Trump may end funding for ISS

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Sooner Boomer

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Putting politics aside (no matter what administration came up with this), this is a bad idea for many reasons. We need to maintain a (manned) presence in space. I think by the time 2025 rolls around, we'll have a man-rated lifter-to-orbit. It will probably be commercial rather than NASA, but that doesn't bother me.


From The Verge...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/24/...e-station-president-trump-budget-request-2025

The Trump administration is preparing to end support for the International Space Station program by 2025, according to a draft budget proposal reviewed by The Verge. Without the ISS, American astronauts could be grounded on Earth for years with no destination in space until NASA develops new vehicles for its deep space travel plans.

Any budget proposal from the Trump administration will also be subject to scrutiny and approval by Congress. But even announcing the intention to cancel ISS funding could send a signal to NASA’s international partners that the US is no longer interested in continuing the program. Many of NASA’s partners still have yet to decide if they’d like to continue working on the station beyond 2024.

The NASA Transition Authorization Act that President Trump signed last year directed the space agency to come up with a way to transition the ISS away from mostly NASA funding. The plan was due to Congress by December 1st, 2017, however NASA did not release any public information as to whether or not it had delivered the report.
 
Without knowing all the ins and outs of the proposal, it is hard to make a judgment. Trump has also said he wants people on Mars by 2030.
 
Careful folks.

While this is a subject worth discussing, please don't make it partisan.
 
Previous plans were to de-orbit the ISS. Finding a way to transition away from taxpayer funds to something that might lead to more commercial uses of space might be a good thing.
 
He wants to end funding in 2024. Currently half of NASAs budget is spent on manning and staffing the station. Diverting those funds to deep space exploration will get us back to the moon and onward much quicker. I believe the station is set to be de-orbited in 2028 anyway, so ending the U.S. involvement is not entirely out of the question.
 
When we read headlines, we assume a whole bunch of things before we even delve into the article. Usually, the story is a whole lot broader than what is presented.
 
It was slated to end in 2024 so this is a year later than planned. Just sensational headline news as usual.
 
Nothing to get excited about. We already passed that deadline once. A *lot* can change between 2018 and 2024.
 
Put a super ion engine on and steadily move it to an orbit that crosses Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit. Thereafter, it can be used to ferry astronauts between Earth and Mars.
 
We can always buy space on the Chinese space station.

It'll be much easier to reach than the ISS too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/science/chinese-space-station.html

About the ISS

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...-on-when-nasa-should-leave-the-space-station/

> NASA's objectives will include "Pursuing a cislunar campaign that will establish US preeminence to, around, and on the Moon."

I am astonished that this administration would use the word "cislunar." I, for one, refuse to kowtow to translunar activists who want to equate their choice to exist beyond an orbital radius of 390,000km to the existence of normal things which are happy to be confined within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. I am not cislunar. I just am.
 
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Put a super ion engine on and steadily move it to an orbit that crosses Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit. Thereafter, it can be used to ferry astronauts between Earth and Mars.

If that were possible, wouldn’t it be cheaper to lift the ISS to a LaGrange point instead of building one there for lunar operations from scratch?


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It was slated to end in 2024 so this is a year later than planned. Just sensational headline news as usual.

He wants to end funding in 2024. Currently half of NASAs budget is spent on manning and staffing the station.

Lets add a few facts and sources to the discussion.

ISS has current projected operating lifespan through 2028.
NASA's ISS annual OpEx support is $4B per year out of a $19.5B total budget.
NASA has spent $87 on ISS to date, to put OpEx costs in perspective.

Going back to the Moon or to Mars relies on developing new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket ($7+ B) and Orion crew vehicle ($10+ B) CapEx programs. Both come with significant ($2+ B/year) OpEx as well.

Sources for above data below:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...ing-iss-funding-2025-return-lunar-exploration
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/442/text
https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY18/IG-18-010.pdf
SLS + Orion costs is here:
https://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2015/20150203-budget-maiden-sls-flight.html
https://arstechnica.com/science/201...s-and-orion-cost-to-fly-finally-some-answers/


Since NASA had previously budgeted support for ISS through 2024, the current proposal would extend that by 1 year, though not for the entire projected lifespan.
While $4B on ISS is not nothing (it's 1/4 of the budget) it is unlikely to be enough to finish SLS + Orion programs in the near future, inclusive of OpEx for those two programs. Not without cutting ISS OpEx to zero immediately, which is not being discussed.

Therefore, without a sizable increase in NASA budget, which is politically unlikely, NASA will not be going to either Moon or Mars outside of PowerPoint slides and proposal white papers.

*sigh*

a
 
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I think it's fine that we begin de-cluttering the NASA vaults that have kept us prisoners for over 40 years in low earth orbit. NASA needs to pull their collective heads out of their @ss and become more aggressive in their approach to visiting other celestial bodies. After the first two or three shuttles were launched, I got bored already. The novelty wore off quick. NASA is fast closing in on being stagnant for almost half a century now. That's TOO long puttering around in low earth orbit.
 
Put a super ion engine on and steadily move it to an orbit that crosses Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit. Thereafter, it can be used to ferry astronauts between Earth and Mars.
To do that you'd have to match the speed of the Ferry as it passed close by to get on the thing, right? Once you do that you're now on the same orbit and will be heading to Mars whether you get on the Ferry or not, so what will you gain? The other choice is to be just near where the Ferry will go zooming by and have it grab you somehow, but just doing that will change the orbit of the Ferry because the added mass and the same momentum.

But beyond that there's also the problem of an orbit that goes between Earth and Mars being impossible. An orbit that goes out as far as the Mars orbit will be orbiting the Sun and will only line up with near-Earth and near-Mars very rarely.
 
From the TINY section on the LARGE Wikipedia entry about the ISS:

The ISS has been described as the most expensive single item ever constructed.[311] In 2010 the cost was expected to be $150 billion. This includes NASA's budget of $58.7 billion (inflation-unadjusted) for the station from 1985 to 2015 ($72.4 billion in 2010 dollars), Russia's $12 billion, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion, Canada's $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station; estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion in total. Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two- to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million, less than half the inflation-adjusted $19.6 million ($5.5 million before inflation) per person-day of Skylab.


I saw a few years ago a comment by a planetary scientist who claimed, correctly I think, that the simplest and best way to determine the scientific value of a space mission is to count the number of scientific papers written based upon its findings. He said that one of the lower cost NASA planetary missions (can't recall which one) had up to that point in its early lifetime already produced more scientific papers than had been produced over the entire history of the ISS up to that point in time.

The seven instruments to fly on the Mars 2020 rover have a projected cost of $130 million. Using the $7.5 million/person-day figure above, it only takes 17.3 person-days on the ISS to equal the cost of the instruments on the Mars 2020 lander.

Which do you think will produce more scientific papers?
 
Just my opinion here. I think the ISS is not a great investment. What does it really accomplish? Sure, it is a place to go. Sure they run some experiments. Can these experiments be run in other ways cheaper?

I, in general, think that it accomplishes little compared to expense. I think the only good use would be to use it to build large craft in orbit, but alas it is not so equipped. I think it has largely served any real purpose it had.

Time to move on in my estimation. I think the objective should be a moon base as we have not done that yet.


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Where have you people been?
The ISS is an "Illusion" There is no outer space. The earth is flat, Nasa IS FAKE, and you have all been programmed.
Wake up Sheeple! LOL

[sarcasm OFF] at 06:30
[video=youtube;Jf0gGBVw6qM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf0gGBVw6qM&t=559s[/video]
 
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To do that you'd have to match the speed of the Ferry as it passed close by to get on the thing, right? Once you do that you're now on the same orbit and will be heading to Mars whether you get on the Ferry or not, so what will you gain? The other choice is to be just near where the Ferry will go zooming by and have it grab you somehow, but just doing that will change the orbit of the Ferry because the added mass and the same momentum.

But beyond that there's also the problem of an orbit that goes between Earth and Mars being impossible. An orbit that goes out as far as the Mars orbit will be orbiting the Sun and will only line up with near-Earth and near-Mars very rarely.

Yes, a permanently orbiting Mars Ferry requires matching velocities. It is really a grandiose scheme and is intended for making many round trips to Mars with some idea of having a long-term commitment to Mars exploration. Perhaps, several such Ferries could be in orbit so that cargo trips could be made separate from manned transfers or even better have plants growing to make food, oxygen, and recycle water. We are a long ways from any such grandiose scheme.

We are a long way from affording a manned presence in low earth orbit, a moon base, and manned exploration to Mars all at the same time. If there was no such as war and defense budgets, we could afford hundreds of billions of dollar for space exploration. Instead, the NASA budget is about $20 billion per year. As others on this thread have pointed out the realistic options are limited. As others have pointed out that the ISS experiments have not generated any astounding science and if there is something there-there, it can probably be done automatically. I remember in the old Willy Ley books he envisioned manned space stations as doing communications and weather, but now we have automated satellites that can do communications, weather, GPS, earth resource research, atmospheric studies, astronomy, etc. much cheaper than humans. At $20 billion per year it is time to move on and get more bang for the buck.
 
Yes, a permanently orbiting Mars Ferry requires matching velocities.
But again, what does it gain you to match velocities with something that's heading to Mars? Once you do that you're also going to be going to Mars even before you dock and move onto the Ferry. You won't save fuel, time, resources, or anything I can think of.
 
So do the other stake holders jettison the 8 US modules, lease them, buy them or do we nudge it toward Mars as a rendevous point for outgoing and returning vehicles to resupply on their transits?
 
But again, what does it gain you to match velocities with something that's heading to Mars? Once you do that you're also going to be going to Mars even before you dock and move onto the Ferry. You won't save fuel, time, resources, or anything I can think of.

You are not launching the main structure every time out of the gravity well at Earth and Mars.
 
But again, what does it gain you to match velocities with something that's heading to Mars? Once you do that you're also going to be going to Mars even before you dock and move onto the Ferry. You won't save fuel, time, resources, or anything I can think of.

This is actually a pretty interesting problem in orbital mechanics.

Aldrin Cycler
 
But again, what does it gain you to match velocities with something that's heading to Mars? Once you do that you're also going to be going to Mars even before you dock and move onto the Ferry. You won't save fuel, time, resources, or anything I can think of.

Room, equipment that is only required for the transfer (such as excise machines). Also emergency provisions, spare equipment and a lifeboat.

You could also dock a supply viehcle that launched around the same time as a passenger vehicle, this would allow you to reduce the amount of supplies that you carried from earth. On the return trip all the supplies you need will also be waiting for you, so you don’t need to haul them off mars either.
 
Room, equipment that is only required for the transfer (such as excise machines). Also emergency provisions, spare equipment and a lifeboat.
That could be true. Launching a smaller rocket just to catch up to the Ferry and then having more room for the trip would be a benefit.

I wonder how often the Ferry in orbit around the sun would align with Earth and Mars in such a way to make it even possible to get there, and how long after that would it align for a trip home?
 
That could be true. Launching a smaller rocket just to catch up to the Ferry and then having more room for the trip would be a benefit.

I wonder how often the Ferry in orbit around the sun would align with Earth and Mars in such a way to make it even possible to get there, and how long after that would it align for a trip home?

There is more than one solution to the problem, so there are different rendezvous intervals.

Google Scholar Search on Mars Cycler



[video=youtube;J6LFvmc5UyM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6LFvmc5UyM[/video]
 
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