Using ISS Needs To Extend Shuttle - Update

Extending the shuttle will just keep us parked in LEO that much longer. Let Methuselah (STS) into that good night We can resupply ISS unmanned the Russians have pretty much got it down to a science. Putting more effort and resources into construction and refueling on orbit to have the capability for BEO is what we all want. BEO exploration is the proverbial good that laid the golden egg.

Damn The Gravity!

What happens when the starboard rotary joint gets fouled again...how in the world do we get the replacement there? Only the shuttle! I'll bet we lose the ISS because of just that problem. I can hear it now; "We can only have 3 crew up there since the array can't track the sun properly." Then we'll hear; "It's much to costly to keep the ISS going with only 3 crew...best to just cut our loses, the controlled reentry over the south Pacific is scheduled for..."

Good for Senator Hutchinson. I'm glad someone is approaching this from a technical and investment standpoint and not from the political end with only wishful thinking taking precedence.

It is absolutely foolhardy to plan to keep ISS operating without a full logistics and repair capability. The President is risking $100 billion investment by the American taxpayer.

The Obama-Bolden plan has not been thought out, is neither complete nor an integrated approach, and needs a serious rethinking.

Obama changed his mind on keeping ISS flying and he can change his mind on Shuttle too.

While everyone has been focusing on the $50M that will go to Russia for launching astronauts aboard the Soyuz, once STS is shipped off to the Smithsonian, what I haven't heard, and perhaps KBH is trying to bring to light is, what will it cost the US to pay it's ISS partners to bring up logistics to the ISS between now and 2020?

And, what are the supplies that are needed to sustain the crew, how much is left over for payloads/scientific experiments, and who pays for all of that?

Certainly losing the up mass and up volume capacity of the STS is going to be significantly missed, but I haven't heard how the other partners are going to make up for this, or what is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN with the ending of STS.

Anyone out there know the plans?

Libby, Obama never changed his mind on keeping ISS flying. Keeping it flying was always part of the new plan. The only thing that could be called a change of mind might be keeping the Orion as a CRV, and even then it's covered by the Administration's declared intention to review Constellation to see which pieces might have value.

"Obama never changed his mind on keeping ISS flying. Keeping it flying was always part of the new plan. The only thing that could be called a change of mind might be keeping the Orion as a CRV"

ISSVet - I think you are confused.

If you look at the 'sand chart' that Hanley and the Constellation people have shown for the last 4 years, it showed ISS going to $0 in 2015-16 and the money all going to Constellation. It showed Shuttle going to $0 in 2010-11. You seem to now be confusing the announced Feb 1 plan vs the Obama Apr 15 statement. That was when Obama added back a super liteweight Orion as a CRV. Obama changed his mind from his previous announcement. Obama - Bolden, per the Augustine recommendations, announced on Feb 1 they were not going to ditch ISS after all, but they would continue with the plan to shut down Shuttle.

The NASA management has caused much confusion on the viability of continuing Shuttle. Wayne Hale has said for years that 'the horse has left the barn and Shuttle cannot be turned around'. His successor John Shannon has said that Shuttle can be turned around. Suppliers have generally not gone away, just no longer producing some needed components. There are 5 or 6 ETs in various stages of assembly that could be started up, and from the time the word is given it will be about 2 years to have the first of the 'new' ETs in-flight. Shannon has said, that keeping Shuttle makes sense if the HLV makes use of Shuttle components. He's said that if they are only bringing workers and companies back for a year or two, he'd prefer they not do it at all.

For more than I decade I have been worried by the shuttle funding trap that NASA is caught in and agree with those who think NASA desperately needs to move beyond the shuttle. However, from the reality of where NASA is at this point in time (and putting aside the finger pointing of how this happened), Senator Hutchison's plan makes a lot of sense and looks like it may well be the best way to get NASA back on track. I am decidedly not a shuttle hugger, but I enthusiastically agree with this plan and hope the Senator succeeds.

I've gone back and forth on ending shuttle myself and I agree. We need to fly her longer, congress needs to PONY up the funds to do so though.

Things change, I could accept shuttle gone if serious human lunar goals remained. But now?????

And if ISS needs to be bailed out of a bad way by shuttle someday, ISS being our only real human space effort right now?...
Yeah, keep shuttle flying a while at least until we get some serious years out of ISS research.

What happens when the starboard rotary joint gets fouled again...how in the world do we get the replacement there? ...

One method of getting large items like rotary joints to the ISS is launch the module on an EELV. Once the module is in orbit near the ISS use an Cygnus with an arm as a docking tug. The tug passes the module to the ISS's own arm.

The tug could be flying in 2 to 3 years time.

Finally, someone that makes sense, Sen. Hutchison. And just what will the cost be from the Russians asides form putting our astronauts to the ISS at $50 mil a pop ???What will the tonnage coast be and how many times will the ISS need to be re-supplied....lets see the $$$ figure on that. Again, the administrations lack of details....You think they would of hammered this all out before hand, no...
lets make this up as we go and let the critics fill in the gaps and make us look like we know what we are doing....not! Let face it, the Shuttle is the work horse and there is no other vehicle in the near future that can do the job. I don't care what the commercial sector says, they are just a bunch of rocket hobbyist that have enough in the piggy bank to try their luck, and that's a gamble I'm not ready to take. They lack tried and true experience, man-rated know how and capacity. This is a real pipe dream and a real slippery-slope the administration is taking the American people down and using our TAX DOLLARS to boot! LEO and BEO are two different program and need two different visions. Also, lets uncouple NASA from the political process so we wouldn't be saddled by each Presidential astronaut dream.We need a NASA program the can guide itself, without the politics and the money begging every year....how can you sustain a space exploration program when the funding/direction is at the whim of Congress and the President?

Wayne Hale is right. Unless the US has lots of money to burn...which by the way we are still recovering from the worst recession in the history of the US...we can't revive the Shuttle. The money is just not there.

Almost 10% of America is unemployed (and those are just the ones still looking for jobs). How can we be so arrogant to think it is ok to expand the deficit for the Shuttle Program? The poles just don't show that American's support HSF or the Shuttle enough to spend over 2 Billion a year on antiquated technology. Oh and by the way there are holes in the gulf spewing oil. How many more people will be unemployed because of that? How many billions of dollars will be required to clean up that mess? When you are in a hole, you need to stop digging.

Shannon's dream of being the Shuttle Czar needs to be laid to rest. There will never be a good time to end the Shuttle program, and you want NASA to continue to throw money into a vehicle that will eventually blow up again...and no one will survive again. I don't think NASA can survive another Shuttle disaster caused by arrogant management. And we have plenty of that.

NASA needs to move on. Let's go explore some asteroids. I think America can understand the importance of that.

Good thoughts Space Minion. The thing too many space geeks, and I am one, don't think about is the really big picture. NASA does not have the money, nor does the federal government, to do all this at the same time. That is simply the reality. If we continue shuttle we spend a minimum of $2B a year to do it. And we will still pay the Russians since we need the rescue capability so US astronauts will ride up and down on Soyuz no matter what happens to shuttle, result: no savings for station crew, shuttle or not.

If we are going to ever go to BEO no matter what the destination, the money we do get has to be put into technology for that. I do think we need to define and start design of an HLV soon, not 5 years from now. And personally I think the moon is the most logical near term destination while asteroids can be considered. Mars is simply not reasonably attainable without serious breakthrough technologies.

However Minion Shannon did post his true thoughts on a space blog and is fundamentally actually against continuing shuttle and he listed 3 or 4 very rationale reasons why. He also stated his supplier comments were taken out of context. Suppliers can be brought online he stated but the press didn't list the costs and other problems inherent in doing that nearly as loudly as they listed it can be done.

But you have listed the reality that the congressmen from the space states are truly pushing extension much more to keep money in their states than anything else. If Hutchinson, and Kosmas or most of the others, were from New York I would bet a bunch of money she would have never introduced this bill. Keeping the federal budget within bounds and reducing the deficit only matter when someone else suffers is the congressional mantra. More pork for my state is just fine.

There are no replacement SARJ joints. The cuurent problem is with the inner race ring. If it material fails to the point it can no longer be used there is a spare outer race ring that the joint will be moved to.

Despite all the hand wringing here there is in fact an ISS logistical plan. All of the spares that are so large that they require Shuttle to bring them up are being flown to the Station by the Shuttle before it's retirement. The curently existing fleet of Progress, ATV, and HTV can provide the remaining required logistical resupply. When commercial cargo comes on line the resupply will become even more robust. You don't need Shuttle to keep flying ISS and there is no need to risk crew lives flying more Shuttle missions that aren't required or provide value worth the risk. First tenent of Operational Risk MAnagement, never accept additional risk unless the additional value outweighs the risk.

"a vehicle that will eventually blow up again... and no one will survive again. I don't think NASA can survive another Shuttle disaster"

I was thinking the same thing. Now that I think about it, though, I wonder what the real chances are of this? In both of the prior losses, the cause was something that was understood by a few, but not widely perceived as something that was both i) likely, and ii) bad enough to cause a LoV event. Everyone now understands those, and keeps a close eye on them.

So my guess is that if we lose another shuttle, it will be something we don't current perceive as a problem, something that isn't being watched as closely. Maybe some sort of catastrophic SSME failure? But I don't know if we know enough to estimate those odds well enough. One thing is for sure, though - the only way you debug complex systems is through failure...

"Let's go explore some asteroids. I think America can understand the importance of that."

I don't think they do, actually. Not everyone is a space/science nut.

"NASA needs to move on. Let's go explore some asteroids. I think America can understand the importance of that."

Do you really think things will go that far? My concern is that, around 2012, post-shuttle, with no US crew launch system in sight, the whole thing will be quietly and permanently shelved. NASA (at least the HSF end) will shrivel to a small agency for preparing scientists for trips to the ISS. No other element will be required for that end and thus will be de-funded.

The commercial space providers will eventually find their way into LEO and will certainly find US Govt money available for them to carry those scientists instead of the Russians. However, should any of them develop capabilities to go BEO, they will need to look elsewhere for funds as the Federal Gov't won't be interested. Elsewheres that will include people with Russian, Arabic and Chinese as their first languages.

SpaceX orbiting the Moon based on Russian, Chinese and UAE venture capital? It is all too possible.

Without additional funding a shuttle extension eats up the BEO money.

You can't remove all risk from ISS. Even with shuttle, we could lose it.

NASA HSF is a luxury the nation can ill afford. So the idea of extending Shuttle is a non starter. Obamaspace is all about attempting to cheapen HSF access to space because the existing paradigm will not work anymore.

Lets hope it works.

"SpaceX orbiting the Moon based on Russian, Chinese and UAE venture capital? It is all too possible."

I actually think that's somewhat unlikely. If there's anything that can light a fire under Congress, it's the threat of someone else doing something we haven't done before (and I stress that- if someone was doing a repeat of Apollo, I don't think there would be much noise- if someone was building a lunar base, yeah, people would probably take notice).

Secondly, Russia doesn't have the funds do much of anything right now, and China and the UAE are potentially unstable in the long term (China because a lot of their economic growth is based at least in part on currency manipulation (plus the fact they're developing a middle class and the government has no idea how to deal with it), UAE because they're entirely dependent on the petroleum market). India, on the other hand, I feel is much more likely to develop a major space program. However, of the rising powers, India is also the friendliest of the U.S., and I would not be surprised if some sort of collaborative venture emerged.

I think that I should clarify my point:

I wasn't talking about SpaceX flying a BEO mission for the governments of any of the countries mentioned. Although the money in question is, ultimately (at least in China and the UAE) controlled by what is effectively the government, at least on the books, it would be private investment in the technology. Expect a lot of thought being given in Congress to allowing such investment whilst preventing any technology transfer or even forcible relocation of the companies involved overseas.

I'd like to see the spending plan that says NASA will put billions into 'game-changing' technologies without a program even being established. How and where will that money be spent ?

The entire idea that Obama and Bolden are proposing is the same idea Obama put forward early in his campaign, which was to put NASA into a five year hiatus and use the money elsewhere.

As far as the US inability to afford space, that is nonsense. The NASA budget is minuscule as compared with the overall budget. Its 1/3 the military space budget. Even the deficit which is often touted as being the reason for the US demise is no where near as bad as in past generations.

For heavy lift, the real answer, the technical answer, is to start with what we have, which is the Shuttle hardware heritage. And you do not start down that path by shutting Shuttle down now and coming back in five years to restart it. And none of the commercial expendables provide that launch capacity, or will anytime in the foreseeable future with a cost anywhere comparable to what Shuttle already offers. Without that HLV capacity then you have shut down the asteroid or any other exploration program, because there is and will be no ability to launch module sized payloads. Obama is about to piss away an enormous US investment with nothing in the plan to replace it.

Folks:

Regardless of whether we're for or against termination, when it comes down to it, we do love the Shuttle, don't we.

Let's face it. One of the reasons the Shuttle Program ran so long is because it's kind of... sexy. I mean, like, large crews, heavy payload capacity, leading technology that no other country could match (although the Soviets came darn close) and individual Shuttles we could bond with (and mourn the loss of like it was another crew member) instead of one mission, one (small) museum piece. Even if the Orion capsule could be reused a few times I'd find it hard to bond with a 5 meter cone.

It almost didn't matter what the Shuttles mission was. In fact, it's mission was changed more then once through fate and opportunity. The Shuttle has "capability" more then a "mission" and it has been used in ways the designers wouldn't have thought possible.

I think that any way forward has to deliver on capability more than mission. Do some research into the Dream Chaser from Spacdev. That comes as close to the Shuttle in terms of human space flight. It provides almost all the crew capability of the Shuttle and some of the payload capacity of the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. The Delta IV Heavy has almost the payload capacity of the Shuttle and a 5 meter fairing. Put the two together and you keep the capacity, improve safety and hopefully reduce costs. But most of all, it looks like you're keeping capacity and moving forward at the same time.

If NASA wants a human space flight program it can call it's own then it should "absorb" the Dream Chaser as a "follow up" program to the Space Shuttle. After all, most of the Dream Chaser design came from government shops anyway. Spacdev could become the "contractor" for the Dream Chaser spacecraft much as Rockwell was for the orbiter.

Also, using the Orion capsule as a "Crew Return Vehicle" is a great idea that could be leveraged for beyond earth orbit missions too. Having an escape capsule with long term on-orbit storage time means that it can be, like, an escape capsule. You don't have to use it. All beyond earth orbit missions should have earth orbit as the final destination. That way, each Orion capsule could perform multiple missions. Service modules could be swapped out to increase the capsules life on-orbit. Use a reusable spacecraft like the Dream Chaser to get the crew up and down.

Maybe not as "sexy" a space program as the Shuttle but, as I've said, it would at least would look like a step forward.

I'll miss the Shuttle but I won't miss the anxiety I feel during launches and landing.

tinker

Despite all the hand wringing here there is in fact an ISS logistical plan. All of the spares that are so large that they require Shuttle to bring them up are being flown to the Station by the Shuttle before it's retirement. ...

Does the plan assume the ISS is deorbited in 2015 or 2020? Keeping the ISS flying for an extra 5 years is likely to need more spares, some of which may be large. The replacement parts may actually need making.

"NASA HSF is a luxury the nation can ill afford. So the idea of extending Shuttle is a non starter. Obamaspace is all about attempting to cheapen HSF access to space because the existing paradigm will not work anymore.

actually it works quite well - why don't ya go help SpaceX with their low cost safety plan:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58855/title/Preventing_disastrous_offshore_spills_may_require_space-program_diligence

dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright

Plan covers out through 2020. Nobody who works ISS thought the 2015 date was realistic given the assembly delays from the Russian Service Module slips and Columbia RTF. Once the IPs proposed extension it was a done deal since NASA never says no to the IPs and we always jump through hoops to accomadate them. Program was already updating the logistical plan long before the new plan officially blessed the 2020 date.

Where will the fuel tanks come from? NASA is mothballing the tools at the MAF where tanks are built, cutting off long lead suppliers and releasing workers. It would be very expensive to start up again.

"I'll miss the Shuttle but I won't miss the anxiety I feel during launches and landing."

My thoughts exactly. (Not to mention the price tag on each flight!)

It was a really cool vehicle, an incredible technological achievement, and we learned a great deal from it - but it's not the way forward.

"The entire idea that Obama and Bolden are proposing is the same idea Obama put forward early in his campaign, which was to put NASA into a five year hiatus and use the money elsewhere."

I think you've managed to put your finger on the one thing we can be certain the plan "Obama and Bolden" are proposing IS NOT. There's a simple reason for that: math. How much is the NASA budget proposed to *decrease* over the next five years?

Oh, yeah. Doesn't work, right?

Where will the fuel tanks come from? NASA is mothballing the tools at the MAF where tanks are built, cutting off long lead suppliers and releasing workers. It would be very expensive to start up again.

Part of the rush to get the DIRECT HLV (J-130) funded is so that production of (modified) tanks can restart whilst there are still people who know how to make the tanks around.

"I think you've managed to put your finger on the one thing we can be certain the plan "Obama and Bolden" are proposing IS NOT. ... How much is the NASA budget proposed to *decrease* over the next five years?"

The key word there being 'proposed'. There's no guarantee it will work that way - the administration might have guessed that without any firm plan, in times of constricted national budgets that giant pot of R+D money would be a target for Congress to raid.