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The International Space Station

UglyCasanova

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Nice video to watch, I love space

The ISS is an amazing feat of engineering, of the diplomacy of international cooperation, and hopefully a source of new scientific discoveries. But it is also extremely expensive. Do you think that the money spent on the ISS was the best use of resources, or should that money have been diverted to smaller, cheaper unmanned craft that can explore far more of the solar system than the ISS can.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for doubling or tripling NASA's budget and have an ISS along with spacecraft being sent to every corner of the solar system, but unfortunately NASA has to fight just to keep the funds they have. I just wonder if the ISS was the best use of their resources.
 
Overall, yes it was worth it. (Full disclosure, I spent the last 15 years helping assemble the ISS).

With something like Hubble it's easy to point to one thing like the "Deep Field" and say that was worth it.

With the ISS it's hard to point to one thing and say that's what makes it worthwhile. Instead it's the sum of the things it has enabled us to do:

  • International Co-operation
  • In Space Construction
  • Regenerative Environmental Systems
  • Maintenance Crew/Robotic Internal & External.
  • Science (AMS, Combustion, Materials, etc)
  • Life Sciences (Long Duration Spaceflight)
  • Kickstarting Commercial Cargo
  • Kickstarting Commercial Crew
 
Paratus said:
Overall, yes it was worth it. (Full disclosure, I spent the last 15 years helping assemble the ISS).
Click to expand...

I had a Moon Pie I bought from Cracker Barrel for 99 cents last week. Pretty sure I am in a greater position to make the call on this one.

:hmm:

Okay I guess it was kind of worth it. You just make sure we keep getting those pies moon man.
 
cabri said:
And the average Joe also has no concept that such allows knowledge to be developed that helps him later on.
Click to expand...
They're the sort who'll post on Twitter about how useless scientific exploration is, while remaining astonishingly ignorant of the mountain of sophisticated technology that is required to allow them to use a smartphone to send information to a remote internet-connected server cluster.
 
Jeff7 said:
They're the sort who'll post on Twitter about how useless scientific exploration is, while remaining astonishingly ignorant of the mountain of sophisticated technology that is required to allow them to use a smartphone to send information to a remote internet-connected server cluster.
Click to expand...

This +1
 
UglyCasanova said:
Nice video to watch, I love space

The ISS is an amazing feat of engineering, of the diplomacy of international cooperation, and hopefully a source of new scientific discoveries. But it is also extremely expensive. Do you think that the money spent on the ISS was the best use of resources, or should that money have been diverted to smaller, cheaper unmanned craft that can explore far more of the solar system than the ISS can.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for doubling or tripling NASA's budget and have an ISS along with spacecraft being sent to every corner of the solar system, but unfortunately NASA has to fight just to keep the funds they have. I just wonder if the ISS was the best use of their resources.
Click to expand...

Fact is that we need far more than the ISS and even what we do now with the ISS is minor stuff compared to what we did 40 to 50 years ago. When the ISS is dismantled you will have a Russian space station and a Chinese space station in Earth Orbit and we will need our own space station to use also. That is in addition to lunar surface outposts and also the required lunar orbit space stations.
 
Jeff7 said:
They're the sort who'll post on Twitter about how useless scientific exploration is, while remaining astonishingly ignorant of the mountain of sophisticated technology that is required to allow them to use a smartphone to send information to a remote internet-connected server cluster.
Click to expand...

They are not worth much at all if not actually detrimental. Even Pillars of Eternity made reference to this bullshit that has existed for all history of civilization in the Skaenite questline.
 
Paratus said:
Overall, yes it was worth it. (Full disclosure, I spent the last 15 years helping assemble the ISS).
Click to expand...

Are we going to be able to get the last pods up there or not? Like the British Habitation modules or the Natulis-X ISS experiment?
 
norseamd said:
Are we going to be able to get the last pods up there or not? Like the British Habitation modules or the Natulis-X ISS experiment?
Click to expand...

The Brits never built their modules so they are not going up.

I haven't heard anything about nautilus X for the ISS so it's not coming anytime soon if at all.

The Russians have another FGB type module coming sometime in the next year or two.

We are getting BEAM which is small test version of an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace :

bigelow-beam-iss-nasa-contract-2.jpg


We're also doing work to add more US docking ports for commercial crew & cargo vehicles.

That's all I'm currently aware of.
 
Printer Bandit said:
for the average joe, what goes on up there doesn't impact his day to day life.


frankly, it's just a dog and pony show.
Click to expand...

Back when radio waves were discovered there were no radios, it was just some random radiation. Guess we should have just quit there and never investigated. 😛
 
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