New plan to defund space station opens up some surprising possibilities | Hacker News Reader

New plan to defund space station opens up some surprising possibilities

nbcnews.com

61 pointsgvb45 comments

In the end the US has no clear space strategy and no goals. Every incoming president declares a new program for PR purposes, doesn't fund it and forgets about it then. I think best would be to fund NASA with a fixed amount and let the scientists battle it out what to do. It makes me sad that Congress forces NASA into silly projects like the SLS.

And that pattern is exactly the reason I’m in favor of restructuring NASA. Get them out of the “big project to nowhere” business and make them a “science and space traffic control” organization. Maybe even split those two operations off to the FAA and the NSF (or other relevant agencies).

I like NASA, I love (most of) what they’ve done, but they’re increasingly just an expensive political tool.

The contractors who build our rockets our the same ones who build [our] war machine. These projects have been, all the way back to Kennedy, about keeping the military industrial complex in business.

Another route to go is not incompatible with SpaceX’s mission (I’m not suggesting Musk will save us, just that he’s not as wrong as the feds).

Use space flight to prop up the industrial complex instead. We have converted that to military in times of war before. We can do it again if we need to. Stop indulging in war fantasies and get to the belts. Learn if it’s possible to refine materials in low g. Start building things. Destinations.

I think it was a little bit more directed than that - a way to conduct advanced ballistic missile research, and to show off how good your ballistic missiles were, without looking too warlike.

Before the invention of the Minuteman, the space program was using the same rockets as the ICBMs, I think.

In many ways the ISS is the victim of it's own stunning success.

Never before have kept habitation outside the earth for so long with so many people, with international teamwork and no fatalities during construction or maintenance. People have gotten used to this.

All the knowledge and experience of the many countries and companies involved will go on to help every other space project.

The cooperation factor shouldn't be understated. It's an amazing piece of engineering developed between many countries. Especially countries with a turbulent relationship right now (US and Russia). It's like a UN that actually works.

The ISS has reached the end of it's usefulness. The money is better spent on a manned lunar orbital outpost. [1]

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-lunar-outpost-will-exten...

The Luna outpost is an insane waste of money, especially considering they want to build it with SLS and Orion.

There is no practical reason for a moon space station. It makes neither scientific nor engineering sense.

If they want to do lunar exploration doing direct surface to surface is far more efficient. SpaceX architecture is way, way cheaper then DSG and friends and far better to support any form of lunar exploration.

A lunar outpost is a good idea as a platform for staging deep space missions. Launching from the Moon is much cheaper than launching from Earth (in terms of delta-V) if you can build out in-situ fuel production, plus more novel launch mechanisms like space elevators and mass drivers are more feasible on the Moon than on Earth. The far side of the Moon is also an interesting platform for astronomy. We'd also learn a lot about a Mars mission by being on the moon, such as proving out safe long-term habitats at a distance where rescue missions are feasible, studying the effects of low (rather than zero) gravity in the long term, etc.

No it's currently vastly more expensive in terms of delta-V because you need to get the fuel to the moon at the cost of delta-V.

Saying we could mine the moon at some point in the future is great, but why not just move an comet into earth orbit and mine that. It's about as feasible in theory, but does not require you to get out of the moon's gravity well.

PS: If you really want rail guns, you can also get free delta-v from solar sails and use them maintain a launch platform's orbit.

>why not just move an comet into earth orbit

This is probably substantially more difficult than establishing a moon colony and mining there. Comets have lots of orbital speed you have to overcome, and are generally pretty big.

Edit:

>PS: If you really want rail guns, you can also get free delta-v from solar sails and use them maintain a launch platform's orbit.

Solar sails cannot maintain the orbit of an orbital rail gun launch platform -_-

All of your ideas are more of a moonshot than an actual moonshot.

Solar sails provide free delta v if you are already in orbit and willing to wait. It's not useful for moving people around the solar system, but a rock that takes 100 years to get somewhere is not a big deal. On that timescale they can move literal mountains.

Free delta-V, yes, but not much - certainly not enough to maintain the orbit of a mass driver.

As you just want station keeping you can ignore the mass of the sail and mass driver, all of the delta-v from the sail get's transfers to what the mass driver launches. Thus you can actually use a fairly thick sail without issue.

The problem is because the station is staying still you are effectively limited to the square root of a sails acceleration. Still ~7 newtons per km^2 adds up and you avoid the delta v deficit from being on the moon in the first place.

You don't just need station keeping. Every launch takes energy away from the orbit of the launch platform. Consecutive launches basically deorbit the launch platform. To maintain the orbit, the solar sails must generate an equal amount of orbital energy as the launch platform imparts upon vehicles launched. In other words, you could just launch stuff with its own solar sail to the same effect.

This happens on the moon, too, but the moon is basically a limitless supply of orbital energy.

I think you misunderstood what I meant by station keeping. The sail is used to return the platform to it's orbit after launch. You probably want something else for normal station keeping.

Anyway, I was wrong about the square root thing. It's 1:1. A 1km2 sail represents 7m/s/s for 1 kg of stuff. Normally the sail eats into that and you quickly get far from the sun, but that's not the case here. Fire a 100kg object at 20,000 m/s and a 10km/10km sail can return the station to orbit in around 50 minutes.

Granted if you are in earth orbit it's a little more complex. But you probably want to be in a fairly high orbit anyway to maximize delta v.

You could use nuclear rocket engines on the Moon though with much fewer risks

Sure if you make up some stuff that does not exist then its better.

But if you actually want to talk about reality where we don't have a moon base that produces in-situ fuel, we don't have mining to get that, we don't have reusable lauchers to carry it into moon orbit and we don't have even a plan on how to store and use that fuel.

Even if that was your goal to devlop, then a moon orbit station would be a bad idea. If you want to build a moon mining base, it is much smarter to go to the moon directly and have the capability to deliver massive payloads there.

All that NASA is planning to do it establishing a small outpost and that will take at least 10 years. SLS/Orion/DSG are all very expensive and you can't even deliver anything to the actual moon. So you need another reusable laucher component that is not even in the budget.

SpaceX architecture is also far, far cheaper. One booster, one ship that can land on the moon or on mars. Its far cheaper, simpler and more capable architecture.

> plus more novel launch mechanisms like space elevators and mass drivers are more feasible on the Moon than on Earth

Yes, but those are extremly far in the future and the DSG will not get us there.

> The far side of the Moon is also an interesting platform for astronomy.

Agree, but NASA is not planning on using that. Building a Space station near the moon will not help that effort. In fact, the money NASA is using to build SLS/Orion/DSG is cutting away money that could be used for such a telescope (as it already does for current missions).

> We'd also learn a lot about a Mars mission by being on the moon, such as proving out safe long-term habitats at a distance where rescue missions are feasible, studying the effects of low (rather than zero) gravity in the long term, etc.

Of course you can learn many things from the moon. But its also extremly different then Mars in many other ways. If your eventual goal for humans is mars, then using earth, orbit and mars itself is a far better investment.

>There is no practical reason for a moon space station. It makes neither scientific nor engineering sense.

There is no practical reason for space travel in the first place. We should do it because it's a cool thing to do and people will enjoy doing it. Everything else is an ancillary benefit.

Practicality generally refers to usefulness in fulfilling a larger goal. A moon space station should either be cool in itself, or it should be a practical stepping stone on the way to something cooler. To many people it just seems like a cop out mission, that will use up the budget, short of efficiently working toward something really cool, like human space exploration beyond Earth.

I could easily see the billionaire class spending insane amounts of money vacationing out there if that was really a thing. The commercial opportunities that would bring are enormous. SpaceX already has two people committed and paid to orbit around the moon next year. In my mind, anything that gets people hyped for space exploration and investing real money and effort immediately is a good thing. Having lofty goals for mars exploration and colonization is important. But we need to practice and learn how to do it in the first place right now and close to home with what we know works, then build up. If it's commercially viable, there's no reason not to.

They may want to build it with SLS and Orion, but I can't imagine that's what'll actually happen.

Strap some big rockets onto the ISS and somehow gently land it on the moon?

The delta-v needed to go from low earth orbit to the Moon's surface is about half of what it took to launch all the components into orbit to begin with. That's a lot of rockets to strap on, and then you'll need additional rockets to move those rockets...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Earth–Moon_spac...]

You can use ion propulsion and power it with the existing solar panels. It might take a while but you can go anywhere you want.

You can't. As soon as you're below orbital velocity at the moon (or any other solid body), you're going to have to slow down quickly, or you'll just collide with it at near orbital velocity. No atmosphere on the moon either, so it'd have to be done with rockets.

> The ISS has reached the end of it's usefulness.

[citation needed]

Lighten up guy, it's an opinion, not a wikipedia entry.

Well if you're going to make some claim one of the most important advancements in science, technology, and space travel is useless, at least provide some evidence to support your claim. Because everything else suggests that you're wrong.

Meh... not really.

Link to actual budget: https://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

> humanity’s only permanent outpost in space is an institution that needs to be protected.

Sounds almost like the definition of the White Elephant[1]. Costly, but prestigious. Keeping it is unreasonable, getting rid of it is embarrassing.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant

Why de-orbit? Why not use the same rockets to move it up into an orbit that doesn't degrade as quickly and doesn't need to be maintained at regular intervals.

A ton of money was spent launching and building it. Why not leave it for potential future use?

If no one's interested in it, it becomes space junk. It's a problem.[0] Don't make more. You need to responsibly dispose of space junk, and the easiest way is to incinerate it via atmospheric reentry.

If it doesn't have a controlled de-orbit, it will have an uncontrolled de-orbit, potentially destroying something (or killing someone) when it reaches ground.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

You could boost it in a specific orbit leave it. That what happens with many satallites and is not consider space junk.

Putting stuff on specific orbits is exactly how we fight space junk.

Keeping it lower in earth's orbit exposes it to less solar radiation

Not to say I wouldn't be on board with moving it up and keeping it around as a space museum

I'd like to see more efforts targeting space mining and manufacturing.

The main problem with the ISS is that the wrong budget is paying for it. It should be in the arts and education sector, instead of NASA.

That's incredibly incorrect the ISS is first and foremost a US National Lab where companies, universities and NASA itself can perform experiments on zero/micro G.

It was a very troll-like comment. To be less troll-y, there has been a long standing criticism in the science community about the cost:benefit side of this. I love the ISS. seeing it pass has been a highspot for me in an otherwise boring week, more than once. I went to every IMAX show I could about it. Thats some amazing stuff up there.

I discount the 'research aimed to further space exploration by mankind' side, as being self-serving. (but I totally agree NASA should pay for that, so I guess I killed my own argument right there) it is true research and its good science, and we need to know it, but I've always felt its a bit of a stretch to justify the overall budget on this line. So I wind up asking myself what we got from micro and zero gravity we couldn't have got other ways. The russians got high quality crystals for their soviet chip farming back in the day on their one. I think by the time ISS came along, that was less of an issue for them.

A totally unscientific google search shows theres a small amount of rumbling discontent under the covers. Even within NASA. It might reflect the long standing 'sats are cheaper than humans' view about what to put in space, and why.

The ISS is in fact not very productive in terms of research, but it's running costs are relatively small and if it gets shut down, the next space station will cost incredible amounts of money, and it's possible that much of the current technical expertise on the aerospace systems will be lost by then. I think ISS's value is not on scientific experiments but as a training and testing ground for the space industry. We could scale it down a bit, but imo decommissioning the only manned human outpost in space is a mistake, especially since there's zero realistic plans to replace it.

> "but it's running costs are relatively small" its my understanding that its not small. 92 billion over 19 years? also, if its so cheap, why doesn't other countries want to put up reasonable $$

It's budget has been less than $2B/year consistently for almost 2 decades. That's pretty low for a space station. Other countries do put up according to their budget, they don't all have a $19 trillion GDP.

#1, who cares if its relatively low cost for a space station. it just matters whether its costly or not, which it is. 2 billion is ~20% of nasa's budget.

> "It's budget has been less than $2B/year consistently for almost 2 decades." first off, that is just factually wrong. Nasa estimates in 2018, even 3-4 bil is overly optimistic. but even if that were true, 2 billion 20 years ago is north of 3 billion in today's money.

An issue I see with the sats over humans arguments is that with people up there the experiments benefit from having a human vs having to create a robot to do all the experimental steps for ever single experiment. In the end we need people up there anyways to study various mitigation techniques for the ways the human body does not do well under micro gravity so having them also perform experiments with reusable equipment and simplifying the setup is a big plus.

For example there's the combustion lab up on the ISS instead of having to make and launch an equivalent apparatus for each new batch of experiments and either leaving it as space trash or throwing it away into the atmosphere we can just send up samples and the astronauts.

Sure on a full cost comparison satellites might come out cheaper but I think another important cost is the cost paid by the actual research teams. In a satellite model the costs to the research team go way up meaning fewer teams can possibly afford it where with the ISS a lot of the support equipment is already in place and you get a pair of human hands that can handle complex steps and adapt to issues better.

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