CNN: Is the Space Station a Money Pit?

[dreada5]

This was produced 14 June, so perhaps its old news. But if not:<br /><br />http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1632890,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics <br /><br />(Personally it seems like a rather narrow-minded, uninformed view from Time)

 

[Boris_Badenov]

Call Art & Brad Shirk to come over & they'll have it fixed up in 2 weeks. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[bobblebob]

That article suggests the ISS is some unreliable peice of junk in space. I didnt know it had reliablity issues, does it?<br /><br />And his line about staples being used to repair the "important work", it wasnt that important was it? It posed no threat to the safety of the crew, they just didnt want it damaged any further. And can he back his statement up that no good "good science" has come from the ISS?<br /><br />Sounds like an article you would see by the UK media, basically talking crap

 

[mithridates]

Pretty much, especially the last part about the space walk to fix the thermal blankets. What did the author expect them to tap it down with, patented NASA Thermal Blanket Fastenerâ„¢? Plus it wasn't a risky spacewalk either. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[kdavis007]

Nope....

 

[Boris_Badenov]

<font color="yellow"> All EVAs are risky. </font><br /><br />So is taking a shower, but if you take all the nessesary precautions you can complete the task safely. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[moonmadness]

Is the Space Station a Money Pit?<br /><br />Yes. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>I'm not a rocket scientist, but I do play one on the TV in my mind.</p> </div>

 

[Boris_Badenov]

<font color="yellow"> True however in the shower one is not subject to the many dangers such as MMODs which are unpredictable. </font><br /><br /> I wouldn't be so sure about that. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br /> Holy Hunks of Junk, It's Raining Boosters! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[kdavis007]

Why is it???

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Is the Space Station a Money Pit?</font>/i><br /><br />Probably any large government endeavor is considered a money pit by a large number of people. I think ISS was/is largely a jobs program and a political instrument.<br /><br />However... if ISS proves to be a catalyst for developing a commercial orbital transportation industry (e.g., COTS), and if its usage generates enough private capital interests in orbital facilities that Bigelow benefits, then ultimately I think it will be worth it.</i>

 

[bobblebob]

Do Nasa ever release details of the many scientific experiments completed on the ISS?

 

[brellis]

They could recoup a lot of costs if they allow private companies to bid for aesthetic/esoteric events staged from ISS. On a whim, I started this thread speculating on the possibilities. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>

 

[vulture2]

If we are to have human spaceflight at all, we must demonstrate in LEO that we can overcome the problems of cost, reliability, risk, international cooperation, and identification of meaningful roles for humans in space. These problems are more readily overcome in LEO than at more distant locations. If we cannot demonstrate the resources and determination required to maintain a viable permanent presence in LEO, than we cannot credibly claim we can do it at more distant locations. Human spaceflight to the moon now, without the capability and commitment needed for permanent habitation anywhere in space, is no more than a re-enactment of Apollo.<br /><br />The ISS program has overcome an extraordinary number of obstacles. It was always intended to be permanent, in function if not in hardware. To abandon it now would be to abandon any consistent rational for human spaceflight. <br />

 

[nyarlathotep]

<i>They could recoup a lot of costs if they allow private companies to bid for aesthetic/esoteric events staged from ISS.</i><br /><br />McDonalds, Columbia Pictures, Pizza Hut and that golf club manufacturer that I can't remember have already tried that trick. The world yawned.

 

[brellis]

I'm not talking about a giant pizza hut billboard -- imagine an event lit as well as the great shots of EVA'ers with earth in the bkgrnd, but instead of putting pieces of ISS into place, they're "tagging" it with material that leaves a trail for many hours or days that will be visible from earth. It can be billed as "global awareness" or something, but sponsored by whatever cheesy McCorp will put up the bux. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#ff0000"><em><strong>I'm a recovering optimist - things could be better.</strong></em></font> </p> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

<i>"tagging" it with material that leaves a trail for many hours or days that will be visible from earth.</i><br /><br />You mean like large foil mirrors? Iridium tried that, they lost six billion.<br /><br /><i>but sponsored by whatever cheesy McCorp will put up the bux.</i><br /><br />The worlds three cheesiest Fortune 400 companies have already done that. The world yawned. <br /><br />The public wants to go to space but they're not interested (actually indifferent as long as it provides district jobs) in the NASA program anymore. Since the early 80's none of their rhetoric about opening space or groundbreaking human-tended science has aligned with observed reality. They haven't even managed to launch the CAM to do partial gravity bone loss experiments. This is THE most promising research that NASA could do in space and it was just cancelled.

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Do Nasa ever release details of the many scientific experiments completed on the ISS?</font>/i><br /><br />JonClarke often mentions the large number of papers that have been published based on research done on ISS; although, I don't know of anyone having collected a fairly definitive set of papers. It seems that those who support ISS should maintain such a list and point to it everytime an article like this one surfaces (and they surface fairly regularly).<br /><br />For example, here is a list for published papers for the MERs (it seems a bit dated, nothing this year):<br />http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/science/pdf/web_publist.pdf<br /><br />I don't think there is a lot of strong support for ISS in the scientific community right now. Cutbacks at ISS were barely met with a peep, but a cutback in hubble met with howels across the scientific community. Where's the love?</i>

 

[qso1]

Excerpt from the article:<br />Their first-line tools for this important work? Staples scrounged from the shuttle's medical kit. If ever a pair of government programs cried out to be mothballed, it's these.<br /><br />Me:<br />A human spaceflight critic is never satisfied. They always tout such basics as duct tape repairs then when a duct tape style repair is done...the vehicles needing the repair should be scrapped. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[kurtwagner]

Citations from Science Direct - an academic/scholarly periodical database. Just a taste of the 580 articles I received for the search "international space station":<br /><br />Real-time on-line space research laboratory environment monitoring with off-line trend and prediction analysis<br />Acta Astronautica, Volume 61, Issues 1-6, June-August 2007, Pages 27-36<br />Kenol Jules and Paul P. Lin<br />Maintenance, reliability and policies for orbital space station life support systems<br />Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Volume 92, Issue 6, June 2007, Pages 808-820<br />James F. Russell and David M. Klaus<br />Flywheel energy storage—An upswing technology for energy sustainability<br />Energy and Buildings, Volume 39, Issue 5, May 2007, Pages 599-604<br />Haichang Liu and Jihai Jiang<br /><br />Numerical simulation of temperature and pressure fields in CdTe growth experiment in the Material Science Laboratory (MSL) onboard the International Space Station in relation to dewetting<br />Journal of Crystal Growth, Volume 303, Issue 1, 1 May 2007, Pages 187-192<br />Lamine Sylla and Thierry Duffar<br /><br />JEM-EUSO: Extreme Universe Space Observatory on JEM/ISS<br />Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements, Volume 166, April 2007, Pages 72-76<br />Y. Takizawa, T. Ebisuzaki, Y. Kawasaki, M. Sato, M.E. Bertaina, H. Ohmori, Y. Takahashi, F. Kajino, M. Nagano, N. Sakaki, et al.<br /><br />Battling fire and ice: remote guidance ultrasound to diagnose injury on the International Space Station and the ice rink<br />The American Journal of Surgery, Volume 193, Issue 3, March 2007, Pages 417-420<br />David Kwon, J. Antonio Bouffard, Marnix van Holsbeeck, Asot E. Sargsyan, Douglas R. Hamilton, Shannon L. Melton and Scott A. Dulchavsky<br /><br />

 

[j05h]

It's a money-pit if you start from the author's viewpoint. He obviously has an ax to grind against human spaceflight (not just ISS/NASA). "Risky" spacewalk? No more-so than any other EVA. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">"Risky" spacewalk? No more-so than any other EVA.</font>/i><br /><br />I suspect unplanned spacewalks are riskier than those that have been rehersed many, many times for months before the actual launch.<br /><br />Still, the author clearly wants to be provacative, and you don't do that by trying to present a balanced argument. The article should have been marked as an editorial piece.</i>

 

[CalliArcale]

Is the ISS a money pit? Yes, in the sense that it is very expensive and most of the money is just spent keeping it going. But that's true of a great many things. The real question is whether it's worth the expense. I think so, personally. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

It wasn't Iridium who did that. The Iridium Constellation of satellites are for communication. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">Citations from Science Direct - an academic/scholarly periodical database. Just a taste of the 580 articles I received for the search "international space station":</font>/i><br /><br />We shouldn't confuse a paper having the phrase "international space station" with a paper describing research that was done and only could have been done on ISS.<br /><br />Once again, I am not saying that there isn't material available, I am just saying that the ISS supporters have not done a good job of promoting their cause in the public arena. Developing a definitive list of papers describing research on ISS, and including how frequently those papers were cited by others would be a good start.<br /><br />Another would be to provide a commercialization report identifying how ISS funded research is generating commercial revenues. I have to do that when I submit a measly $100K SBIR proposal. I would think that a multi-billion dollar program could do the same.</i>

 

[kurtwagner]

Of course there is the difference RR describes. A quick survey of resources (Apollo 11) logically precedes the more in-depth scientific research mission (Apollo 17). I did a little more in-depth looking at the abstracts of a handful of articles and was able to see that the database does, in fact, contain plenty of articles that deal with research done on board ISS or from datasets collected on ISS. As an academic librarian, I'd be happy to produce a content analysis report that provides more detail on this.