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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-small-orbit-for-man dept.

Buzz Aldrin has said that NASA should stop spending $3.5 billion per year on the International Space Station and relinquish low Earth orbit activities to private companies, such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace, and Axiom Space. This would allow for the funding of "cyclers" to enable a base on the moon and eventually a permanent presence on Mars:

http://www.space.com/36787-buzz-aldrin-retire-international-space-station-for-mars.html

Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" — spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth. "The foundation of human transportation is the cycler," the 87-year-old former astronaut said. "Very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so; no external moving parts."

Step two involves the international spaceflight community coming together to build cyclers that ply cislunar space, taking people on trips to the moon and back. Such spacecraft, and the activities they enable, would allow the construction of a crewed lunar base, where humanity could learn and test the techniques required for Mars colonization, such as how to manufacture propellant from local resources, Aldrin said. Then would come Earth-Mars cyclers, which Aldrin described as "an evolutionary development" of the prior cyclers.

[...] NASA officials have repeatedly said that the ISS is a key part of the agency's "Journey to Mars" vision, which aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.

Is the ISS a key part of the "Journey to Mars" or a key roadblock?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:05PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:05PM (#508356)

    It is a lot of mass in a controlled orbit, ditching it is therefore stupid since for our lifetime at least, putting that much mass into orbit is going to be expensive. If NASA can't justify the upkeep somebody else probably will and should be given the opportunity. Having a base in low Earth orbit is useful for any project to put stuff farther out.

    If the argument is that it is getting expensive to maintain, that is actually an argument for keeping it. We have to learn how to maintain things in space because we can't simply replace stations and bases every decade or two so we should think of it as an opportunity to learn. That was one of the basic goals of the ISS, to learn how to live long term in space, learning how to maintain your home is part of that. Someday we will have hundred plus year old structures in space, so we need to learn how to do that.

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