discovering it, there is no nice safe place for humans to go out there.
Space is frikken big. It would take infeasible amounts of time and or energy to get anywhere interesting. An overwhelming most of it is terminally hostile to humans.
We are stuck here.
We will multiply and exploit and consume every possible thing here and then that's it.
Sure Mars has a better chance for finding non-terrestrial life. That's even more of an argument for sending robots instead of humans. We don't want to accidentally infest Mars with Earth-based organisms before we've had a chance to fully explore it in search of evidence of life that originated there.
And it's probably true that all we're ever really going to find on the Moon are rocks. Maybe there'll be some rocks that are actually worth something. The lunar surface is riddled with residue from meteors and asteroids from the past 3 or 4 billion years. There might be areas on moon that contain some element that is rare and valuable on the Earth. Stuff can be shipped back to Earth by launching it from the lunar surface with a rail gun. That's just not feasible from Mars.
Maybe Google is protecting those outside the US
No, no, don't try to explain:)
My point is that it might as well be. It's like the difference between rowing to the Isle of White from the English main land or rowing to what we now call NewYork.
You are not thinking big enough. Space is frikken big, unbelievably huge, the nearest star to here is 4 light years away. The nearest place humans could actually end up that is hospitable is probably orders of magnitude even further away. If we could ever pin point what ever direction that is in.
So yes we can check the rocks and stuff near by, but ultimately we are stuck here.
By the way, what's all this "We don't want to accidentally infest Mars with Earth-based organisms" business? I thought that's exactly what we want to do. What we want is a new playground. Of course it might be wise to find out if there is anything there that can kill us first.
Not being familiar with English geography I had to look up the Isle of White. You must be referring to the HMS Bouncy Castle. Too bad those guys didn't make it across, but maybe they'll succeed next time. And then they can try crossing the Atlantic to New Amsterdam. Oh sorry, I mean New York. I keep forgetting that they changed the name a few years ago.
Space is unimaginably big. It's will probably be hundreds or thousands of years before we settle on the nearest habitable planet. The speed-of-light barrier is a real downer. Even if the human race could spread out to distant planets 100 light years away what fun is it if it takes 200 years to send a message and get a response.
Terra-forming Mars will eventually be a total waste of time unless we also give it a magnetic field to stop solar coronal mass ejections from destroying whatever atmosphere we give it.
There is an Isle of Wight county in Virgina.
...now, just how long did it take you to photoshop the pic?
Of course volcanoes serve that purpose on Earth. If Mars was still geologically alive, it would most likely have active volcanoes and a magnetosphere. Guess it might need an ocean too ....
Well spotted on the spelling of "Isle of Wight".
Down there they refer to the main land as "The big island to the north".
Exactly, just now my feeling is that civilization won't make it that long even if we had the resources to pull it off which is looking less likely all the time.
One of the big gotcha's was it's dependence on a rickety old space shuttle that should have been replaced by the time the ISS was being built.
Sadly contemporary American aerospace companies aren't as bright as their predecessors so we have nothing for a HLV or Earth to orbit transport and probably never will again.
It's not that we don't have the resources, we do. We just blow it on useless welfare and weapons programs that accomplish nothing of note.
In regards to interplanetary travel. Had we continued with programs like Nerva and Orion we could have licked interplanetary travel for humans by now.
The other failure is that the U.S. never had a set of national goals for NASA that would have kept it's budget constant. Instead it varied from administration to administration.
For the future I see space as playground for the super rich. Who will fly up there, drink booze, party a bit and come back down and brag to their jaded friends. Leave it to Musk to vulgarize space travel.
I don't see even that lasting very long. Once a thousand or so richies get up there and puke around, space travel will soon lose its exclusive mystique and the price simply won't be worth it even for those who have the cash to burn.
Outer space simply isn't big enough to accommodate some of the egos we have on earth.
Concerning the ISS- I wish they would keep it orbiting... and start using it as a staging platform. Every time an astronaut lands on it, do the usual stuff but he/she/they should also have cargo that is to be used to build an on-station launch pad. The launch pad is to be used later, once they've hauled fuel, fuselage, and everything else needed (including chia pets!) for a manned launch from the space station to Mars, Europa, Disney Land, or wherever. It wouldn't save anything in energy usage but it would allow us to stockpile our Smile (to some extent) so the "final" launch could be a much larger craft and would be able to achieve a much higher velocity because we're not trying to escape earths gravitational pull to get us on our way (during that particular launch, anyway.)
You know what WOULD be exciting to do it low earth orbit? On orbit manufacturing and recycling. Work on fully closed loop life support systems. Or serious work on Laser heat exchanger launchers and other cheaper launchers. Basically any research that makes it more likely for me to be able to buy a trip to orbit but is too risky for the private sector is exciting work I think NASA should be doing. Even if it's stuck in low-earth orbit.
Marty
In space, location is everything... one space station is absurd, we need 12 or 20 equidistant and in synchronous orbits to allow workers to maintain satellites and have the ability to observe both the entire planet and sky.
Excellent point, Loopy. If we're just looking to build a colony somewhere, the most barren or polluted wasteland on earth (or under water) would be cheaper and easier than any moon or planet, even if spacesuits, diving suits or hazmat suits were required.
http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/Basics/wwwwh.html
Are you serious? This place is already f***ed up enough by human habitation. That's why we have to find a new place or go extinct.