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Five Key Findings From 15 Years of the International Space Station

posted by cmn32480 on Friday January 01 2016, @01:14AM   
from the is-dark-matter-like-dark-energon dept.

martyb writes:

The Conversation has a story about five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station:

1. The fragility of the human body — there is considerable loss of strength and bone mass without intervention. Mitigating this is key to making it possible to have manned trips to mars.

2. Interplanetary contamination — spores of Bacillus subtilis were exposed to space upon the ISS (but shielded from solar UV radiation). "The space vacuum and temperature extremes alone were not enough to kill them off."

3. Growing crystals for medicine — "Crystals in a microgravity environment may be grown to much larger sizes than on Earth, enabling easier analysis of their micro-structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer."

4. Cosmic rays and dark matter — early results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) support the theory that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way.

5. Efficient combustion — flames burn more efficiently in space with much less soot produced. Understanding this may lead to more efficient combustion in vehicles.

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Original Submission

• Re:wwwwww Re:wwwwww (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 01 2016, @06:31AM

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday January 01 2016, @06:31AM (#283298) Journal

  From the link I posted: [wikipedia.org]

  NASA has never attempted to build a rotating wheel space station, for several reasons. First, such a station would be very difficult to construct, given the limited lifting capability available to the United States and other spacefaring nations. Assembling such a station and pressurizing it would present formidable obstacles, which, though not beyond NASA's technical capability, would be beyond available budgets. Second, NASA considers the present space station, the ISS, to be valuable as a zero gravity laboratory, and its current microgravity environment was a conscious choice.

  However NASA have explored plans for a Nautilus X centrifuge demonstration project. If flown, this would add a centrifuge sleep quarters module to the ISS. This makes it possible to experiment with artificial gravity without destroying the usefulness of the ISS for zero g experiments. It could lead to deep space missions under full g in centrifuge sleeping quarters following the same approach.

  Russia plans to detach some of its ISS modules in the 2020s to make a new space station [wikipedia.org]. However with $150 billion sunk into ISS there will be calls to keep it alive. One way to do that is to put an ion engine [wikipedia.org] on it to help stabilize the orbit at a lower cost:

  In early 2009, the earliest possible launch date was reported as 2012.[25] As of April 2014, its launch was anticipated to be in 2016.[26] The reason for the delays in the project were attributed to funding; and in June 2014, Franklin Chang-Diaz stated that the project would be unlikely to proceed unless Ad Astra were to receive Space Act Agreement (SAA) funds from NASA.

  Since the available power from the ISS is less than 200 kW, the ISS VASIMR will include a trickle-charged battery system allowing for 15 min pulses of thrust. Testing of the engine on the ISS is valuable because it orbits at a relatively low altitude and experiences fairly high levels of atmospheric drag, making periodic boosts of altitude necessary. Currently, altitude reboosting by chemical rockets fulfills this requirement. The VASIMR test on the ISS may lead to a capability of maintaining the ISS, or a similar space station, in a stable orbit at 1/20th of the approximately $210 million/year present estimated cost.

  If ISS can persist as a platform indefinitely due to lower ongoing costs, and lower launch costs (due to SpaceX and other new players) for replacement modules, maybe a ring module can be added. One way to lower module costs would be to use inflatable modules [wikipedia.org]. Possibly applicable to a rotating ring, and definitely a way to provide more volume on the ISS for less money. Laser systems can be used to deorbit space debris.

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• Re:wwwwww (Score: 1) by Some call me Tim on Friday January 01 2016, @06:49AM

  by Some call me Tim (5819) on Friday January 01 2016, @06:49AM (#283304)

  Not sure what I did, but 90% of my previous comment vanished. I'll blame the beer. I like the idea of the inflated modules for a ring, far less mass to move which means less energy to maintain orbit and the same for rotation. They really need a small reactor for power to get rid of the solar panels. Those things are in the way of expansion and need to go if NASA has any plans of keeping the station beyond 2020.

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  Questioning science is how you do science!

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