That's no moon...
Posted on 01/31/2010 12:49:09 AM PST by tlb
After more than a decade of construction, it is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.
And then?
"In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft," says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.
That's a polite way of saying that NASA will make the space station fall back into the atmosphere, where it will turn into a fireball and then crash into the Pacific Ocean. It'll be a controlled reentry, to ensure that it doesn't take out a major city. But it'll be destroyed as surely as a Lego palace obliterated by the sweeping arm of a suddenly bored kid.
This, at least, is NASA's plan, pending a change in policy. There's no long-term funding on the books for international space station operations beyond 2015.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A hundred billion dollar re-entry.
And no space station, no need for shuttles. It's back to 1959.
Ironic that the O is killing off space exploration to build trains....
And no Ares Constellation program if Obama gets it’s way.
However, Florida will get a government funded train set.
There has been at least one instance in which a satellite was orbited around the Moon from its original Earth orbit.
Might be a thought for the Space Station. Orbit it around the Moon for its next life.
Might make Moon exploration a bit easier.
I follow a blog by a very liberal astronomer and he said John McCain and Sarah Palin were ignorant funndies who would kill all science funding in this country and that Obama was very pro science.
That's no moon...
Dump Obama in the Pacific instead. He'll be less missed and his loss would save a lot more money! There's even precedent for such. Australia lost a PM swimming in the 60s and his body was never found. It's much neater than dropping a house on him.
Ironic that the O is killing off space exploration to build trains....
He's so desparate he's having to reach way back to an old role model. Mussolini won popular appeal by making the trains run on time.
At $45,662,100.46 per day the ISS doesn’t seem like too good of a deal now. I think NASA is already “fishing” for more $$ to keep it going past 2016 (like the Hubble “re-fi”). Most of the $$ is spent at the front end of a project like this...kinda stupid to only have a 6 year lifespan. Also, since it is the “International” station won’t the other countries have a say? Japan or Europe may want to take it over.
Maybe we can sell it to them in exchange for some the trillions of US Treasury Notes that they now hold.
What a typical Democrat move. The SSC would have employed people and advanced research for decades and decades. Here is what the Superconducting Super Collider site looks like today.
It never was a good deal. Space Station Alpha was part of Reagan's plan to bankrupt the Soviets. After their collapse, there was no good reason to build it.
It’s a fitting end for a massive boondoggle which has never done anything except keep NASA Astronauts employed. The fact that it took so long to get built that it’s useful life only exceeds it’s completion date by 6 years tells you everything you need to know about it’s usefulness. However, I would pay to see the reentry burn. That will be quite a light show.
No science is accomplished on the ISS. The Astronauts pretty much spend their time repairing what’s there or adding components to it.
Sigh. NASA doesn’t “maintain communications sattelites”. NASA doesn’t own them, they are for the most part owned by other govt agencies or private companies. We’ll have a NASA budget, we just won’t be wasting it on Astronauts.
Now is a fitting time for NASA to exit manned spaceflight and turn over LEO operations to private industry. Google Space-X, Bigelow Aerospace, Ad Astra. Those are just some of the startups (not to mention the big guys like Boeing etc.) that will take over the manned LEO missions and do it cheaper and faster than NASA can.
Sci fi story with some political punch on this subject...
But as usual, the luddites can't see any point in the only things that have one...
Perhaps a private company will have an incentive to listen when the head engineer says he has serious concerns about the loss of human life should the company attempt to launch with o-rings untested in 28 degree weather.
And from 1959, it will be a short step back to the 18th Century and windmills.
All brought to us by our progressive friends in both parties.
Trains which which no one will ride or want; trains which will get you to your detination slower that a car; trains which will need huge right of ways (sorry to comdem your farm, dream home, retirement village but it is for the greater good), the cost of which is NOT built into the dollar estimates.
Ain’t progressivism great!
We’re just going to love the 18th Century!
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