NASA executive William Gerstenmeier, NASA's associate administrator in charge of the agency's manned space program, said this month, according to a report on the Ars Technica website, that NASA wants to end support for the International Space Station "as soon as possible" in order to focus on its plan to send Astronauts into deep space and later (in the 30s at least), to Mars
NASA official William Gerstenmeyer, NASA's associate administrator in charge of the agency's manned space program, said this month, according to a report on the Ars Technica website, that NASA wants to stop "as soon as possible" support for the International Space Station, in order to focus on its plan to send astronauts into deep space and later (in the 30s at least), to Mars. According to Gerstenmeier, American support for the station will continue at least until 2024, with a maximum extension until 2028. The meaning of the cessation of American support is, apparently, the end of the station's life and its destruction by entering the Earth's atmosphere.
The International Space Station began to be built in 1998 in an international effort of five partners - the USA, Russia, the European Union, Canada and Japan. So far all the partnerships, except for Europe, officially agreed To extend the life of the station until 2024. NASA too stamping most recently with Boeing on a $1.18 billion contract to continue maintaining the station and explore ways to extend the life of its hardware through 2028.
The International Space Station is one of the most expensive projects in history. Its total cost over the years is estimated, according to estimate The European Space Agency, about 100 billion euros. According to the report on the Ars Technica website, every year NASA invests about 3 billion dollars from its budget (estimated at about 18 billion dollars) to operate the station, and the costs may only increase over the years. Gerstenmeier said NASA would not be able to continue funding both the station and its program to send astronauts into deep space, where no astronauts have been sent since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. NASA first intends to carry out manned missions near the moon (but not land on it) and later, in the years The 30th at least, towards Mars.
Gerstenmeier's words are consistent with NASA's current (intentionally vague and flexible) plan, which she calls "The journey to Mars". According to this approach - NASA will transfer to private and commercial hands the field of "near-Earth space", meaning the orbital path near the Earth where the International Space Station resides, which is at an altitude of about 400 km. This is to "release" NASA from this role and allow it to develop the hardware required for deep space, such as the Orion spacecraft andThe SLS Space Launcher, whose first launch is expected in 2018 and will be one of the most powerful launchers in history.
This direction that NASA is planning has already begun to grow a first crop in the form of the Dragon and Cygnus cargo spacecrafts flying towards the International Space Station. SpaceX and Boeing are currently developing manned spacecraft for the International Space Station, which are expected to begin operating in 2017 or 2018.
However, until now, there was, and still is, behind these companies, a large-budget government agency that allows them to develop their space vehicles and launchers. It is hard to know what will happen to them without NASA's financial support. Gerstenmeier said that these companies now have another decade to continue developing their capabilities and economic opportunities in space, but emphasized that NASA does not see the success of these companies as a necessary goal on its way to deep space and Mars.
So what will happen after the International Space Station becomes history? There are several options and space stations that may be "replaced". China has announced that it plans to launch a permanent space station in the early XNUMXs. At the International Space Conference in Jerusalem last October, the chief designer of China's manned space program said that it works for international cooperation in its construction. It is currently unclear what will be included in this proposal, and in addition to that, China has not confirmed that it intends to develop a universal docking capability for the station, which would also allow non-Chinese spacecraft to dock there.
Another alternative might be an inflatable space station. Inflatable space vehicles Constructed of flexible materials and can be launched in a folded configuration and then inflated in space. Their advantage is that they weigh less than vehicles that are built of rigid materials, and can contain more volume. Bigelow Aerospace is currently developing such an inflatable vehicle, the machine B330, and its name was given to it because it contains a volume of 330 cubic meters. It weighs only 20 tons - and compared to the "Destiny" module on the International Space Station, which weighs 15 tons and contains only 106 cubic meters, it provides an advantage of 220% in volume, with only a 33% increase in weight. The component may be used either as a commercial space station that will be used, for example, as a "space hotel", but also perhaps by NASA as a vehicle for the stay of astronauts on long-term space missions, where it is impossible to be satisfied with only the limited volume of the Orion spacecraft. This is not science fiction - as Bigelow Aerospace has already launched Two experimental inflatable vehicles in 2006 and 2007 and is now awaiting the launch of another experimental module that has already been built, BEAM, which will team up with the International Space Station to test this technology, in preparation for the development of the much larger B330. The component was already supposed to be launched, but due to the failure of the last Falcon 9 launch, the mission was postponed to early 2016.
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So tell me "Anonymous" - what will they do in the spaceship after the plutonium and xenon gas run out, how will it be possible to continue further into deep space?
Snofkin - Life here is over anyway.
At least those hundred on Mars will survive. Maybe.
Wars have always been and always will be in every trip to Mars. Let's take Columbus' voyage or Amerigo Vespaucci's or Vasco da Gama's voyage as an analogy. Is the fact that money was spent on a project to discover a new world bad for the world and could it be used to improve life in the old world? I think not. The discovery of America led to the growth of a new world and 2 countries, the USA and Canada: a. Twice they saved the old world from itself (1914, 1939). B. The USA is built on the possibility of many nations merging and all of them merging into one entity, which made it a source of hope for all. Thus a journey to Mars. A humble beginning, but the idea: a chance to colonize the universe. Civilizations here that we have grown fond of, a chance for a new beginning.
It's amazing how much this space stupidity costs people in the world and benefits mainly a lot of people who receive salaries and government contracts.
First someone will establish a functioning colony on the moon and then we will see Mars. Even Antarctica doesn't have a functioning human colony without outside supplies, so are we talking about Mars?
Not to mention the destruction of the Earth in exchange for some maddened fantasy about an intergalactic civilization. After all, all the trillions of dollars that have been invested and will be invested will be able to save exactly how much of the planet? 100 people? Let them freeze there, breathe air from oxygen cylinders and be constantly afraid that they will have a hole in the ceiling and all the atmosphere will escape? Or they will starve before that and eat each other...
In the meantime, this money could be used to turn the earth into a paradise, save tens of thousands of species from extinction and save the future of the human race.
sad
An ion engine with a nuclear reactor - search Google for the words ion engine and NASA in English and see that this is one of NASA's intentions.
The logic is simple:
With a core the size of an orange, a nuclear reactor can provide motive power for over a decade. An ion engine is the way that man found to accelerate particles to a speed close to the speed of light and their momentum is high even if their mass is low. Metal is a source of ions that decays very slowly and is almost indestructible. The modern probes move with an ion engine and the next challenge is to provide propulsion by itself to drive a space station. To produce ions you need to produce a high voltage. To produce high voltage you need to produce low voltage (120 volts) and double it - which they know how to do. Up to tens of kilovolts is possible. To produce low voltage, an electric generator is needed, and it is driven by an electric reactor that heats steam. One of the challenges is to recycle the steam all the time. For all battleships this is how a nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier engine works.
What really excites me is the plasma engine based on a nuclear generator (the silence that will be on board! !)
Heat!
They will rebel there on Mars, so the powers will send an army there! Wake up!
I also believe that instead of each power developing its own space station, to unite forces, less ego.
The United States simply believes that it has accumulated all the knowledge for a trip to Mars: growing vegetables, producing oxygen, desalinizing water, an ion engine, a nuclear reactor with steam recycling for reuse to drive an electric generator, and systems that have not yet been developed but will be developed: artificial intelligence supports operations in the spacecraft and the colony, systems with self correction She believes that with the advantage you will get in Mars, the fact that they are "only" 250 million and China 1.5 billion will be bridged by all the advantages of spreading in space.
A colony on Mars would really break the bank, in the sense that the technology and effort has been focused on manned interstellar travel. Later things will develop: engines for movement at super speeds, spaceships resistant to superspeeds, a spaceship that is self-sustaining.
Sometimes there is a tendency to see the existing as understood above it, the space station is a base for research and learning about life in space
At the lowest possible costs because it is relatively close to the Earth, there was a huge investment to build it
It might be possible to include the Chinese instead of pushing them out to share costs, the research there is just at the beginning,
If we take two cultures, one culture that has learned to live in space and builds everything in space and obtains resources from asteroids of the kind that it is unable to preserve or to develop and also for energy it does not need the sun, compared to a culture whose existence requires a planet, which culture will have greater survival, The answer is clear, the culture that learned to live in space, if this is true it would be a tremendous achievement to land people on Mars and even establish a colony there,
The time has come to replace the outdated space station - and to think about a space station fixed on the moon - both on the side facing the earth and on the opposite side that will be connected by wiring between them - so that it will save a lot of costs with the utilization of the moon for the construction of telescopes and transmission and reception antennas on a much larger scale
The residents of the USA are descendants of the English.
They paid taxes to England and over the years rebelled,
They stopped paying taxes to England and went for independence.
Even in this Bible, in my opinion, this is what will happen and such a Mars colony at the end
Go for independence and break away from the USA or any other nation that sends them.
So it doesn't matter that much (in my opinion) which nation will get there.
And this is all evolution on one leg.
An unwise decision in my opinion that delays the journey to Mars. A vehicle for Mars will have to be built in a space station, in my opinion.
There is no contradiction between the 2 actions. The amount of challenges in reaching Mars, in my opinion, requires international cooperation. Today they do not know how to give life to the Mars team for more than two months and this is one of the reasons why not. The Americans are thinking about going it alone and taking over their exclusive Mars colony. Characterizes the level of civilization that humanity has reached: the functioning of states separately from each other. It is not enough for spreading in space.
The journey to Mars is full of challenges: a plasma engine of unprecedented sizes, nuclear propulsion, methods of existence on Mars: breath/water/food, self-repair systems on the journey to space and there that have not yet been developed, artificial intelligence at levels comparable to ours. There is no doubt that having a colony on Mars will be a milestone in human history.