Hitching Rides

Too many times I have read the claim that with the retirement of the Space Shuttle this year NASA will be "hitching rides with the Russians" to the International Space Station. A number of writers have taken it upon themselves to stress that Shuttle retirement was a decision made by the Bush administration, not by the Obama administration, and although this is true I think it is really beside the point.

It has always been the plan to fly expedition members to the ISS on the Soyuz. That was the deal, the Shuttle builds the station and the Soyuz rotates the crew. Since late 2000, that's exactly what the Soyuz has done, and a permanent human presence has been maintained on the ISS. Every time the Shuttle flies to the ISS it is for a visit, of no more than 10 days as that is the limit of on-orbit endurance of the Shuttle.

If the shuttle wasn't retiring this year the missions they would be doing would be resupply - and maybe some more experimental hardware installations - the same kind of stuff they do now. What they wouldn't be doing, couldn't be doing, is delivering crew to stay on the station for any significant length of time.

Now, I can understand journalists, politicians, and dipshits on the Internet bemoaning the retirement of the Shuttle as the end of how NASA gets expedition members to the ISS - a position that is simply false in fact, as well as impractical on merit - but I have no idea why sensible educated people who have any idea how the ISS program operates would repeat this stupid meme; unless they are deliberately being dishonest.

Comments

  1. Anonymous9:30 PM

    One reason to consider is that the news media loves that status quo - see http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/30/newsweek-evan-thomas-status-quo-establishment-media-coverage-global-warming/.
    In my opinion, those "sensible educated people" are just too comfortable with the status quo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:19 AM

    Another reason is that we don't have much leverage in the area of price. It went up, it could go up again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:40 AM

    it is fair if the price goes up.

    there is no competition, so why wouldnt they try to raise the price when it is renegotiated?

    you bleeding heart liberals should let the free market act. sad how russia is more capitalist than america.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heinrich8:01 AM

    That's a nice point that I had not appreciated. With regard to crew transport for duty on ISS, the Shuttle has been out of the loop since last year. We have been wholly reliant on Soyuz for up- and down-transport of humans for a long time.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disabling OS-X Device Removal Warnings In Yosemite

Image
If you're anything like me you've probably seen the Disk Not Ejected Properly message so many times that you've forgotten how annoying it is.. despite the fact that you never even wrote anything to the usb drive that you're yanking out of your Mac the operating system insists that you remove it "correctly". You're supposed to click the eject button. Why? I dunno, Apple seems to think that if you can write to it then the operating system might have written to it - and being Apple, they probably have. Well ya know what? Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Note: this will not fix your external drive disconnecting when your Mac goes to sleep. For that problem try disabling "put hard drive to sleep when possible" in both the Battery and Power Adapter tabs of the OS energy saver settings. What appears below is a dirty hack for deliberately removing a warning that Apple insists on showing you every single time you yank out a usb stick. ...
Read more

Rebirth Of The Spaceship

Image
Over the last year the space advocate community has splintered into two major groups in answering the question "where should we go next?" Moon First or Mars First . This division was present in the Review of Human Spaceflight (aka Augustine) committee's final report in late 2009, with the surprising conclusion that there isn't the funds for either, suggesting a number of intermediate destinations first - including asteroids. However, as few people consider asteroids to be truly interesting destinations for the human utilization of space ( except me! ), the debate rages on. Many Moon First advocates are "Mars Next" advocates while most Mars First advocates are "Moon Again?" detractors. The former claim that Mars exploration will benefit from lunar exploration, particularly in experience and risk reduction, and perhaps the procurement of propellant. The latter claim that lunar exploration is just a distraction and want to avoid the risk of be...
Read more

Living Inside An Asteroid

Image
Deriders of the new NASA direction have latched on to the announced human asteroid mission in the 2025 timeframe as something they "can't imagine" and therefore is not worth doing. Of course, the administration is talking up the "science" that can be done on an asteroid, and how this could better inform us should the need arise to divert or destroy one that threatens Earth. This is good politics as nothing motivates like fear, but for those of us who think the human spaceflight program is really about preparing us to live at the future homes of humanity, asteroids would seem to be just a stop on the way - I disagree. As I've written previously, the new NASA direction isn't about asteroids - it isn't about destinations - it's about going and specifically, it's about going to Mars. I'm not sure NASA knows yet why they're going to Mars, but they're focusing on the technology to get there and get back safely, and some of the ...
Read more