An International Space Scrap-yard

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Honestly, I'm starting to think that this is in fact what certain parties within NASA administration want to have happen. I think they're using the Columbia tragedy as an excuse to trim away the most expensive programs, programs about which there has been some controversy. If so, it's very dishonest, but par for the course in a lot of politics these days.

Pardon me, I'm feeling very cynical today....

Aarrrgghhhh!!!

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If ignorance is bliss, why is the world so full of misery?

No pardon needed in my book, I think you're right on.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Is there room for one more in the cynical corner? That article's just downright depressing.

You'll forgive me for saying that this sounds a bit too conspiratorial.

You're saying that forcing the shuttles to be grounded is a backhanded way of getting out of the ISS project by delaying relaunch of the shuttles till after the station has deteriorated beyond recover?

Then having no ISS, there's no reason to hang on to the shuttle program.

So this whole thing is a big dark conspiracy to save a few dollars? Do the Senators/Congressmen in Texas/Florida know that the ultimate pork barrel project is being undermined so deviously?

I can believe that the environment in low Earth orbit is harder on machinery than we originally predicted.

I can believe that the machinery was made far more complex than it should have been, therefore more susceptible to breakdown.

I can believe that loss of personnel due to budget chicanery has resulted in a deterioration of capability at NASA.

I can even believe that NASA and the CAIB are being overly paranoid and averse to the risks of manned spaceflight.

But to chalk this all up as a conspiracy to shelve manned spaceflight to save a few dollars is bunk. We're spending an insane amount of money trying to make it work to give this line of thought any credence. Why bother making NASA a scapegoat for wasted money in government when so little money is spent there, relatively speaking, to begin with? They could shut NASA down tomorrow and the general outcry would probably not so much as cause a ripple in Washington.


I can understand your being morose, but lets not start letting that erode critical thinking to the point we become woowoo's ourselves.

To clarify: I wasn't alleging anything conspiratorial in nature about the programs, merely expressing my cynicism. Morose serves as an excellent descriptor in my case.

Sorry if I jumped the gun, but that level of cynicism surfacing in this bunch is extremely unusual. There wasn't this level of depression the day of the Columbia accident or the NEAT probe breaking up.

Admittedly, the ISS is a monumental level project by comparison, but the only thing that separates healthy cynicism from handwaving is a few degrees of separation.

I wasn't trying to accuse anyone of having made the plunge into insanity, just splashing a little cold water in the collective face to try and snap you out of it. Us laymen depend on the more knowledgable posters here to help filter the hype into something more rational, the mere threat of irrationality in the lot of you is enough to set off alarms.

I can admit, wondering if the ISS will last until the next Shuttle mission is causing concern for some. More telling is the problems within the project itself, how stringent is quality control of parts?

This is what should concern the "specialists" involved, not the Shuttle's return to service. Had it not been for failures of numerous parts, would Soyuz/Progress be able to handle regular trips to the ISS during the extended absence of the Shuttle? If the ISS does become a "floating scrapyard" is it due to a lack of Shuttle flights or just poor quality control of parts that have gone up there?

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

WHAT??? When was this??? Isnt that the probe that collected Comet samples??


I dont see how or why they would want to back out of the ISS program when Bush wants to go back to the Moon and then onto Mars. Plus what would the International Community think about this? It is named the International Space Station, after all.[/i]

BAH, my rotten ungoogled memory. Was it NEAT or NEAR? The one that broke up when it was supposed to initiate a burn a couple years ago.

I hate acronyms...


Added: International Space Station is all well and good, but we've got the only heavy lifter in the neighborhood, so unless other countries want to foot the bill and the warm bodies to fly it, we are the gate keepers.

Hmm.... I work in software, and a defect rate of .025 bugs per 100 lines of code is extraordinarily good. Average software is in the 1-5 per 100 lines of code range, or 40 to 200 times the defect rate, so this really isn't that bad.

And given the fact that this is safety critical software, there's a good chance that the 1000 bugs they know about are the vast majority of all the bugs out there.

Doodler, I think your refering to CONTOUR, Comet Nucleus Tour. Broke up just after leaving Earth orbit.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

Awww.....first the HUbble, and now the ISS, what will they scrap next?????????????????

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Fahad Sulehria,
Astronomical Artist,
Administrator of Nova Celestia.

i hope it stays up there...

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

http://www.heavens-above.com/issheig...ied&TZ=CET

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

this is terrible :x

what kind of stuff is going on ! How Can This Happen !!?

You may be depressed, but I doubt the article's author is. Jeffrey Bell has hated Shuttle and ISS forever. With very good reasons, in my opinion - both are horrid examples of "horse made by a committee". He does not say it outright in this particular article, but judging from his past columns, he thinks that junking both white elephants is the best thing NASA can do. And I more than half agree with him.

Without intervention, it's fate is that of Mir. :-?

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"It's time to receive our missions from The Head."

The article is an opinion piece, by someone who doesn't actually work on manned space flight.

I've even heard a few people saying that the astronauts are willing to fly to the ISS even if all the Return to Flight fixes are not completed.

Let's cross that bridge when it happens. The Russians have a lot experience leaving space stations unmanned and returning later.