End of an era! Shuttlelaunch.

[CJvR]

NASAs final shuttle mission live...

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

NASAs final shuttle mission live...

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Not. Quite. Unless you've inadvertently posted from the future, the final Shuttle launch isn't scheduled until sometime in July. The honor of last Shuttle flight EVAR goes to Atlantis. This is merely the final flight of Endeavour.

[CJvR]

Ah. My mistake then. I thought it was the last mission ever.

[Sithking Zero]

Whoops.

Doesn't mean we can't resurrect this thread when the last launch really DOES happen, though, does it?

[Sarevok]

So whats the future for NASA's manned space program ? There had been a lot of talk and paper proposals but other than the Ares 1 first stage test no concrete progress.

[Zaune]

So whats the future for NASA's manned space program ? There had been a lot of talk and paper proposals but other than the Ares 1 first stage test no concrete progress.

A better question is, what exactly do we need manned spaces launches for at this stage? Robotics technology has come a long way since the Shuttle was first launched, and we're probably nearing the upper limit of how much useful operational experience for manned missions to Mars and the rest of the solar system that we can gain from the International Space Station, especially since we have yet to even trial a working scale model of a propulsion technology that could make such a mission feasible.

[Sarevok]

Well right now manned space indeed does not bring much benefits. Robots can do the exploration cheaper. But there are many long term benifits related mankind as a whole.

Even in the short term not building a replacement vehicle as the shuttle goes to muesuems can cause harm. Can you imagine what happens after the ISS deorbits ? The Russians likely would not continue Soyuz anymore. You would get a situation where there is no longer a ready made way to reach space anymore, just like how we cant go to the Moon these days.

[Broomstick]

How are they planning to handle the de-orbit of the ISS, anyhow? I remember when Skylab came down, and by good fortune the large lumps that crashed near Perth, Australia didn't actually hit anyone, or anything important (and shame on NASA for not paying the $300 fine for littering! Finally paid by someone else on behalf of NASA something like 30 years later).

ISS is bigger than Skylab, and we might not be so lucky this time. What are they going to do about it?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

How are they planning to handle the de-orbit of the ISS, anyhow? I remember when Skylab came down, and by good fortune the large lumps that crashed near Perth, Australia didn't actually hit anyone, or anything important (and shame on NASA for not paying the $300 fine for littering! Finally paid by someone else on behalf of NASA something like 30 years later).

ISS is bigger than Skylab, and we might not be so lucky this time. What are they going to do about it?

Intentionally dump it into the ocean. Skylab's de-orbit was problematic because it the only people who got a say in where and when it took place it was Sir Isaac Newton and Bernoulli. When ISS gets de-orbited, it will be an event that will be planned for months in advance, and will be done in such a way that the ellipse that describes where the bulk of debris will come down will be located well out over the Pacific.

[Sarevok]

After being abandoned Skylab was badly malfuctioning with everything from electrical power to gyroscopes failing. Ground control could establish a limited telemetry only when when the station was in sunlight. The fact that Skylab by a design flaw had no thrusters capable of adjusting orbit significantly did not help either.

The ISS is not in such dire straits. So I think it could be safely deorbited in such a way there is little risk to inhabited areas. Most plans call for a deorbit around 2016 and given the state of manned space this may not be postponned...

[Broomstick]

Uh-huh. Skylab was supposed to land off Cape Town. I distinctly remember NASA reassuring everyone it would land in the ocean. Off Cape Town. South off Cape Town, actually. Over and over.

It landed in Australia.

It wasn't just a lack of steering - the thing didn't burn up as fast as expected either. Due to high sunspot activity the atmosphere heated up and expanded more than anticipated, increasing drag and bringing it down sooner than it might have happened otherwise.

Now, I would really like to think that there is no chance of the ISS de-orbit being screwed up, but shit happens. I'm am content to listen about rockets and thrusters and stuff, but please don't start down the road of how much better things are and how it can't land where we don't want it to. I remember Columbia, I remember Challenger, I remember Skylab missing the mark, I remember Apollo 13 (well, at least that one ended well). Shit happens. Sometimes we come through with a fix and sometimes we don't.

If something goes wonky with the steering will there be any way to fix it so the damn thing lands where we want it to? Or are we going to get as stupid as we did in the Skylab era?

[Zaune]

Well right now manned space indeed does not bring much benefits. Robots can do the exploration cheaper. But there are many long term benifits related mankind as a whole.

"Long term" isn't saying the half of it. I know there's a lot of very interesting things that can be done in micro-gravity with chemistry and metallurgy, but none of that serves much purpose while getting a manmade object safely into orbit is such a huge and costly undertaking. I'm not saying we should give up on putting people in space altogether, but I do think NASA would get a better return on its investment of time and resources by approaching the problem from a completely new angle -spaceplanes, Orion drives etc- than simply designing Shuttle 2.0, even if it meant suspending manned launches for a few years.

Even in the short term not building a replacement vehicle as the shuttle goes to muesuems can cause harm. Can you imagine what happens after the ISS deorbits ? The Russians likely would not continue Soyuz anymore. You would get a situation where there is no longer a ready made way to reach space anymore, just like how we cant go to the Moon these days.

Well it's not as if we'll have to ship a load of roughnecks up there to blow up an asteroid on short notice, is it?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Uh-huh. Skylab was supposed to land off Cape Town. I distinctly remember NASA reassuring everyone it would land in the ocean. Off Cape Town. South off Cape Town, actually. Over and over.

It landed in Australia.

It wasn't just a lack of steering - the thing didn't burn up as fast as expected either. Due to high sunspot activity the atmosphere heated up and expanded more than anticipated, increasing drag and bringing it down sooner than it might have happened otherwise.

Now, I would really like to think that there is no chance of the ISS de-orbit being screwed up, but shit happens. I'm am content to listen about rockets and thrusters and stuff, but please don't start down the road of how much better things are and how it can't land where we don't want it to. I remember Columbia, I remember Challenger, I remember Skylab missing the mark, I remember Apollo 13 (well, at least that one ended well). Shit happens. Sometimes we come through with a fix and sometimes we don't.

If something goes wonky with the steering will there be any way to fix it so the damn thing lands where we want it to? Or are we going to get as stupid as we did in the Skylab era?

We understand much more about how vehicles behave in the tops of planetary atmospheres than we did when Skylab fell out of the sky. We didn't have the understanding of outer atmospheric interaction with the sunspot cycle, nor the experience in aerobraking spaceships, nor the computational horsepower or understanding of aerodynamics that we do now. And, again, the de-orbit of the ISS will be something planned and rehearsed for months in advance. They will undoubtedly double- triple- and quadruple-check the telemetry, attitude control, and power systems of the station before the last crewmembers depart the last Soyuz to go back to Earth.

NASA has conducted lots of experiments with spacecraft and aerobraking. They tweaked the orbits of Martian orbiters via aerobraking, and measured the force generated by air on the solar panels of Magellan in its final months orbiting Venus. NASA gains experience every time it de-orbits the Shuttle, and is constantly aware of how much drag the upper atmosphere is exerting on the ISS at any given time (and it is experiencing a not-insignificant degree of drag. The station must be periodically reboosted by visiting cargo ships.) For that matter, we have Russian expertise to draw on. They've successfully de-orbited quite a few Salyut stations, and disposed of Mir.

It's a different game today than it was with Skylab.

[Sarevok]

If worst comes to comes the ISS modules can be individually separated and deorbited. This may happen actually, the Russians have stated in the past they want to keep their part of the station. So you could see a few modules from countries that will not go with the deorbit plan staying up and individual modules being dismantled and cast down.

[someone_else]

Well right now manned space indeed does not bring much benefits. Robots can do the exploration cheaper.

It is more like "only robots can do the exploration at all". If we had to wait a man on mars to do the stuff the rovers are doing...

Can you imagine what happens after the ISS deorbits ?

That the US public interest in space keels over and dies (if it isn't already), while NASA's exploration becomes limited in the inner system (the dwindling reserves of radionuclides for RTGs will force them to do so, I think it's plutonium) and of course the deforestation to make papers about stuff that the Congress asked but won't pay for can only increase.

Russians are unlikely to give up space stations (their part of the ISS can survive alone without problems), as are chinese (although after they went on the moon their program may die as well, or maybe they want to do a Shuttle and a space station too for the same perverse reason they are going to the moon now), and japan will get back to work as soon as they patched up their current situation (3-6 years maybe?). And ESA will ally with whoever brings (or keeps) its stuff up (likely to be the russians).

Still, russians didn't seem to have a so huge interest in space exploration, they seem to want something manned in space.
The only hope for US is that the private sector takes over the access to space for some unknown reason.

I'm not saying we should give up on putting people in space altogether, but I do think NASA would get a better return on its investment of time and resources by approaching the problem from a completely new angle -spaceplanes, Orion drives etc-

Personally, I think NASA is already doing what it should (considering the budget they have, they cannot embark into any real project).
At this point, NASA's best bet is to help companies like SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, and whoever else wants to do stuff in space by either promising to buy their services or by helping their development in any possible way. Yeah, they keep producing tons of papers for the Congress's wet dreams about big shafts, but it's wildly unlikely they will ever get the funding to go beyond that stage.

[Skgoa]

Lets not forget that Bigelow is using NASA technology, that NASA was forbidden to use by congress. And SpaceX isn't doing anything else then what Boeing, LM et.al. have been doing for decades. So yeah, I agree that this is NASA's best option. That there is no budget for big payloads/missions is a shame, though.

I do think NASA would get a better return on its investment of time and resources by approaching the problem from a completely new angle -spaceplanes, Orion drives etc- than simply designing Shuttle 2.0, even if it meant suspending manned launches for a few years.

I couldn't decide between these two smileys, so you get both:

[Sarevok]

I don't get the attention Bigelow gets. They have no launchers. The real challenge is ability to orbit stuff at economical rates. Anybody can make 3D models of space hotels but they are just fancy pipe dreams. Bigelow is doing exactly that and nothing more.

[Shannon]

On a slightly more personal note, I once had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Roberto Vittori, Mission Specialist 2 on the Endeavour flight. He's an ESA astronaut, former fighter pilot and test pilot who has flown with the Russians. His account of his experiences with them and of what it's like on the ISS was entertaining. I met him at a seminar he spoke at down here in NZ in 2008 when the Awarua Tracking Station was opened to track Ariane 5 launches for the ATV missions.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I don't get the attention Bigelow gets. They have no launchers. The real challenge is ability to orbit stuff at economical rates. Anybody can make 3D models of space hotels but they are just fancy pipe dreams. Bigelow is doing exactly that and nothing more.

They get attention because they've actually have working hardware on-orbit. Both their Genesis I and Genesis II prototypes are still in orbit, still pressurized, and still function. They're in the process of constructing a fully man-rated space station module complete with attitude control.

The issue of developing private-sector space travel has two sides. The first is getting people up there. The second is giving them somewhere to go, (though it's possible that people will pay for a couple hours packed like sardines inside a tiny tin-can with nine other, violently spacesick, ultra-rich people for company . . . just to say they've been to orbit.) Bigelow is actively working the "destination" part of the equation, and is collaborating with Boeing and SpaceX in developing the "getting there" part.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Oh yeah, on-topic: Woman captures shuttle launch from the vantage point of a Delta commercial air flight.

[someone_else]

They're in the process of constructing a fully man-rated space station module complete with attitude control.

The Sundancer! To put its (planned) performance in context, it will have slightly more than 1/5 of the ISS's pressurized volume. For a much cheaper price (mostly since it doesn't need a buttload of Shuttle flights, but only one vastly cheaper Falcon 9s). The other two prototypes already in orbit are around 10 times smaller.

[Skylon]

If worst comes to comes the ISS modules can be individually separated and deorbited. This may happen actually, the Russians have stated in the past they want to keep their part of the station. So you could see a few modules from countries that will not go with the deorbit plan staying up and individual modules being dismantled and cast down.

I imagine ISS deorbit would be handled similar to Mir. Using an unmanned spacecraft to aim it for a targeted deorbit (a Progress craft, normally used for station resupply was used in Mir's case).

That's also the plan for the Hubble Space Telescope. The last shuttle servicing mission attached a docking rig for an unmanned vehicle to be docked to, and deorbit it.

I'm frankly unsure how the heck the Russians could detach their elements of the station. Their primary elements are among the oldest on ISS. You'd probably need to remove crap around them. It sounds more like bluster to me than anything else.

None of this was considered for Skylab because NASA assumed the thing would stay up there until the Shuttle started flying. Because of higher than expected drag, and the Shuttle's development being delayed they were wrong.

[someone_else]

I'm frankly unsure how the heck the Russians could detach their elements of the station. Their primary elements are among the oldest on ISS. You'd probably need to remove crap around them.

Russian stuff is all together, and is linked to the rest of the ISS by a single hatch (even the new science lab russians plan to add will be docked on their own Zvezda module, and will have its own solar panels).
They contain ISS's crew quarters, primary life support and (minor) engines, an airlock with russian EVA suits, primary docking hatches, and they have their own solar panels and thermal management systems. What the US added are mostly life-support extensions and a buttload of labs plus power and thermal management such additional modules need.

Even if the US decides to throw away the whole truss with panels (plus the labs and other stuff) the russian modules will still be viable (although won't support 6 people plus the labs as the ISS can).

Maybe Esa or Jaxa can buy a solar panel or two, a radiator and a node to keep their modules up, linked to russian stuff while US modules are de-orbited. But I wouldn't count a lot on this last part. Both aren't swimming in cash, nor have shown lots of guts.