ISS to be abandoned??

Originally posted by jhamende
Here is a link to the successor to the shuttle.
Orion

We can be back to the moon by 2020 wow isn't that amazing!!! My mother watched us land on the moon when she was just a kid. Simply amazing what a step backwards nasa has taken. As I said before, were were on the moon in the 60's space shuttle early 80's and now we can't even maintain our shuttles let alone keep the POS ISS in space. I'm sorry but there are political reasons why progress stopped on the space front. Private companies are getting into space now days too. Maybe all the funding for the real space projects are going to Area 51.

Guess again. Apollo funding wound up going into Vietnam, and into something called "The Great Society". Vietnam was a disaster, but the "Great Society" project was a revelation to the members of Congress. They discovered two things that pretty well shut down big-ticket space projects.

1) If you give people money, they will vote for you
2) Space missions don't vote.

The biggest problem with NASA (or, more correctly, with the ISS and the Space Shuttle) is the same kind of problem that made the Vietnam war such a total mess. There's an old saying that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, become administrators". There should be a third line that says "Those who can't do or administer become politicians". Why is the ISS such a technological mess? Because we invited everybody on Earth to design bits and pieces of the bloody thing. This isn't a slap in the face to any country's engineering skill, it's a simple look at fact. Some of the countries involved use metric measure, some use imperial. Some use 28v current, some use 12v. Multiply that sort of thing by several thousand systems and sub-systems, and it's a shock that anything works.

The Shuttle has the same problem, but strictly in-house. It's supposed to be a universal, do everything machine....cargo carrier, laboratory, people-mover...and it's supposed to be recyclable, too! Like most 'jacks of all trades', the Shuttle is master of none. It doesn't carry much cargo (you might notice that we're still putting a lot of things in orbit using Titan rockets?), doesn't carry too many people, and makes a very inefficient laboratory. The vehicle that was supposed to be cheaper, faster, and better turns out to be none of the above...which is why we're going 'back to the future' as it were, and planning to use 'throwaway' rocket boosters for the return to the Moon. They turn out to be more reliable and cheaper than the Shuttle.

Good news on tv. The crew got the computers back online. The I.S.S. will not be abandoned. Fantastic. Now let's get our space shuttle home without incident.

I am sorry to hear that the ISS ia not being abandoned, as it is, it looks like something my 4 yr old made at kindergarten with a few bits and pieces as a craft project!

Originally posted by Mukiwa
I am sorry to hear that the ISS ia not being abandoned, as it is, it looks like something my 4 yr old made at kindergarten with a few bits and pieces as a craft project!

Are you actually being serious in what you just posted? If you can show me a 4 year old that can create an orbitting self sustained craft I will eat my hat, and many other non edible objects.

People are so quick to find fault with any hight tech injinuity just to say "i told you so".

How about you support some scientific endevours for a change, instead of exagerating every little "hickup" that might occur.

If you can do better, tell me what company you are involved with and which X prize you have won, or are on the verge of winning, then I might back your theories.

Until then, stop critisizing every little malfunction, or are you just waiting for another disaster so you can say...

"I told you so"

Sad....oh so sad.

So they're abandoning it in November, and Elenin is reported as having broken up into a number of pieces. Hmm. DO they expect incoming comet/debris to be much closer than previously calculated? Maybe a little too close...