No Shuttle Left Behind

July 03, 2008

Some folks have been wondering about the prospect of leaving a space shuttle behind at the International Space Station in a sort of semi-retirement. Here's the skinny from Wayne Hale, the former program manager now helping to transition NASA into a new era of human space exploration:

"There are a couple of reasons why this basically wouldn't work," Hale writes in his blog. "First of all the shuttle is primarily water cooled. That is, we use water evaporated (sublimated really) into space to cool the electronics. Water is a precious commodity on the ISS and is mostly recycled. If we can't use the electronics on the shuttle then it is basically a dark cave that is going to get cold in a hurry after the lights go out.

"Secondly, the weight of the shuttle will cause attitude control problems for the ISS over the long term. It's OK for a short term docked mission, but over the long term the control system would have a hard time compensating for it. But the biggest reason is this: how do we get the guys that flew up on the shuttle back? Sending more Soyuzes just to do that is probably cost prohibitive. So, look for a Space Shuttle Orbiter at a museum near you after they retire in 2010."