Columbia was a blow, no doubt about it. However the troubles of the ISS started way before that happened.
Kind of dumb ISS question
- Thread starter Stag
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Columbia was a blow, no doubt about it. However the troubles of the ISS started way before that happened.
Um. No?
With the trouble Russia has been having recently with the Soyuz, I'm beginning to think it's nearly ready for retirement too. The last couple of flights have reentered at a much steeper angle than intended with much higher G loads than normal and landings hundreds of miles short of the target. There has even been a report that the last Soyuz suffered a damaged hatch and destroyed radio antenna because it initially reentered the atmosphere with the wrong attitude.
As far as the American Orion CEV is concerned, tests with full scale mock ups have already be conducted for landing stability and the emergency escape rockets. The first stage will be derived from the solid rockets already used for the shuttle, the same technology used with many unmanned satellite boosters. The second stage will use a modernized version of the same engine used in the third stage of the Saturn V. Since the technology doesn't seem to be a barrier, the main issue would appear to be not cutting NASA's budget to the point it's almost closed down.
I'm almost willing to give JustAFriend the benefit of the doubt, and wonder if he's thinking of Senator Obama's education proposal, which has been reported to take money from the Project Constellation and push its development back by five years. In which case, it might be ten years between the grounding of the shuttles and the first manned flight of Orion. But I can't see the United States abandoning manned spaceflight for more than a decade.
I've never understood why some politicians always try to cut space exploration in favor of other programs. According to this chart, NASA doesn't have all that much of the budget to begin with. I guess they're just a bit more visible than other programs.
One of the reasons why Congress wants to cut space exploration in favor of other programs is that, according to surveys, the American public believes that NASA's budget is a quarter of the entire federal budget. Americans believe that we're giving NASA too much money, rather than not enough.
It was Casper Weinberger, I think, back in the Nixon administration 35-odd years ago, who commented that the space budget was going to get cut not because it deserved to get cut, but because it was possible to cut it. All the alternative ways of cutting the budget had too great a political or social cost.
By "done" you mean with no habitation module for the originally planned crew compliment of ...was it 6 or 7?? so long ago now.., no centrifuge module, no universal docking module, no docking and stowage module, no propulsion module, no science power platform, and no Russian research module. That kind of complete?
Damn cutbacks.
AG
Here's an editorial about Barak Obama's stated plans for the space program, should he be elected:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obamas_plan_for_nasa.html
"As the legend goes, when the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in what is now Mexico in 1519, he ordered the boats that brought him and his men there to be burned. Obama seems to have something similar planned for NASA."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obamas_plan_for_nasa.html
"As the legend goes, when the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in what is now Mexico in 1519, he ordered the boats that brought him and his men there to be burned. Obama seems to have something similar planned for NASA."
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Well, one of the reasons the ISS wasn't designed to spin and create gravity is because NASA and its international partners are using the ISS as a learning stepping stone for longer space-based and deep space missions on the effects of microgravity on the human being. Of course, the Mars ship will probably have to have a rotating structure because you don't want your astronauts to be weak kneed after the 6 month trek to Mars. They gotta be strong enough to get going as soon as they land.
Done as in "completed". If 107 had landed safely, and no other contingencies taken place then there would have been shuttles flying in 2002, 2004 and a couple more in 2005...probably about 10 missions total and the ISS would currently be finished and manned by 6 people (it's currently scheduled to increase to the full 6 man crew with Expedition 19 next April.
They probably don't understand the fetish for manned exploration that some have, I don't either.
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