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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 25 2018, @11:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the wish-me-luck-as-you-wave-me-bye-bye dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 26 2018, @05:18AM (4 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday January 26 2018, @05:18AM (#628113) Journal

    Do the experts in the field agree?

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday January 26 2018, @06:34AM (3 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday January 26 2018, @06:34AM (#628127) Journal

    Well done, frojack! Two "yeses" would have sufficed. But it the science settled on this? From one of your sources:

    a subsequent decision by the Bush administration to retire the shuttle by the end of the decade.

    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

      by shrewdsheep (5215) on Friday January 26 2018, @11:27AM (#628214)

      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

      by TheRaven (270) on Friday January 26 2018, @12:45PM (#628233) Journal
      The ISS is in a horrible compromise orbit that makes maintenance more expensive than it should have been. People have been calling for the funding to be redirected towards science and away from a big political compromise of a dick-waving monument in orbit for over a decade.
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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @02:15PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 26 2018, @02:15PM (#628261)

      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.

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