Congress to NASA: What comes after the International Space Station?
Questions of how long the station — already over 20 years old — can last and how international and industry partnerships might drive activity in low Earth orbit (LEO) filled a two-hour hearing held by the House Science, Space and Technology's subcommittee on space and aeronautics on Tuesday (Sept. 21). The International Space Station partners are currently committed to operating the orbiting laboratory until 2024. NASA has long argued that the facility is safe to occupy until at least 2028 and the U.S. space agency's Administrator Bill Nelson has endorsed keeping the station operational until 2030.
But some worry that pushing the lab so far beyond its design lifetime is courting disaster, particularly as a string of incidents have shown the facility's wizened age. (Construction of the station began in 1998.)
[....] "We did experience a gap in our transportation system when we retired the shuttle that we do not wish to repeat with our U.S. human presence in low Earth orbit," Robyn Gatens, NASA's director for the International Space Station (ISS), said during the hearing.
[....] "The first and foremost indicator is that we have commercial LEO destinations to transition to," Gatens said. "That may sound pretty obvious, but that's a prerequisite so that we don't have a gap in low Earth orbit." Other indicators include the structural health of the International Space Station and the development of commercial markets, she said.
What should America do next in space after the ISS?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @05:19PM (13 children)
BUILD A BASE ON THE MOON SO WE CAN GET OFF THIS ROCK SOME DAY
(Score: 2) by GreatOutdoors on Friday September 24 2021, @05:33PM (5 children)
A moonbase is my thought as well. We could use it as a practice facility for installations further out.
Yes, I did make a logical argument there. You should post a logical response.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @04:30AM (4 children)
Practice is a big enough reason on its own, but a full sized lunar production facility is also an ideal supply depot for deep space missions. The setup cost is high, but lunar oxygen production alone would be invaluable for large scale deep space operations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:17AM (3 children)
Do you ever stop and think... there's no air in space. There's no anything in space.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday September 25 2021, @12:53PM
There is plenty of space, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @06:15PM
In space . . . . no-one can hear you breathe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:00AM
Earth is in space, therefore we are in space. Are we anything?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 24 2021, @06:45PM (1 child)
Agreed. We have a lot to learn before humans leave the earth in any great numbers. The moon is a nice place to start learning. At least it's close enough that we can actually respond to emergencies with a rescue mission in a timely manner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:03AM
Not sure how you got rated 'funny', but we do have a lot to learn and the moon is an ideal jump-off location.
(Score: 5, Funny) by RamiK on Friday September 24 2021, @08:36PM
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
compiling...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 24 2021, @08:47PM (3 children)
https://phys.org/news/2019-10-humans-migrate-planets-nobel-winner.html
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @12:15AM
Wow. I had no idea that we hadn't actually discovered any planets outside our solar system until 1995.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 25 2021, @03:25AM (1 child)
Michel is probably right, in that, humans may never migrate in the millions or billions. There go so very many science fiction scenarios down the drain. Intergalactic space wars will never happen. Trade routes among the stars out the window.
But, that doesn't automatically rule out missions to establish colonies outside the solar system. Building and sending an Ark ship to another star remains a possibility. Whether that ark is a generation ship, or cryo, or just a seed ship run by robots is still open for question. But, I think man can ultimately populate other solar systems, if he just makes his mind up to it.
Nor have we ruled out wormholes and/or other means of warping space.
Not so very many decades ago, all the world's brains agreed that man would never fly, and look at us today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @06:29PM
Oh, that is not true at all. Maybe in the popular press, but man had been working on flying for thousands of years. A lot of these "they said" stories go back to finding quotes from a person or two, but that isn't reflective of the general technical consensus. Another very popular one was that in the late 19th century "they" were advising students away from physics because they had figured it all out (the "they" is usually said to be Lord Kelvin), but that was never true either. [bbvaopenmind.com]. We like these anecdotes for a variety of reasons, whether it is supporting an anti-elite bent or demonstrating the ingenuity of people, but more often than not they are just stories.
Don't forget the famous words of the (fictional) newspaper editor Maxwell Scott: When legend becomes fact, print the legend!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Friday September 24 2021, @05:37PM
There are a number of things. Nuclear thermal propulsion (NERVA) was developed in the 60s and 70s and there should have been a successor to Apollo/Saturn V with a nuclear thermal upper stage for Earth Departure which would have slashed the time to get to Mars.
There should have been a proper Clarke Wheel space station (see 2001: A Space Odyssey) in Earth orbit and regular flights to and from a Moon base.
An orbital outpost at Mars should have been next, followed by a base on Mars.
But war wins elections. And society runs on Microsoft Windows (don't get me started...)
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 24 2021, @05:40PM (2 children)
We also need a presence on Venus, a floating cloud city in the atmosphere.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday September 24 2021, @06:34PM
A floating Venus city would still have to deal with corrosive gases and probably couldn't use any materials from the surface. Exploration missions should float around in the atmosphere though.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:39AM
Moon, Mars, and possibly Ceres, should all be before Venus. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, just that there is still much lower hanging fruit to pick before we are ready to tackle the harder problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @05:51PM (1 child)
Seems a lot of wasted research to let them die off, but probably already too late.
https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-entire-workforce/ [spacenews.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday September 24 2021, @06:50PM
It really is. We could have had a BA 2100 [wikipedia.org].
However, I thought another company is planning to use inflatable modules. Axiom Space?
Will Axiom Space provide a commercial space station replacement for NASA's ISS? [thehill.com]
After looking into it, I don't see any mention of inflatable modules. But at least it's something and it could reuse parts of the ISS like Canadarm2.
Apparently, Sierra Nevada Corporation is looking into it [wikipedia.org]. They recently got a win with their Dream Chaser spaceplane being selected for CRS-2.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:03PM (1 child)
Well, after the USA falls, and the globalists finish mass genocide, nobody will need to go into space at all.
They will have cleansed the surface of this planet of all the carbon (people) they deem necessary for their utopia.
Sorry, science nerds. Time to either close up shop, or apply for a Mentat-ship with one of the ruling families.
If you're lucky, they'll only remove your gonads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:57PM
Conspiracy fantasy. Reality is, If the U.S. falls, you better enroll in a crash course in Russian or Chinese
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Friday September 24 2021, @07:06PM (11 children)
What we should do next is build an assembly building and fuel depot in Medium Earth Orbit.
With an assembly building, it becomes possible to launch fuel an modular missions to MEO.
And that means you don't need to build Super-StarshipX if you want to do a 200 tonne mission to mars — you can use cheaper, reusable rockets instead.
And we'd have enough fuel to put satellites in orbit around other planets, not just do a one shot fly-by of them.
And while I agree with the idea of artificial gravity via spinning, I think a non-rotating hull with a rotating inner section is a better design than a wheel.
(Think salad spinner, or hamster wheel in a rock)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Friday September 24 2021, @10:57PM (4 children)
I'm curious for your reasoning behind the hamster wheel - what are the advantage trade-offs of a internal mechanical system vs a single contiguous habitat, and why is the former superior?
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:20AM
If I had to guess I'd say ease of operation and less risk of leaks. Docking with a fully rotating station is tricky and limits you to two on-axis ports, and sealing a continuously rotating structural pressure joint to a stationary docking hub isn't as easy as it sounds. The downsides are the weight from a double hull, and increased weight, power, and cooling requirements for the drive system, but inspections and maintenance should be much simpler in a shirt-sleeve environment. For a small to mid-sized rotating station it might be worth it, or for a primarily zero-g facility with a rotating living ring.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:28PM (1 child)
Several things, but an assembly building is really just a big air-tight barn.
You don't want that part to rotate, you just want air (and walls) so it's easier to assemble stuff in a weightless environment.
People, on the other hand, need gravity to function well.
The hamster wheel can be "outside" the station, but you need an easy way for workers to move from the living quarters to the assembly area.
Air tight rotating bearings are really tough, especially on a building-sized scale.
But bearings inside an airtight container are much easier.
Magnetic bearings, or air bearings, or even just normal ball bearings would work well enough, and we already have a lot of engineering expertise with them.
They have friction, which means losses, which have to be replace with power, but power is less of a problem than air.
And most importantly, you can "inflate" the shell, then build a super-structure inside it.
I.e. it's way easier to assemble a hamster wheel from parts, which is kinda the whole point of an assembly station.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:15AM
Magnetic bearings would largely wasted in a pressurized environment unless you also want vibration damping. I really hope it isn't rotating fast enough for gas bearings to work. Roller bearings would probably be better than ball. There would also be air friction with the wheel in all cases, but as you say the power requirements are less hassle than sealing a rotating joint. I hadn't thought of assembly but you are correct that a shirtsleeve environment would simplify that a lot. I'm still not sure what you'd be assembling, maybe satellites? Being able to run the wheel at 1g might be enough of an advantage over a lunar facility to be worth it, and the satellites wouldn't even need to support themselves under lunar gravity which might matter for ultralight designs.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:34PM
Oh, and I should point out that this would be the absolute smallest rotating wheel we can get away with.
Probably a 9.55m radius rotating at 6rpm (yielding only .4g), which would take a lot of getting used to for the workers, but is still easier to adjust to than weightlessness, which they will also have to adjust to.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:02AM (4 children)
Such a facility would be better built on the moon so that mining, refining, and manufacturing, can all be done in one place. Launching from the moon is cheap once you have a solar powered magnetic catapult available. Orbital manufacturing only makes sense if you have a product that benefits from zero-g during manufacture, and either LLO (supplied from Luna) or LEO (supplied from Earth) would be a better location. MEO just increases the fuel bill.
There aren't very many 200t payloads that can't be economically split into 100t payloads, and most of those are better built on site from local material. The motivation for 200t (and bigger) Starships is about reducing launch facility overhead, with a small fuel economy improvement as a bonus. When you are sending 10kt flotillas to an established colony the logistics are a bit different than for one-shot exploration missions.
We do put satellites in orbit around other planets. Mars currently has several and Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, have all had their own satellites. There is even talk of sending one to Pluto.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:17PM (3 children)
Sure, once you have a solar powered magnetic catapult available, a lunar base is great.
But we don't, and it's not what we're going to build next.
A lunar mining facility is great, once there's enough demand for space presence to warrant it.
But right now, we're going to manufacture and launch everything from the Earth, because that's where all our stuff is.
The best, first step is something in MEO.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 25 2021, @07:53PM (1 child)
What is the benefit of going to MEO? Toastier astronauts? It sounds about as useful as the Lunar Gateway. Go directly to the surface of the Moon or stick to LEO.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:39AM
I must object. Lunar Gateway has potential use as a satellite outpost operated from the moon, once it is lowered to a reasonable LLO. MEO has no such use case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:32AM
MEO is not a good first step for anything. LEO is much easier to reach from Earth, and if you are doing in-space manufacturing in any meaningful amount then a lunar facility is both easier and cheaper than orbit because you can source local material to build it. In fact any orbital facility of any significant size is cheaper to build and supply from the moon, including the cost of the moon base and catapult. This remains true even if SpaceX's Starship rocket achieves Musk's $2 million per launch pipe dream.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @06:48PM
Sounds like someone has been playing KSP again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @07:40PM (2 children)
What they should do and what we can realistically expect them to do are worlds apart; literally. What they realistically will do is continue to enrich Old Space with a bunch of lame probes and space telescopes that take decades to launch and go billions over budget.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @08:28PM (1 child)
Which, incidentally, is the *real* question that congress is asking here! Where goes the pork?!?
No politician actually cares about space. Anywhere. Ever. But the pork must flow! (just not to SpaceX, because they're in a different state and didn't make any campaign contributions anyway ...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:27AM
Even when SpaceX is in the same state the pols don't like them much. If only Bezos would get off his yacht and do something so there would be two politically divisive space billionaires competing for attention, then The Party could present a divided front while fighting over which of them to support in order to spite the other side. :(
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24 2021, @11:28PM (2 children)
There is so much junk floating around up there that any missions risk contacting some errant debris leaving Earth. Once that is cleaned up a channel can be created to pass through the remaining satellites to the target destination. Too much is left to chance up there, and there will be a tipping point where satellite debris starts crashing into each other and takes out some important stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @12:32AM
Fake news. Stop watching Hollywood movies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @05:36AM
All we need for that is a plucky pilot who skipped class to play 'Dodge 'em' to save the day.
In the real world, satellite and debris tracking has been a thing for decades, new systems are being worked out to coordinate the new mega-constellations being built, and debris removal systems are currently in development.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday September 25 2021, @12:09AM (1 child)
What about a huge spinning halo ring? International effort, can split it up by country but everyone contributes to building it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:42AM
Huge understates it. A mega construction like that would be centuries in the making, if not millennia.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday September 25 2021, @01:38AM (1 child)
If you think billionaire space tourism is heating up now, just wait 'til they build Little St. James in Space. They'll have those Lolita Express rockets going up and down like juggling balls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @02:14AM
In space, no one can hear you scream.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @02:02PM (2 children)
Skylab, ISS, NGSS.
Look at what they have, decide what they can keep. Separate and deorbit the rest.
Possible keepers.
Module to module interface design. (Or not.)
Nodes
Trusses and solar arrays
Arm
Maybe a module with life support until they can get few starships docked.
Mission?
That didn't seem to be a problem before, but the basic mission is the same defacto mission of the ISS.
Advancing space technology and experience.
On the Todo list:
Routine launch to higher orbits.
Fuel storage
Vehicle assembly
Support of more mass sent farther into the solar system
Continued understanding of routine living and working in space
Perhaps much larger robotic missions to some moons or planets? (Don't morph the missions to justify the station. Instead acknowledge that the station is primarily for tech development.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @02:01AM (1 child)
There isn't much of the station that isn't nearing end of life. Bigelow's demo module and the new solar arrays come to mind, but those aren't really worth the cost of rescuing them. Better to decommission the station and build a replacement in an easier-to-reach orbit. Roscosmos is renting a launch facility from France so a Russian partnership is still possible if Congress still wants to do that, though I doubt it.
The module interface dates to the 90's. I'd hope they've learned a thing or two since then.
Congress was never interested in ISS's science mission and the foreign policy goal has been met: Roscosmos' experienced rocket engineers have all retired without moving to Iran.
The recent division of NASA's crewed operations separates LEO from the rest. This is about the LEO division. The only thing on your to do list that applies is "Continued understanding of routine living and working in space", and again, Congress isn't interested.
Robotic mission are handled by the deep space division.
The key to understating what is happening is that this is all just a dog and pony show to justify punishing Kathy Leuders for giving the moon lander contract to SpaceX. They've taken all forward looking projects away from her and are now demanding that she justify her job, with the understanding that nothing she asks for will ever be funded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26 2021, @01:09PM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/nasa-to-split-leadership-of-its-human-spaceflight-program/ [arstechnica.com]
good cop/bad cop is a tried and true plan?
Also, perhaps add materials for indefinite lifespan space structures to the list of goals.