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Expanding, And Eventually Replacing, The International Space Station:
Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), humanity has managed to maintain an uninterrupted foothold in low Earth orbit for just shy of 20 years. There are people reading these words who have had the ISS orbiting overhead for their entire lives, the first generation born into a truly spacefaring civilization.
But as the saying goes, what goes up must eventually come down. The ISS is at too low of an altitude to remain in orbit indefinitely, and core modules of the structure are already operating years beyond their original design lifetimes. As difficult a decision as it might be for the countries involved, in the not too distant future the $150 billion orbiting outpost will have to be abandoned.
Naturally there's some debate as to how far off that day is. NASA officially plans to support the Station until at least 2024, and an extension to 2028 or 2030 is considered very likely. Political tensions have made it difficult to get a similar commitment out of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, but its expected they'll continue crewing and maintaining their segment as long as NASA does the same. Afterwards, it's possible Roscosmos will attempt to salvage some of their modules from the ISS so they can be used on a future station.
(Score: 5, Funny) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 04 2020, @07:10PM
Not on this site there aren't.
There. FTFY.
In fact, the ISS isn't even serving the purpose of helping us create and refine in-space or low/micro-gravity engineering.
If we wish to be a "space-faring" civilization, we have to, well, go to space. We haven't done that with humans (and that only a "small step") in nearly 50 years.
Let's not get delusions of grandeur here. Our manned space efforts/capabilities have almost completely disappeared, and we just starting to rebuild them.
In that respect, we've wasted most of my life. Let's get on the stick.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr