There have been a couple of stories going around that are on that line between sorta-makes sense and WTF are they talking about?
The one that sorta makes sense is the story that Thursday (yesterday) Elon Musk said NASA should start working on taking the International Space Station out of service. It sorta makes sense because NASA is already working on deorbiting the ISS. After all, they gave SpaceX an $843 million contract to develop the deorbit vehicle last June. Musk's quote seems pretty reasonable; I mean, it might be wrong or it might be right but what he said makes sense.
“It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station.
It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility.
Let’s go to Mars.”
When pressed for an answer to "when" Musk replied that it's the president's call but he recommends two years, or 2027. Instead of the five years to 2030? How much does that save? Or what does it buy you?
The question of whether it's wrong or right applies to the middle line in that tweet (Xeet? What do we call these things, anyway?) There are several sides to this: from the purely political; that is, can it be done in congress as it now sits to whether or not there are worthwhile things that need to be done with the ISS.
In reality, NASA has only been fully utilizing the space station since late 2020, when it began to fly a full complement of astronauts thanks to SpaceX's Crew Dragon coming online. The agency says it has a lot of worthwhile scientific and human performance research to conduct over the next five years.
Don't forget that NASA has had problems with Russian modules on the ISS leaking precious air out of the station. This isn't the first case. While Boeing has a contract to keep the ISS working through the 2030 deorbit date, structural elements of the station have been in space for more than a quarter of a century and there are valid concerns about parts possibly failing. Neither of these is a pleasant thought.
NASA has already voiced support for not just one, but a population of privately developed and run space stations. None of those is in orbit and ready now, so we can't know that one or more private space stations could be working in Musk's "two years."
The other story is referring to Starliner-then-Crew-9 astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as being stranded in space. Stranded might have been an acceptable adjective last summer, before their long term solution to getting back down was arrived at, but now they're just ISS astronauts at the end of their mission; a mission that happened to last longer than originally planned - as they sometimes do. Maybe it's just my perception, but I think that people in the astronaut corps have the mindset that doing their job might entail serious disruptions to everyday life - and might even end their life. While I'm sure they miss their families, I'm equally sure they consider being in space for eight or nine months to be a privilege.
This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Roscosmos
The problem with such an off the cuff remarks as Musk's was can be interpreted in different ways. It is somewhat like "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". The listener hears the words and they create a meaning that may have little to do with the speakers intent.
ReplyDeleteIt would be funny if the deorbit vehicle that SpaceX provides is an actual Starship. After all, if Musk says they can start launching Mars missions in a year or so, then flying to the ISS and deorbiting or uplifting will be just as possible.
ReplyDeleteAs to the two Stayliner astronauts, apparently Musk approached NASA about bringing them down before the election and he says that was disapproved because of the Biden administrations hatred towards Musk.
"apparently Musk approached NASA about bringing them down before the election and he says that was disapproved because of the Biden administrations hatred towards Musk."
DeleteThat is 100% believable - the Bidenista regime was as petty and nasty as imaginable.
We are definitely going to need new bingo cards.
ReplyDeleteI merely wonder how many of the current astronaut corps would LOVE to be either Ms. Williams or Mr. Wilmore and be "stranded on ISS"?
ReplyDeleteExactly! That and if either of them really love being there.
DeleteI'd call it "Xitter", with "x" as "sh". So then "xeet" is entirely appropriate. Come to think of it, such an appellation would've been applicable even before Musk bought it.
ReplyDeleteIn order to accommodate Russia and because we were too cheap to do it all ourselves, the ISS was put into an orbit they could reach economically, bt which is ultimately worthless for anything but being where it is, and doing what it does-- which is essentially nothing truly transformationally useful.
ReplyDeleteDe-orbit that aging junkyard before someone gets hurt, put one up in an orbit with future utility as a staging stop for the Moon or Mars, and single source it with quality modules instead of Russian spit-and-baling-wire Cold War-era floating space junk.
Probably save 10-20 lives in the bargain, both American and Russian.
Once it's gone, Russia is never doing anything useful in space again, for anything this side of 2100, and flying the leftovers into a flaming hulk in some remote oceanic trench spares us 100,000 pieces of floating space debris for the next 200 years.
Win win win win win.
Its become a flying legacy space junkyard. Too bad it can't be stored in a reclamation "yard", lot of valuable mass costing a shit-ton of hard money to put into orbit, and nothing is ever really wasted in space, one day soon somebody will set up a solar smelter, and all those expensive alloys its made from become raw stock to manufacture more things, maybe push it out to a Lagrange point, only needing small thruster units to maintain station. If it can be de-orbited it can be orbited to a Lagrange point. It just strikes me as totally stupid to send it all back, only to send more mass up to replace it, certainly a lot less expenditure storing in the long run. Mass is mass in space. Useful mass either has to boost from the bottom of earths gravity well or it gets dropped into earths gravity well, and which costs less fuel? Someone say, comes up with cheap "omnivore" drives, nothing super efficient, but a simple drive for say space tugs and open people cycles you sit on in your space suit, which use any "dust", all you need is a way to reduce all that mass into the correct size particles, thats quite a bit of fuel potentially sitting in that old space station. Look how they used two kinds of low thrust orbits last few months for the moon landers, kind of mini Hohmon orbits really.
ReplyDeleteISS is waaaaay past its "sell by" date, time to push it up to a Lagrange Point and recycle the metal in orbit in a decade or three. As for Musk offering to go rescue them, it was pooh-poohed because we couldn't show how incompetent the Old Guard Spacecraft Manufactur(ers) are. He could have/would have charged the relief launch to Boeing, they deserved it.
ReplyDeleteAs for what you call an X post, you call it... waaaaait for it... an X post.
We need a new Space Station, Let's get Vast and others up there ASAP in a *decent* orbit, one that says "screw you" to the Russians.
Dang, I still had hopes they'd boost it up higher and turn it into Musk's secret headquarters.
ReplyDelete