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A draft budget proposal would end support for the International Space Station (ISS) by 2025. The U.S. was previously committed to operating at the ISS until 2024:
The Trump administration is preparing to end support for the International Space Station program by 2025, according to a draft budget proposal reviewed by The Verge. Without the ISS, American astronauts could be grounded on Earth for years with no destination in space until NASA develops new vehicles for its deep space travel plans.
The draft may change before an official budget request is released on February 12th. However, two people familiar with the matter have confirmed to The Verge that the directive will be in the final proposal. We reached out to NASA for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Also at the Wall Street Journal.
Related: Five Key Findings From 15 Years of the International Space Station
Congress Ponders the Fate of the ISS after 2024
NASA Eyeing Mini Space Station in Lunar Orbit as Stepping Stone to Mars
NASA and Roscosmos Sign Joint Statement on the Development of a Lunar Space Station
Russia Assembles Engineering Group for Lunar Activities and the Deep Space Gateway
Can the International Space Station be Saved? Should It be Saved?
(Score: 3, Disagree) by frojack on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:52PM (18 children)
No significant or new science is being done on the ISS, we've learned just about everything we can learn on that platform.
Like Skylab and Mir and Vostok and Mercury the Shuttle, its probably time to go on to something better.
Its always bitter sweet to abandon [hdrcreme.com] a technical accomplishment.
We had a story here about the cost [soylentnews.org] of keeping the thing in orbit. We've covered that ground already. We've gotten all the ROI it has to offer. Its probably the right time to get out of it before it kills somebody.
We will need new skills to land livable modules on Moon and Mars.
Maybe we should practice by finding a way to soft-land ISS modules on the moon to build a shelter. Or soft land them on earth to build a museum.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday January 26 2018, @12:05AM (13 children)
Conservative mindset in a nutshell. A nutshell with wings. A right-winged nutshell, with a job. A right-wing nut-job.
Prey tell, froj, how do you know we have learned all we can learn? Do the experts in the field agree? Or is it just the embarrassment of having to depend on the Russians for launch capability?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @12:10AM
There's your Russian collusion. It dates back to the Reagan administration!
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 26 2018, @12:11AM (3 children)
Notice how we are continuing our support through 2025? This is all a plot for Trump to continue to fund taxpayer money through Russian rocket shell companies and back into his own pocket. Russians are playing us like a lyre.
In all seriousness I think it is kind of silly to discuss the future of the ISS when the BRF will be capable of putting up components larger than most of what is on the ISS by 2022. By that point we just deorbit the modules that are no longer useful and add in ones that are.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday January 26 2018, @12:49AM (2 children)
How about we see it first and decide to upgrade after we are sure we have a replacement?
Notice how the administration says "I'm gonna throw it out" but doesn't say "we gonna replace it with somethin' better"?
Yeah, right, the "go to the Moon" directive - no meat so far, not details about how and when.
By contrast, :ISS defunded in 2025" is damn'd precise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 26 2018, @02:37AM
I was not disagreeing with you
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @03:15AM
The ISS is a modular system (end of life or outdated modules can be replaced, upgraded), and it's being used as a proof-of-concept base for all kinds of next-generation missions: Mars transit habitats, navigation systems, deep space propulsion units, etc. etc. To think that we can just put up an oversized Gemini capsule and accomplish the same things that the ISS can do is clearly willfully ignoring the facts.
If we're never going to do manned missions again, then, sure - deorbit the ISS ASAP and launch SkyNet to replace it. Until then, the ISS is useful as long as it's habitable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by unauthorized on Friday January 26 2018, @12:35AM
<sarcasm>Damn right, you got that that conservative fool arguing about changing the status quo and trying out different approaches!</sarcasm>
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 26 2018, @02:14AM
Writing style analyzed. You are either RealDonaldTrump or starting to become influenced by him.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @03:10AM
I also find the timetable interesting... not during his administration, not even if he wins glorious re-election ('cause if that happens we can just do all our research on the flying pigs...) but, just past the end of the next administration, temping the next Prez to let it slide to his replacement when it would be too late to reverse.
This is so much less about science than it is political posturing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 26 2018, @05:18AM (4 children)
Yes, yes, yes they do.
https://www.space.com/36787-buzz-aldrin-retire-international-space-station-for-mars.html [space.com]
https://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/why-russia-is-abandoning-the-international-space-station [worldcrunch.com]
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a14287/russia-leave-iss-in-2024/ [popularmechanics.com]
The TWO countries with the most invested both want out of this thing by 2024. (That's right, the Russians want out before the US does!).
Then there's a long running structural analysis:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-looks-to-post-2020-international-space-station-operations/ [cbsnews.com]
Its an accident waiting to happen.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday January 26 2018, @06:34AM (3 children)
Well done, frojack! Two "yeses" would have sufficed. But it the science settled on this? From one of your sources:
This makes me think it is more a Republican cheap-all tight-wad approach to science and space exploration that is behind all this. The fact the Russians want out first, now that they are an oligarchic semi-capitalist country, or Republicans, does not surprise me.
What surprises me is that you obviously have not seen the movie, "Valerian"! In it, the ISS becomes the platform for human contact with alien species, which is good. And finally, the space station, for some inexplicable reason, as inexplicable as the suggestion that we land modules of the ISS on the moon, is shot off into interstellar space, you we can have a space ranger movie fraught, fraught, I tell you! with young adult sexual tension. Yes, it is a terrible movie. But do you really want to shut off this possibility for the generations after you, when your lawn is just a withered patch of parched pavement?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday January 26 2018, @11:27AM
In his defence, one of the links provided make it very plausible that maintenance cost will run up steeply after the current planned date of retirement. We haven't learned everything we can for sure, but cost-benefit considerations have to be updated constantly. I am personally opposed to human space exploration as a waste of resources but see the ISS as a compromise close enough to earth to justify its existence. If a replacement will be cheaper than maintenance at some point, please go for the replacement.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday January 26 2018, @12:45PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @02:15PM
Shortly after W did his "Mission Accomplished" publicity photo in a flight jacket on a carrier deck - (the "Mission" apparently being: starting a war that wouldn't be ended until well after he was out of office), he also set out to pump up his personal homeland with as much pork as possible. Back then, jobs were tight all around the country, except in Houston - man, the money was flowing in Houston. The Shuttle recently it's second major embarrassment, so that was the perfect opportunity to pivot on space policy, flow the money out of Melbourne/KSC and spread it back around to the new program development centers, including a big chunk for Houston.
The Republicans talk cheap, but they take care of their own; and while they're backing up their cheap talk with choruses of fiscal responsibility, they dig the deficit deeper, and faster than ever before.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by NewNic on Friday January 26 2018, @12:41AM (1 child)
"Quite unnecessary, Sir. Everything that can be invented has been invented."
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @01:07AM
FYI
After viagra, this quote actually makes sense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Friday January 26 2018, @03:05AM
Why not let the free market decide if it has value? Let the private sector bid to take it over if anyone wants to. Historic space hotel? Stepping off point for Mars, or for asteroid mining? Who knows?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday January 26 2018, @03:30AM
I'm not sure about the science part, one could probably do more or interesting science there if one wanted to. The thing is that the International Space Station is really past its prime, it's been in space now for 20 years (think it's 20 years this year). It was already living on borrowed time. Mir spent only 15 years in orbit, and it seemed like a deathtrap in the end. One would assume modular design has improved on the 70's and 80's designs used and that something was learned from the various mistakes made. So I don't really see why it should be funded forever, better to just start building something new, save or reuse what can be saved (after all it's already up there) and then start a new and learn from what we have learned up there. They have seven years to come up with something now. Russia already suggested doing something new, not sure if NASA is on board with it yet. The Chinese keep sending up their stuff. There are a few others doing minor things to.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:58PM (17 children)
Let's end support for the Trump Administration in 2018
If the voters don't clean up the mess they made, we are doomed, DOOMED!
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 26 2018, @12:07AM
This is all to help the Russians anyways. Look at it, Trump works with Russians for decades and then boom - he's president and wham - we end US support for the ISS leaving it fully to Russia. This has been in the works forever. That secret payload we sent up? Uranium to arm the ISS. Its too late now, we didn't impeach soon enough, now come 2025 they can rain down atomic hellfire on us and all we can do is sit and take it. Vlad's been planning this since 1999 and we played right into his hands.
#itwasherturn
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 26 2018, @12:10AM
Stupid boy...
Oh, it's you, Frazer.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @12:14AM (3 children)
"If the voters don't clean up the mess they made". WTF are you talking about? When Hellary beat (bought DNC) Bernie I switched sides just to keep that thing out of DC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @12:56AM (2 children)
You filled the WH with smoking shit to keep the plague outside and you succeeded.
Do you have any reasons now to keep that shit for longer? Perhaps you got to like it since?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 26 2018, @04:29AM (1 child)
Because it still seems to be working okay at keeping the elephants and donkeys out. Some of the elephants are getting to where they can ignore the smell but the longer they stay away the better.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @06:18AM
That would be kind of cute except, once you get past the smoke and mirrors, he's following modern (aka batshit) Republican policy to the letter.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday January 26 2018, @12:56AM (2 children)
Let's end support for the Trump Administration in 2018
What's that going to do? Maybe you don't realize this, but Trump's first term doesn't end until January 2021, and there's no such thing as a "recall election" for the President, so we're stuck with him, like it or not, unless he does something that actually gets the Republicans in Congress to go along with impeaching him (good luck with that).
Worse, I predict we're going to have a 2nd term with Trump if he isn't prevented by health issues. Most likely, the DNC will pick yet another unbelievably horrible candidate, perhaps quack-medicine-peddling Oprah, and again enough people will vote for Trump out of disgust for the DNC that he'll win just like this time. The Democrats have shown over and over and over and over that they just can't learn the simple strategy of how to beat the Republicans (hint, you just have to pick a decent, likable candidate who isn't scandal-ridden, and has more charisma than a paper bag; apparently this is just too much for them).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 26 2018, @02:29AM (1 child)
They are nuts, but they won't go with Oprah. If they do, it will only be surface noise to cover their real choice(s) so that their real choices don't fizzle out too soon. There is the Oprah/Weinstein stuff as well, and all those aides and other insiders who've seen Oprah's bad side are likely to come out of the woodwork at the most inopportune time -- somebody with a past like Oprah's is not likely to be all unicorns shitting rainbows and roses. The Bannon war machine is playing for keeps now, and nothing is hidden anymore*.
So who would they pick?
• Kamela Harris (flaming bitch aka Hillary-in-Training) -- nope.
• "Creepy Uncle Joe" Biden -- nope.
• Luis "La Migra" Gutiérrez -- that depends on whether or not the DREAMERS, Salvadorians, and other scumbags are allowed to stay and given voting rights. Should that be the case, he'd be at least a VEEP.
• Bernie Sanders -- nope, but only because the vengeful DNC-infested FBI are going to dirty him with the investigation (something about his wife misappropriating funds for a college, or something) as retribution for indirectly diverting Democrat votes to Trump and third-parties. Otherwise he would stand a chance.
• Anybody else from California -- nope. Everybody else, including Californians, are sick of California's bullshit.
* Opinion -- Bannon and Trump's 'falling out,' like their previous spats, are all misdirection. With the 2018 midterms coming up, Trump and Breitbart both had to shed that liability. Bannon is still working behind the scenes to dig up and expose dirt on Trump's enemies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday January 26 2018, @03:44PM
There is the Oprah/Weinstein stuff as well, and all those aides and other insiders who've seen Oprah's bad side are likely to come out of the woodwork at the most inopportune time -- somebody with a past like Oprah's is not likely to be all unicorns shitting rainbows and roses.
Huh? Look at what happened to Hillary: she had bad associates (Kissinger), and insiders came out of the woodwork, yet the Dems still happily nominated her. I'm sorry, your comment seems to assume that the Democrats will actually learn from their mistake, and I just don't have any faith that they will (don't forget here, I'm usually a Dem voter!). They've been pushing lousy Presidential candidates for ages, and that includes 2008: they didn't want Obama at all, and were forced into it when Obama "stole" the nomination from their queen Hillary. They just can't seem to learn that the only way they win elections is when they have a *likable*, charismatic candidate. That's how (Bill) Clinton won, and that's how Obama won. All their other candidates in the past several decades didn't meet this very simple test, and lost. They should have learned in 2008, with Obama's huge success, how important charisma is, and how unpopular Hillary is, but nope, they had to double down with her in '16, and lose an election that they should have had in the bag.
Really, your reasoning seems to be assuming "they can't *possibly* be so stupid to make the same mistake a 3rd time". With these people, I just don't think that's a reasonable assumption. I really would not be surprised to see them push Hillary yet again.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday January 26 2018, @02:49AM (5 children)
New headline, "US ends support for Trump Administration by 2021".
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @03:31AM (4 children)
We can use congress to keep him in a box until then. But the odds keepers all still say that reelection rates will hold around 90-95%.
And right now Trump is the Darling of Davos.
We live in a sick world.
Our social security is in real danger.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 26 2018, @04:33AM (3 children)
I will just assume you are a boomer and address you as such.
Your social security is at stake, as a millennial I have never been under the false impression it will still be there for me. When I got hired to work for the state of oregon my boss told me not to count on my pension, social security, or my matched retirement to still be there based on chicago being able to weasel out of their agreements. I invest on my own and stack up assets to sell at a later date, to assume there will be anything left to America after the boomers wring it dry and die off is just insane.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @05:11AM (2 children)
Don't give me your crybaby bullshit. All contracts were signed and funds were secured. We have every right to expect them to be honored. We are entitled to our earned benefits. Yes, you are a typical millennial that refuses to acknowledge such things. And it's you people wringing the country dry with your weak ass democrats taking our money to bail out the banks and refusing to protect our, and even your own earned pensions. So take your whiny little ass back to your basement or cubicle, whatever, but don't touch what isn't yours.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 26 2018, @03:47PM (1 child)
We have every right to expect them to be honored. We are entitled to our earned benefits.
You being entitled to something because of contracts doesn't mean squat when the government decides to renege.
Yes, you are a typical millennial that refuses to acknowledge such things.
You're being stupid. He's not refusing to acknowledge that, he's acknowledging *reality*: regardless of the legal issues, those funds will probably not be there by the time he retires, or maybe even when you do. It's not his doing, it's yours: your generation is the one that succeeds the most at the polls, and chooses most of our leaders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @07:31PM
Nice blame passing there! How is it my fault if you people don't go out and vote?! And the people you vote for are just the same old democrats and republicans anyway. So you know where you can stuff it! This is what causes all our problems.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @03:37AM (1 child)
I support the ISS but I don't vote on single issues alone usually and there are so many other things to be concerned with. Someone needs to start a petitition to keep the ISS going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @06:23AM
Cool, I'll just dust off this one used to petition for Net Neutrality.