Talk:ISS into the Pacific

Not yet:

The great successes of the ISS, and there were many, were mostly about international politics and the dissolution of the USSR. We need to do a very large and public analysis of the contribution and weakness of the ISS program to generate the critical lessons learned we need for a large back to the Moon program.

Only after such a study is made, should we decide the fate of the ISS.

The ISS also shows us how a bad name can kill a program.

--Jriley 04:37, 10 March 2007 (PST)

This article yields no information about the moon, and from a technical standpoint, its assertion that the ISS is in the wrong orbit for access to the moon is just plain silly. It appears to be motivated by purely political intent, which again means it has no place in the Lunarpedia unless you want to open a section on Idiotic Political Smoke Screens.

Recommend deleting it.

-- Greg

The purpose of this article, and a number of simular entries, was to start a discussion to provide incite into what gets people hot about space. This approach is detailed in Show Stoppers and the Purposes List.

Had a technical person wished to defend the ISS, then they could provide technical information on the use of the ISS as a safety station on the way to the Moon and exactly what this would mean to launch windows. No such defender has come forth.

So far the input on nearly all of these articles has been extremely low. All these articles have demonstrated so far is how increasable low interest is in returning to the Moon and how much work we have ahead of us.

This type of article belongs on Lunarpedia if, and only if, one of Lunarpedia's purposes is to make returning to the Moon happen. That is to be an active tool.

--Jriley 22:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It may be too early in Lunarpedia's development for the controversial question concept to take off. Most of our contributors are too busy trying to create new content to make Lunarpedia a major attraction to stop and think of such subtleties at this time. As it stands, Mike and I don't even really have time to even write many articles, as we're too busy with top level maintenance and administrative stuff -- and that was bad enough before the wiki project got multiplied by a factor of five... -- Strangelv 22:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It could be helpful to create a tag template for your controversial question series to clarify the purpose of them so that people aren't looking at them hoping to get something from them that they aren't meant to provide. -- Strangelv 22:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Broken Promises

The ISS has failed to provide the promised medical and pharmacuetical advances that were used to sell the space station plan to congress.

That has a lot to do with designing so much of the station so it could only be launched by the Shuttle. Between the groundings caused by fuel line fractures and the extended grounding of the fleet after the loss of Columbia and then the very careful and conservative return to service, the ISS construction program is now close to 7 years behind schedule and still slipping. Add to this that in its' present configuration it takes the entire crew of 3 just to run the station, there is little or no science done.

But they do still find time to run the Boston marathon.

-- Mdelaney 06:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I genuinely hope that this will change once the crew is expanded. Letting such a large investment go to waste doesn't seem logical to me. The boston marathon stunt does provide the opportunity to get physiological measurements on a female who has been in microgravity long enough to begin experiencing muscle/bone loss. It's too good of a data gathering opportunity to pass up. -- Jarogers2001 01:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Jriley makes sense. I was opposed to building the space station as planned because it is permanently manned before the proper infrastructure is in place to make reasonable use of people. I would have gone with a remotely operated lunar base instead of the space station and shed no tears over the loss of expertise in the manned space program as employees drifted away. They could have could have archived as much of the details of how they do their jobs as possible, and then gone on to do something usefull. It would take a long time to restart a manned program when it is finally needed, but the need is a long time away. What we have is a show space program. Some people would be better impressed if we were efficiently doing something to further humanity's future in space. We can learn things like how to avoid the bearing problem that threatens the space station's solar arrays. We may need to keep the space station for a while to satisfy international agreements. We may be able to convince other nations that keeping space station agreements is just too expensive, and we can make up the debt some other way. Then we might be able to convert the space station to all robotic operation and lower costs. I am not sure we can lower costs but we should look into it. --Farred 15:27, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Political Difficulties in National Funding

Mdelaney wrote that medical and pharmaceutical advances were promised to sell the space station to congress. Its more complicated than that. Congressmen were generally not fooled by the probability that such advances and others would occur. They needed a story to tell constituents to explain the reason for their votes. The second layer of persuasion was political support from people whose employment would cease if the space station failed, and people in communities where employment would be lost if the space station failed. These were highly motivated supporters of a program that they saw as having "lunch" written all over it. There were true believers too. The harm they have done by saddling the U.S. with a manned space program that is mainly a welfare program for a dependent constituency is worse then the mere cost of the program. The argument comes up (I won't say from whom) that as long as we are going to have astronauts up there anyway lets save a particular task for them. So, efficient methods of doing things like robotic servicing of satelites are never given a serious effort, no matter if plenty of money were available. It is not the space station so much as the whole manned space program that is the enemy. It just keeps sailing on with no destination like the Flying Dutchman, just as much a curse to those who do know where they are headed. Some say that the devision between manned and robotic space programs is a competition wrongly foisted upon space enthusiasts by congress which lumps their funding together, and that we should support both programs. But I say that the average congressman does not know beans about our future in space and cares less. Our message should be that the main effect of the current manned space program on our future in space is to detract from it. This is so much the case that having to coexist with a manned space program is likely to kill any serious attempt to develop industry using the raw materials of Luna, if it has not already done so. That is just for the United States though. Other nations are poised to make attempts at Luna, and they might not copy our mistakes. --Farred 00:32, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not opposed to manned spaceflight, but I am opposed to the promotion of an environment where it would be the sole domain of governments. Instead of seeking to eliminate the manned program we should take an industry building approach in the same way that NACA did for atmospheric flight. There are many things that can be done by robots, but a robot is never a substitute for a human in tasks that aren't redundant processes (such as maintaining robots in the field). Instead of seeking to eliminate a manned program we should instead foster the development of private replacements which can carry people for much less than NASA, allowing more funding to be freed up in the long run for the support of a lunar base. I am of the opinion that the ISS should remain in place until a suitable private LEO destination is in place for private flights. Today we have reached a technological nexus where this is finally possible. Google search for Bigelow Aerospace. -- Jarogers2001 00:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

problems with a manned spaceflight bureaucracy

I am not opposed to manned spaceflight. I am opposed to the farce that constitutes the current U. S. manned space program. I did write "robotic servicing of satellites [is] never given a serious effort" but I should have written remote control servicing. I do not propose that an artificially intelligent robot perform maintenance on satellites. I propose that technicians perform this maintenance by remote controlled devices while the technicians remain comfortably on Earth. This method properly developed would likely be more convenient for any particular task than working in a space suit and allow shifts of technicians to stay on the job for much less than the expense of having them in space in person. The space station we have now is a special case. Every thing there was designed to maximize its convenience to human operation on cite. In an ideal world the space station would have been designed to maximize convenience for remote operation. However even using the robonaut and others of similar make it might be cheaper to run the space station remotely than to keep men their in person. I do not think employees of the manned space program have the intention of doing harm, but just look at the program's record. First the Apollo program sent astronauts to Luna. That was the first and last worthwhile thing it did. It made more sense then to send men to Luna. Remote control was not as highly developed then. When the decision was made to have a human pilot for the space shuttle, that was a big mistake. This wasn't done because of lack of ability to land a shuttle by remote control, even the Russians landed their version of a shuttle by remote control. Robotic autolanding can be done today and I guess that it could have been done when the first shuttle was built. Flying a space ship is naturally a computer's job, but the shuttle's designers built a man into their design because they wanted to give astronauts something to do that had prestige. Then the space station was a make work program for astronauts from the word go. Astronauts being there was always the primary consideration. Actually accomplishing something on the space station was something to be considered when the program got around to it. The only thing that couldn't be done more cheaply remotely on a space station is testing human endurance of weightlessness. The results of the test are only applicable to working on a space station or flying to Mars, two expensive things that are not at all urgent. If lunar industry is developed first, respectable size spaceships could be built to take people to Mars in comfort. The Hubble Space Telescope is grand, but for the cost of each servicing mission there could have been a whole new telescope in orbit. A remote controlled space station would not have been hung up with all of the life support problems. It could have been developed to assemble a multi mirror telescope better than the Hubble. I have read the words "permanently manned base" referring to Luna, and it just makes me sick. It does not seem at all likely that the current manned space program is in the mood to let remote controlled devices develop local resources until most of the mass needed to support people can be gotten from Luna. That would almost make it seem as if people were not needed. The manned space program wouldn't tolerate that. It is bound and determined to ruin the moon base like it ruined the space station and the shuttle, and for the same reason. It insists on making every other consideration secondary to having a man on cite. For the U. S. manned space program a few men would not go to the moon for a purpose. A few men on the moon would be the purpose. They turn everything into a show. I set my sights higher. A civilization in space is my purpose.