Is This A Good Idea? De-orbiting the International Space Station?

September 28, 2009

Most of the time, this blog strives to make a case for some grand, if outlandish, notion, such as building a space elevator, terraforming Mars or developing warp drives for spacecraft. This week, however, we’re going to change-up a bit, and instead look at something that I think is a totally dumb idea: NASA’s intention to junk its $100 billion investment in the International Space Station,just a few years after it is finished.

Huh? (Or as my ten-year-old son would say, “What the freak?”) But I kid you not. According to this recent Washington Post article, the U.S. space agency plans to get rid of the ISS, the football-field-sized satellite that is the largest and most costly spacecraft ever built.

"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.

Apparently, the big issue is cost. As this report by the advisory U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee lays out in a sobering chart, the approximately $20 billion a year that we’re presently budgeting for NASA simply isn’t enough to support the ISS—which costs the U.S. around $2 billion a year to maintain—and also build the Ares V heavy launch vehicle and the Orion spacecraft that NASA would use to send astronauts first back to the Moon and then eventually to Mars.

You may be thinking: So what? Indeed, to some of you with libertarian, anti-internationalist leanings, the ISS is probably the primo example of what’s wrong with both the space program and the U.S. government itself. When the U.S. and the Russian Federation launched the project in 1993, it was supposed to be completed by the mid-1990s and cost in the low tens of billions. Not only has it cost vastly more and taken more than a decade longer than envisioned. That’s so long that the project arguably has outlived what cynics would say were its real reasons for existence—to give the Space Shuttle program (which is due to be phased out in 2011) a destination, and to provide a steady gig for former Soviet space scientists who might otherwise go to work building missiles for third-world dictators or terrorists. Add to that the fact that, according to the web site What It Costs, the U.S. so far has shelled out $100 billion, which seems to be the lion’s share of the tab for the ISS. (Curiously, nobody seems to be able to say precisely how much the Russians contributed, though according to the news site RussianSpaceWeb.com, circa 2008 they had budgeted about a modest $3.9 billion toward the completion of their section of the ISS.)

Beyond that, some critics find the amount of science accomplished for that price on the ISS to be pretty underwhelming. In 2008 NASA compiled this report listing its experimental accomplishments, but good luck downloading it from the agency’s molasses-like server. (Try this more succinct “Uses of the ISS” article from HowStuffWorks.com instead. Indeed, as Houston Chronicle science blogger Eric Berger reports, Norman Augustine, chair of the committee that’s considering the space program’s future, has openly questioned the value of the ISS.

If one accepts that much of the scientific community believes there's no scientific value in the international space station, and setting aside international relations, I understand that its value is as a testbed for living in space and eventually going to Mars. But we've already said that the moon is our testbed for going to Mars. So why do we need the station as a testbed?

Okay. So the ISS has been incredibly expensive and so far it hasn’t accomplished all that much. But trashing it is even dumber. Some perspective here: Even at $100 billion, the ISS cost us a little more than half what taxpayers have had to spend so far to bail out American International Group, after the latter made bets on derivatives contracts that it couldn’t cover. When we’ve already spent that humongous sum, what’s a couple of billion more each year to keep it up and running for a few more years? And if the research accomplished so far hasn’t been so earthshaking, why don’t we just push the scientific community to come up with better experiments that have more of an upside, in terms of both space exploration and industrial applications on Earth? I mean, it’s a space station, for Jiminy Cricket’s sake. There’s got to be some cool stuff that we can still use it for.

So what do you think? Express your opinion below.

A Space Debris Dustbuster?

March 27, 2009

What if NASA launched a spacecraft specially designed not for research or space exploration, but to pick up the increasing amount of trash accumulating in orbit and increasingly endangering satellites and astronauts?

Keep reading...there's more!

Space Elevator?

June 27, 2008

First, a shout-out to reader Imperator D, who turned me on to this idea with his comment about a previous blog on the question of whether NASA should go back to the moon or straight to Mars. Imperator wrote that

“The priority for low and high orbit human endeavors is to build a space elevator. This would make construction of a large vessel easier.”

Sounds perfectly logical, huh? Except that you may be wondering: What in the Robert Heinlein is a space elevator? 

Allow me to explain. For most of the space-faring era, humans have relied upon powerful rockets to put satellites, probes and manned spacecraft into space. The Space Shuttle, for example, is propelled at liftoff by a pair of 650-ton solid rocket boosters that are jettisoned, retrieved and refilled with fuel for reuse in a future mission. For the next generation of missions to the moon and beyond, NASA is developing the massive Ares V cargo launch vehicle, which it hopes to have in ready in time for a manned lunar mission in 2020.

Should NASA Revisit the Moon First, or Send a Manned Mission Straight to Mars?

June 05, 2008

Before I get into my usual rambling screed, let’s pause to give a well-deserved shout-out to NASA, whose Phoenix Mars Lander just achieved the first successful soft landing on Mars since Viking 1 and 2 did it back in 1976. (If you’re wondering why that feat is so impressive, consider that it required the spacecraft, among other things, to slow from its initial reentry speed of 12,000 miles per hour to virtually a dead stop in a matter of seven minutes.) Here’s a video clip from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that shows some of the initial images that Phoenix has transmitted:

Unlike the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers, which have been exploring the Martian surface since 2004, Phoenix is going to stay in one spot near the Martian north pole and use its robotic arm to dig into the surface. Using its onboard robotic laboratories, it will analyze soil and ice samples in search of organic material and other signs that life exists on the planet, or at least once existed there. (By the way, for the latest on Phoenix’s activities on Mars, check out Mars Daily , a news Web site devoted to the planet.)

The successful Phoenix landing got me thinking again about the prospects for eventual human colonization of Mars.

Do We Need a Crash Effort to Thwart Killer Asteroids?

January 04, 2008

Astronomers’ recent announcement that an asteroid has about a 1-in-25 chance of smashing into the surface of Mars brought back the memory of those alarming headlines in 2002, when a 1,000-to-1,300-foot-long rock named 2001 YB5 hurtled toward Earth. What CNN labeled the "killer asteroid" turned out to miss our planet by 375,000 miles, about 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the moon. But by asteroid standards, that’s way too close for comfort.

Sure, sizeable asteroids don’t strike the Earth very often — on average, an object 1 kilometer (.6 miles) or larger hits every 500,000 years. But when they do, all hell usually breaks loose. Scientists believe an asteroid 6 miles in diameter struck the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, releasing energy that was the equivalent of 100 million megatons of TNT and generating a planet-wide heat pulse so intense that according to one recent study, it probably killed off the dinosaurs in a matter of hours. In 1908, another asteroid probably caused the Tunguska Event in Siberia, a mysterious aerial explosion that generated enough force to level 80 million trees and cause an earthquake estimated at 5 on the Richter scale.

Nobody is sure how many potential killer asteroids are out there, but astronomers already have discovered more than 5,000 Near Earth Objects (NEOs) — that is, asteroids, comets and meteors whose orbits bring them within 124 million miles of Earth. About 900 of these have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), objects at least 500 feet in diameter that come within 46.5 million miles of our planet (about half the distance between Earth and the sun).

Even the least imposing PHAs have the potential to cause a devastating tsunami, while the bigger ones could wipe out an entire city and kill millions of people. (Imagine, for example, what would have happened if the Tunguska Event object had exploded over Moscow.) But it’s the exceedingly remote but nevertheless possible collision with a Yucatan Event-sized asteroid that really gives cause for concern, because it could wipe out the great majority, if not all, of the living creatures on Earth.

So if we’re threatened with the prospect of annihilation from the cosmos, what are we doing about it? If life were a Hollywood movie — say, the 1998 Hollywood disaster flick Armageddon — NASA simply would launch Bruce Willis and his intrepid team into space on a mission to land on the giant asteroid, drill an 800-foot-deep hole, drop in a nuclear bomb, and then remotely detonate it, cutting the PHA precisely in half so that both pieces narrowly miss Earth. (As the Bad Astronomy blog notes, splitting an asteroid in half might well cause one of the pieces to hit Earth with even greater velocity.) In reality, NASA isn’t doing much at this point beyond surveying space and attempting to identify and chart the NEOs and PHAs out there, a project for which the government has allocated a relatively minuscule $4.1 million a year. (NASA hopes to have that job 90 percent complete by 2020.) A 2007 NASA report to Congress only briefly touches upon possible killer-asteroid mitigation strategies. Instead of trying to split an asteroid into pieces, scientists have contemplated using the gravitational attraction of a giant spacecraft to pull the asteroid in a different direction, or using a giant mirror to focus solar energy on the asteroid’s surface and boil off material, creating thrust that would change its path.

In order to actually be able to do any of these things in the foreseeable future, however, we’d likely have to allocate many billions of dollars to an effort vastly more ambitious than the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program to put men on the moon. Developing effective asteroid-diverting technology might well divert resources and attention away from other important priorities, such as the efforts to mitigate global warming. On the other hand, if a killer asteroid strikes Earth, we might not be around to worry about climate change any more. So what do you think? Should we launch a crash program to deal with the threat of killer asteroids? Offer your opinion below.

Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Stake Out a Policy Position on UFOs?

November 08, 2007

In addition to the Iraq war, global warming and other important world issues, voters and the news media have been pressing 2008 presidential candidates for their positions on extraterrestrial matters as well. Here’s a video clip of former New York mayor and GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani at a town meeting in New Hampshire, being quizzed about how he would respond to an attack on the U.S. by space aliens. (“Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," was Hizzoner’s response.) According to this Fort Worth Star-Telegram story, New Mexico Gov. and Democratic contender Bill Richardson revealed to a questioner at a Texas event that as a member of Congress, he had asked for access to U.S. Department of Defense files on the infamous Roswell UFO incident, but was rebuffed because the information was classified. (“That ticked me off,” he added.) And in the most recent Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich confirmed a published claim that he had once seen a gigantic triangular craft hovering silently for 10 minutes over the home of actress-turned-New Age maven Shirley MacLaine.  “I did," Kucinich admitted. "It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It's like, it's unidentified; I saw something."  As this article from Rawstory.com recounts, Kucinich subsequently contended — not quite correctly — that more Americans have seen UFOs  than approve of President Bush’s job performance. (According to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll, 34 percent of Americans believe in UFOs, roughly the same number who support Bush.)

The Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, is probably a bit too cautious to speak out about the possibility of alien spacecraft visiting Earth. Nevertheless, Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein reports that Stephen Bassett, chief lobbyist for the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee, is leaning toward supporting the former first lady, in part because Clinton adviser (and her husband’s former chief of staff) John Podesta has advocated declassification and release of Defense Department files on a purported UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pa., in 1965. (“It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon," Podesta told CNN in 2002.)

Some might consider the UFO issue a bit too, well, wacky for a potential president to even bother thinking about. But others, such as Richardson, argue that it’s time for full disclosure of whatever the government knows about UFO incidents, if only in the interest of transparency and restoring trust that has been eroded by the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy. Give us your opinion here.

Big-Fix for Global Warming?

October 10, 2007

Sure, the simplest way to stave off a potential climate catastrophe from global warming would be to reduce carbon emissions drastically on a worldwide basis. But that would require an international political consensus; substantial investment in replacing coal, oil and other dirty energy sources with alternative sources, such as wind farms; and sacrifices like driving our cars less or unplugging energy-hogging appliances. Here’s a list of 10 non-drastic measures that ordinary people can take.

Unfortunately, that’s all easier said than done.

That’s why some scientists are proposing big-fix geoengineering solutions to global warming. Some scientists, for example, have suggested altering the atmosphere by launching an armada of balloons that would pump microscopic particles into the stratosphere to block some of the sunlight reaching Earth, as volcanic eruptions have occasionally done. Others have advocated deployment of giant orbiting mirrors, or suggested fertilizing ocean waters with iron to stimulate the growth of carbon dioxide-absorbing phytoplankton. But there’s a catch. Some of these solutions would cost enormous amounts of money, while critics argue that such massive geoengineering projects might possibly backfire and wreak even greater havoc upon the planet.

So what do you think? Which technological big-fix seems most doable to you? Would the risks be justified by the benefit? Join in the debate and post your comments below.