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.