Preserving the ISS as a space museum?

[Nibb31]

Once, there was an attempt to preserve an old station in higher orbit and then return it to Earth with a spaceplane. The station was Salyut-7, the spaceplane was Buran. It ended with the station running out of fuel and falling into the atmosphere before Buran was even finished.

Same as Skylab was supposed to be visited by an early Shuttle flight. The Shuttle was delayed, so Skylab reentered before the Shuttle was ready. The feasibility of the idea, however, was dubious from the start. The Shuttle and Skylab worked at different atmosphere pressures, si they would have needed a special airlock to be developed, and people at NASA expected that Skylab would be unfit to breath in anyway because of mould and bacteria that would have developed.

[Voyager55]

I see no way that it could be preserved as a museum. A monument yes, but not a museum.

[lincourtl]

The articles predicted an SRB explosion every 50 shuttle flights. Challenger was flight 51. Gee, too bad there was no way to see that coming. We even had a Morton Thiokol engineer literally begging for the Challenger flight to be delayed until warmer weather, and he was overruled for political reasons by his management, because a cancellation now would make the whole program look bad. Hey, great call guys! You sure avoided that bullet.

The Challenger disaster was shuttle mission STS-51-L, but it was in fact only the 25th launch of an STS.

I'm pretty sure the predicted stat you quote of once every 50 flights is actually Feynman's calculation from the Rogers Commission Report.

[michaelsteele3]

She's got a lot to clean up if she wants that in a museum.

[Beowolf]

The Challenger disaster was shuttle mission STS-51-L, but it was in fact only the 25th launch of an STS.

I'm pretty sure the predicted stat you quote of once every 50 flights is actually Feynman's calculation from the Rogers Commission Report.

Never noticed that STS-51L was only the 25th flight. Mea culpa!

I distinctly remember one of the late 70s magazine articles mentioned the failure rate of SRBs. I agree that was also in the Rogers Commission Report. When I originally saw Feynman's statement, I also remember going "If he read Hustler he'd have known that a decade ago". But since I don't have the sources available, I'll grant the 1% thing could be a false memory. Those happen more and more as I get older. Still I'm certain the SRBs were being criticized as a desperate design decision. Other details I (think I) remember involved NASA repeatedly rejecting SRBs as too dangerous to be man-rateable during the 60s, yet when their backs were against the wall in the 70s with STS design, abruptly changed their minds about that without any evidence the new SRBs were any safer. Anyone have confirmation or debunking of that statement? Googling wasn't of any help, so I can't be sure.

The GEM-40s on used on most Delta-II variants have flown ~1200 times. One has exploded. The calculation of that as a percentage is left as an exercise for the reader.

The first flight of a GEM-40 occurred in 1990 (Wikipedia). I'm glad to hear they've improved them so much, but it's not relevant to an STS design conversation.

[lincourtl]

When I originally saw Feynman's statement, I also remember going "If he read Hustler he'd have known that a decade ago".

Knowing Feynman (through his memoirs), I'd be willing to bet he read Hustler. Or at least Playboy. But then everybody read Playboy back then.

I wish I still had university library access. It'd be interesting to go back and compile a retrospective of STS coverage in magazines and newspapers from the 1970s through early 1980s.

Edited March 13, 2015 by lincourtl

[wumpus]

Knowing Feynman (through his memoirs), I'd be willing to bet he read Hustler. Or at least Playboy. But then everybody read Playboy back then.

I wish I still had university library access. It'd be interesting to go back and compile a retrospective of STS coverage in magazines and newspapers from the 1970s through early 1980s.

Only the terminally geeky read Playboy in those days (although many on this fora might qualify). This made it a favorite of writers: Playboy paid top dollar for top writing. And since nobody read it, you could sell it again to a more widely "read" audience. I can't see Hustler publishing it, as far as I know they were pretty juvenile and concerned with pictures of purely gynecological interest. Other competitors (Penthouse comes to mind, they occasionally published things worth reading. Playboy always did) could have done it.

I'm a bit too old to remember much Shuttle bashing in current media (I saw the first launch/landing in elementary school). I do remember it being slammed by SF writers in books (RAH especially), although I think it was mostly after the program was done (attacking it too early was seen as a great way to have *no* human space program).

As far as the "right" way to design a shuttle. KSP has help confirm my suspicion that the ability to return cargo to Earth was fantastically expensive for the shuttle. Placing the cargo ahead of the cockpit might have political issues (especially considering those paying the bills have zero knowledge of actual design issues), but would wildly cut down on the mass needed on the orbiter (and thus the return flight) [see here:http://xkcd.com/1461/]. SpaceX has pretty much confirmed that the earlier "two-stage" spaceplane would be wildly better (assuming a rocket powered first stage that would get up to at least mach 6 or so. Forget about jets.), although there is no real reason to believe that engine rebuilding would be all that much faster (although no serious re-entry on the main engines is a big reason why SpaceX is confident about engine reuse).

- - - Updated - - -

Getting back to the original point of the thread, there is supposed to be some sort of VASMIR ion engine added to the ISS. It looks like a load of vapor to me (the company that makes it, Ad Astra, is still asking for money to design it), but that looks like the only real hope of boosting the ISS to some sort of graveyard orbit. Presumably the VASMIR would be able to get it (eventually) to somewhere like lunar orbit or L3, where being turned into space debris would be less likely and less dangerous if it eventually happened.

[GreenWolf]

Boosting the ISS to Lunar orbit is a great way to turn it into surface debris. Remember all those LEM ascent stages that were left behind in Lunar orbit? Ever wonder what happened to them? Yeah, the Moon ate them. Mascons are terrible things.

[magnemoe]

Only the terminally geeky read Playboy in those days (although many on this fora might qualify). This made it a favorite of writers: Playboy paid top dollar for top writing. And since nobody read it, you could sell it again to a more widely "read" audience. I can't see Hustler publishing it, as far as I know they were pretty juvenile and concerned with pictures of purely gynecological interest. Other competitors (Penthouse comes to mind, they occasionally published things worth reading. Playboy always did) could have done it.

I'm a bit too old to remember much Shuttle bashing in current media (I saw the first launch/landing in elementary school). I do remember it being slammed by SF writers in books (RAH especially), although I think it was mostly after the program was done (attacking it too early was seen as a great way to have *no* human space program).

As far as the "right" way to design a shuttle. KSP has help confirm my suspicion that the ability to return cargo to Earth was fantastically expensive for the shuttle. Placing the cargo ahead of the cockpit might have political issues (especially considering those paying the bills have zero knowledge of actual design issues), but would wildly cut down on the mass needed on the orbiter (and thus the return flight) [see here:http://xkcd.com/1461/]. SpaceX has pretty much confirmed that the earlier "two-stage" spaceplane would be wildly better (assuming a rocket powered first stage that would get up to at least mach 6 or so. Forget about jets.), although there is no real reason to believe that engine rebuilding would be all that much faster (although no serious re-entry on the main engines is a big reason why SpaceX is confident about engine reuse).

- - - Updated - - -

Getting back to the original point of the thread, there is supposed to be some sort of VASMIR ion engine added to the ISS. It looks like a load of vapor to me (the company that makes it, Ad Astra, is still asking for money to design it), but that looks like the only real hope of boosting the ISS to some sort of graveyard orbit. Presumably the VASMIR would be able to get it (eventually) to somewhere like lunar orbit or L3, where being turned into space debris would be less likely and less dangerous if it eventually happened.

Benefit of putting an vasmir on IIS is to keep station keeping fuel cost down and do an long term run space qualification testing of vasmir essentially free.

Russia has committed to ISS until 2024 that is 9 years, lots of stuff changes in 9 years, unless Russian economy improves a lot they will stay doing that they do best. Yes I read the Russian follow up plans for their follow up station and loved it however the marked is probably not where in 2024 and they can not afford it.

If you wanted to mothball ISS I would lift it orbit to reduce drag, replace the atmosphere with an inert gas like nitrogen and reduced pressure to 0.2- 0.5 bar, reduce temperature to 3 degree centigrade, however it would be smarter to break it up for useful parts and deorbit the rest.

[Beowolf]

Only the terminally geeky read Playboy in those days... I can't see Hustler publishing it, as far as I know they were pretty juvenile and concerned with pictures of purely gynecological interest. Other competitors (Penthouse comes to mind, they occasionally published things worth reading. Playboy always did) could have done it.

...I saw the first launch/landing in elementary school...

Mr. Wumpus, I truly don't mean any offense, but please think about what you're doing here for a minute. I was college-age during the Carter era. You weren't in kindergarten yet. And you're explaining the state of 1980 men's magazines to me. Let me assure you, sir; I was intimately familiar with this subject!

Yeah, the story was in Hustler. This was during the Cincinnati obscenity trials, and during that period Hustler was trying to prove their First Amendment relevance by throwing in some serious commentary. And Playboy was still quite the big deal in 1980. But the 80s were the decade they faded, so you're presumably thinking of their state when you hit puberty several years later.