When the Space Shuttle program ends

[Bad Bishop]

We hear that there are just five shuttle flights to go. After the last shuttle mission, what will happen to the ISS? Will it be serviced by the Russians alone? Will American astronauts be hitching rides aboard Russian capsules to visit the ISS?

Orion, NASA's new manned spacecraft, will not be ready to launch until 2015 (assuming it progresses on schedule, of course). This time gap between the Shuttle and Orion seems very inconvenient for the ISS, which has depended heavily on NASA missions for supplies and maintenance.

 

[JustAFriend]

Uh, yup, thats the controversy thats been going on for the past few years.

The Russians will be the only way up and even they can't take large replacements or new modules up there.

NASA plan? They originally wanted to throw up their hands and dump the $100billion station into the Indian Ocean in five years. Public outcry has that plan on the back-burner now.

We're screwed.

 

[Bad Bishop]

Uh, yup, thats the controversy thats been going on for the past few years.

The Russians will be the only way up and even they can't take large replacements or new modules up there.

NASA plan? They originally wanted to throw up their hands and dump the $100 billion station into the Indian Ocean in five years. Public outcry has that plan on the back-burner now.

I had no idea that the ISS was supposed to be dumped that soon. I hope we got our money's worth.

 

[Mark de Vries]

The discussion now centers on a deorbit date of 2015 or sometime post-2020. But it's strictly a NASA discussion. The Russians have already said they won't agree with a 2015 deorbit and I can imagine that Japan and Europe will feel likewise. The downside is that the latter two use ISS modules firmly integrated into the American section. The Russian section could conceivable carry on as an independent station. With a heap of modifications, obviously.

The ISS has now been under construction for 11 years. Having only five years of optimum use after that is frankly ridiculous. There are still a few modules waiting to launch: Tranquility for NASA (in February) and two lab modules for Russia (one on the shuttle, the other on a Russion Proton launcher).

After the last flight of the shuttle, the ISS will be serviced by Russian Soyuz craft for crew exchange; unmanned Progress, HTV and ATV for cargo, and unflown commercial ships for manned and unmanned flights. ESA is looking into the option of converting their ATV into a manned launcher, but that'll take a few more years at least.

It's a weird future, and I hope the ISS will remain in orbit (and intact) until past 2020.

 

[Praxius]

The discussion now centers on a deorbit date of 2015 or sometime post-2020. But it's strictly a NASA discussion. The Russians have already said they won't agree with a 2015 deorbit and I can imagine that Japan and Europe will feel likewise. The downside is that the latter two use ISS modules firmly integrated into the American section. The Russian section could conceivable carry on as an independent station. With a heap of modifications, obviously.

Let's also not forget about many of the existing Canadian parts of the ISS, in paticular the Canadarm that has made work on the ISS and the shuttles far more easier then ever before. I doubt Canada and other nations would be all up for the US to have the final say on dumping the station into the ocean when it's supposed to be "International."

The US doesn't have any decent shuttles or rockets to replace their older ones? Not our problems...... there is not just Russia but other nations starting up their own space programs recently, some in Canada have even been talking about getting our own system in place.... but that remains to be seen.

The ISS has now been under construction for 11 years. Having only five years of optimum use after that is frankly ridiculous. There are still a few modules waiting to launch: Tranquility for NASA (in February) and two lab modules for Russia (one on the shuttle, the other on a Russion Proton launcher).

After the last flight of the shuttle, the ISS will be serviced by Russian Soyuz craft for crew exchange; unmanned Progress, HTV and ATV for cargo, and unflown commercial ships for manned and unmanned flights. ESA is looking into the option of converting their ATV into a manned launcher, but that'll take a few more years at least.

It's a weird future, and I hope the ISS will remain in orbit (and intact) until past 2020.

I would suspect that it will.... it just doesn't seem logical to put all this stuff into the station over so many years, only to just toss it into the ocean shortly after the last part is installed.

Why not just continue to upgrade and improve the station?

Afterall the thing is built into sections, why not remove outdated and worn out sections and replace them with newer, advanced sections/programs/equipment, etc. when they come about?

It sure seems to make more sense to do that then to dump the whole thing into the ocean and start all over again with a different station..... how many more years will it take them to build a new one, only to dump that shortly after it's done?

 

[Mark de Vries]

I didn't mean to gloss over the candian contributions. The Canadarm and DEXTRE are vital elements of the station indeed.

Afterall the thing is built into sections, why not remove outdated and worn out sections and replace them with newer, advanced sections/programs/equipment, etc. when they come about?

That might be possible for Kibo or Columbus, which are only connected to one other module, but I wouldn't want to have to plan the choreography of replacing Destiny or Harmony, or worse: Unity. I don't think that's even possible with a space shuttle at the station. Unity supports the entire truss structure and is connected to Destiny and Zarya (and thus all the other modules), plus it has the Quest airlock and a Pressurised Mating Adapter stuck to its side...

But, on a smaller scale, the Russians are doing that. Next year, they'll be replacing the small Pirs module with a larger lab module.

 

[diankra]

It sure seems to make more sense to do that then to dump the whole thing into the ocean and start all over again with a different station..... how many more years will it take them to build a new one, only to dump that shortly after it's done?

There is one sensible reason for starting over: there's a most efficient orbital inclination which depends on the latitude of the launch site - the further you are from the equator, the higher the orbital inclination should be if you want to launch the maximum payload. Getting to an orbit in another inclination is possible, but takes more fuel for the same payload - or rather, in practice, the same fuel for a smaller payload.
The ISS is in an orbit roughly halfway between the best inclination for Canaveral (as used by solo shuttle flights) and that for Baikonur (as used for solo Soyuz, Salyut and Mir). That's why it wasn't practical to transfer the newer bits of Mir to the ISS, and why both Shuttle and Soyuz/Progress have to fly a bit light for flights to the ISS.

So, if America is out and the Russians are launching all the ISS flights from Baikonur, it might be sensible to replace the ISS with a new station in the best orbit for Baikonur. But given the amount of hardware that would be thrown away, it doesn't really make sense to do it.