Converting the iss into a spaceship to mars

[deathbane]

From my understanding we allready have the compartments in orbit with a little rearanging and some fule we have a space ship to mars with half the cost

[vger]

Minus tons of food/water storage, and tons of breathable air...

And a lander, if you actually want to put people there.

[Bill Phil]

"Some fuel" is, quite the understatement...

For example, to send 50 tonnes to the Moon, you need about 70 tonnes of propellant. And that's just the Moon. The ISS is upwards of 400 tonnes

It lacks radiation shielding as well. Rearranging them is very difficult, too.

Better to build a new one. But, a thing in space is a thing in space. They could adapt it as a way station...

[Tommygun]

Too complicated, much of the structure wasn't designed to take accelerations needed for a planetary transfer.

Just getting the center of mass at the right spot would be hard, the air tight joints wouldn't like all the flexing motion and it's probably a bit too heavy for the job.

[sumghai]

But, a thing in space is a thing in space. They could adapt it as a way station...

Boeing proposed adapting some of the unflown ISS hardware as components for the Exploration Gateway Platform, which when situated at eh Earth–Moon L1/L2 Lagrange points, could serve as a cost-effective staging area for exploration missions to the Moon, Mars or Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs).

[WinkAllKerb'']

tons of seeds, various micro-organism, and greenhouse materials once there ... also bring a lot of patience ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoperiodism ...

[deathbane]

Too complicated?...really? When it comes to engineering humans hit the mark i mean look to your left.... Now look to your right.... I can almost geuss with a 90% certinty thay what ever you saw requierd a engineering marval of some sorte

And acceleration would not be a problem because the ship would be moving at a snails pace remeber its about dv not thrust

The only problem i can see would be radiation and the only thing i can come up with is eather 1 water 2 lead based paint or 3 a big effing magnet

[Bill Phil]

Too complicated?...really? When it comes to engineering humans hit the mark i mean look to your left.... Now look to your right.... I can almost geuss with a 90% certinty thay what ever you saw requierd a engineering marval of some sorte

And acceleration would not be a problem because the ship would be moving at a snails pace remeber its about dv not thrust

The only problem i can see would be radiation and the only thing i can come up with is eather 1 water 2 lead based paint or 3 a big effing magnet

Exactly. Delta-V. That's the problem. Even with hydrogen you need hundreds of tonnes of propellant to move the ISS. And then you need tanks for that. The tanks need to be launched and then attached. Then you need to fuel it. Dozens of flights, probably a lot more unless you handle boil-off effectively.... It would take longer than the ISS took to build, with something around 25 launches....

[cpast]

Too complicated?...really? When it comes to engineering humans hit the mark i mean look to your left.... Now look to your right.... I can almost geuss with a 90% certinty thay what ever you saw requierd a engineering marval of some sorte

And acceleration would not be a problem because the ship would be moving at a snails pace remeber its about dv not thrust

The only problem i can see would be radiation and the only thing i can come up with is eather 1 water 2 lead based paint or 3 a big effing magnet

Yes, too complicated. One of the most important things in engineering is knowing when something isn't worth sinking more effort into. The ISS would cost more for worse results compared to building Mars transfer equipment from scratch.

To answer your acceleration question: Acceleration is absolutely relevant; it controls what kinds of maneuvers you can pull off. The ISS can't take much acceleration; if you can't do much acceleration, you can't pull off the trajectory used on most Mars trips. This is particularly a problem on ejection and capture burns. The ISS can't aerocapture and can't pull off a Hohmann capture burn, so it has to follow a different trajectory than other Mars missions (the way Dawn did capture was to approach at low relative velocity, which required a different trajectory than you're used to seeing). In contrast, something that could pull off aerocapture would have a huge dV savings.

This is, of course, leaving aside that the ISS isn't designed to operate without resupply; it's getting fairly old, which you don't really want on your interplanetary spacecraft; it's not designed or allowed to operate without the ability to rapidly evacuate all crew to safety (and while they haven't had to do that yet, they have had emergencies that required preparing for an evacuation if needed); it's a highly specialized orbital lab with the ability to receive new experiments from resupply ships, and is designed with the assumption that it'll be doing that (swapping experiments in and out, rather than having just long-term experiments), which is not what you want or need in a one-shot Mars trip; and it's currently performing lots of good science in Earth orbit, which we'd lose if we sent it off to Mars.

I really can't think of any reason why it would be a good idea to take a highly specialized (and aging) LEO laboratory and send it off as a transfer vessel for a Mars mission, which has different requirements. The ISS was designed for a job. It does that job fairly well. Said job is more valuable than anything it could do in Mars orbit (because there's not all that much difference between LEO and LMO, and scanning-type experiments can be done at least as well with a probe, but in LEO it's way more accessible). There's no such thing as a "little rearranging and adding some fuel" in real life; real rockets aren't Legos. A Mars transfer ship should be built as a Mars transfer ship, not retrofitted at great expense from something doing a useful job.

[deathbane]

so in the year 2020 when the iss is decommissioned then what through it away... im just saying some of the Components can be reused, evary thing reused is one less thing needing to brought into orbit

and as for the engines we have nuclear(politics aside) and ion or some sort of electrical based propultion, i mean the solar panels on the iss right now produce around 6 to 8 kilowatts

[WinkAllKerb'']

? mechanique stress and wear and other assessment of default risk even the slightest ... yes there is the road to do, whatever ... ¿

Edited March 30, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''
yes it's a lazy and crappy google translation ...

[cpast]

so in the year 2020 when the iss is decommissioned then what through it away... im just saying some of the Components can be reused, evary thing reused is one less thing needing to brought into orbit

and as for the engines we have nuclear(politics aside) and ion or some sort of electrical based propultion, i mean the solar panels on the iss right now produce around 6 to 8 kilowatts

Yep. When the ISS is decommisioned (2024, not 2020), it's because its getting too old. That is the *worst* time to fly it on a manned mission with no evacuation possible and no resupply possible. Component reuse on the older components is not practical because of age; IIRC, most of USOS isn't designed to be able to operate separately from the ISS. Spacecraft are not Legos. You can't just pop something out of the ISS and pop it onto a different mission for which it was not designed; integration is difficult and expensive when two things *are* designed to go together, let alone when they're not. Bringing things into orbit isn't *that* expensive compared to the cost of retrofitting an aging module to work with new systems reliably enough that it can be used on a manned mission with no abort modes.

[AbhChallenger]

I doubt Zarya could handle anything outside of LEO considering it's age.

[Kerbart]

From my understanding we allready have the compartments in orbit with a little rearanging and some fule we have a space ship to mars with half the cost

The only virtue, but I'll admit it's a magnificent one, is that it's already in orbit, which is half the way of getting there (insert mandatory Heinlein quote). Aside from that it's about the opposite of what you want:

• Build a large station in LKO without any regards for ever flying it. Asymmetric, long parts sticking out in every direction. And then add a few mainsails (or as Whackjob calls, them, "seperatrons") and try to fly the friggin' thing to Duna. 'Nuff said.
  
• The weight mass! So many parts you don't need, and they all need to be propelled to Mars!
  
• So many things missing! Extended life support (can't really rely on those regular Progress deliveries). Shielding against radiation. Long range radio systems. Shuttles

And last but not least. You've owned a car for twenty years. You've come to that point where the recurring costs of repairs to keep it running starts to become higher than the cost of leasing a brand new car. And just when the garage tells you the timing belt needs to be replaced, what's your reaction? ROAD TRIP! LET'S RIDE IT COAST TO COAST BABY!

If I were a professional astronaut I'd politely decline to step into that death trap to mars. But there's always the Mars One people of course...

[deathbane]

Yep. When the ISS is decommisioned (2024, not 2020), it's because its getting too old. That is the *worst* time to fly it on a manned mission with no evacuation possible and no resupply possible. Component reuse on the older components is not practical because of age; IIRC, most of USOS isn't designed to be able to operate separately from the ISS. Spacecraft are not Legos. You can't just pop something out of the ISS and pop it onto a different mission for which it was not designed; integration is difficult and expensive when two things *are* designed to go together, let alone when they're not. Bringing things into orbit isn't *that* expensive compared to the cost of retrofitting an aging module to work with new systems reliably enough that it can be used on a manned mission with no abort modes.

so your saying engineering,retofiting and building a ship to be built in mind of useing iss parts would cost more then 50 billion (half the cost of the iss because i dont see using every single piece use in the construction) over building a brand new ship from scratch

[dharak1]

It wouldn't necessarily be less expensive by much but it certainly would be more safe and easier to build.

[deathbane]

It wouldn't necessarily be less expensive by much but it certainly would be more safe and easier to build.

safety is in the design the better the design/retrofit the safer it is, and whats cheaper then already having the parts in orbit all that need to be done is send a metaphorical tool box

+having the Canadian robot arm would help a lot too

Edited March 30, 2015 by deathbane

[Motokid600]

As it's been stated the ISS to Mars is putting resources and time to the wrong use. As for the future of the ISS... Who knows. Alot can happen in five years. It's decommission could be delayed. Then when the time comes Russia might want some of their modules to do what I say NASA should do.

The ultimate future of the ISS imo is a staging platform for new station construction. Branch off new modules from the old then once the new station is complete discard the old modules either all at once or gradually over time as new modules replace them.

That being said I'd gladly say goodbye to the space station if it meant more funding for a Moon or Mars mission.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Motokid600

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

so your saying engineering,retofiting and building a ship to be built in mind of useing iss parts would cost more then 50 billion (half the cost of the iss because i dont see using every single piece use in the construction) over building a brand new ship from scratch

Yes. Here's what the ISS would need to be capable of going to Mars.

1. A propulsion system capable of moving it out to Mars. This on its own is >50% of the mass that would need to be put into orbit for a new ship.

2. A habitation module with radiation shielding capable of working all the way out to Mars.

3. A life support system that isn't ancient.

4. Control computers with the radiation tolerance to operate for months outside Earth's magnetosphere.

5. A power supply: solar panels wear out, and the ISS panels are already pretty old. Plus, out at Mars there's only half as much sunlight. Besides, the interplanetary propulsion system will likely have a nuclear reactor onboard, either as part of an NTR or to power a VASIMIR engine.

6. A structure designed to survive an interplanetary transfer burn.

7. A laboratory module. The ISS has lab modules, but they aren't necessarily set up for the kind of stuff a Mars mission would need, like analysis of Martian rock samples, or biological experiments in Martian gravity. In any case, a lab module you can't land on the surface is dead weight for almost all of the mission.

8. Any hardware that lands on Mars, including a habitation module, any laboratory facility, a mars rover, an ascent stage, any hardware needed for ISRU, and all the heat shielding, parachutes, and landing systems needed to get all that to the Martian surface. This is also a lot of the mass and cost.

9. New docking hardware to work with the Orion capsule and lander, which will both use the new NASA Docking System. The old docking ports are pretty much useless.

Here's what the ISS has that could be reused:

1. Maybe one or two of the node modules to carry supplies in. All the Russian stuff is either old or being used in OPSEK, the laboratory modules are dead weight as are the cupola, robotic arms, Quest Joint Airlock, and the truss structure.

Also, spacecraft are generally built in factories with lots of very expensive, very heavy equipment. To do major modifications to ISS modules, you would have to either design and launch miniaturized versions of that equipment (astronomically expensive), or deorbit and re-launch the modules (pointless, since the only thing you were saving was fuel to launch replacements into orbit).

[cpast]

safety is in the design the better the design/retrofit the safer it is, and whats cheaper then already having the parts in orbit all that need to be done is send a metaphorical tool box

+having the Canadian robot arm would help a lot too

You're underestimating the cost and difficulty of converting an ISS module for a Mars mission. Like, by several orders of magnitude, based on the "tool box" comment. I'm not sure where you get $50b from or why it has any relevance to this discussion: most of the ISS simply could not be used, the parts that could would need modification to support it (because the mission they're designed for is not the mission of a Mars transfer stage), and unless you can extensively inspect the modules (which is rather difficult in space) you will still have serious trouble meeting safety requirements.

What's cheaper than using the things already in orbit? Having the parts down on Earth where assembling stuff is relatively easy, and where the parts are actually designed for the job.

You don't seem to understand this: The ISS is not capable of independent operation. It needs resupply. It needs evacuation procedures. Much of it has spent over 10 years in orbit; parts of it are approaching 20 years. Its component pieces are not designed for, and are not capable of, the reliability needed on a Mars mission. They never needed to be, because there was always an abort option. They routinely require spare parts to be sent up, because the entire station was designed for a mission in LEO where resupply is possible. Its component parts might be considered reliable enough to continue operating in LEO past the design date. Operation in LEO is easy -- there is an easy abort option. A Mars mission cannot rely on that, nor can it rely on the ability to send up replacement parts.

Space hardware is expensive. Part of the reason is that it has to be designed within very tight parameters, and is highly specialized. The ISS is specialized to be a LEO laboratory. Its modules are designed to support a crew and science in LEO. Trying to turn them into something suitable for a Mars transfer, while they're in space? That's the sort of thing that, while it might initially sound frugal, ends up being a massive budget-sink.

[magnemoe]

Yep. When the ISS is decommisioned (2024, not 2020), it's because its getting too old. That is the *worst* time to fly it on a manned mission with no evacuation possible and no resupply possible. Component reuse on the older components is not practical because of age; IIRC, most of USOS isn't designed to be able to operate separately from the ISS. Spacecraft are not Legos. You can't just pop something out of the ISS and pop it onto a different mission for which it was not designed; integration is difficult and expensive when two things *are* designed to go together, let alone when they're not. Bringing things into orbit isn't *that* expensive compared to the cost of retrofitting an aging module to work with new systems reliably enough that it can be used on a manned mission with no abort modes.

Why 2024, does that year require some serious refit or is it just budgeting? If just budgeting I think its an high chance it get extended as keeping it would be cheaper than building an follow up station.

Russia talked about reusing one module, this might just be temporarily as its an core module who make it an good base for making an new station, you can then add another core and remove the old.

Anyway keeping ISS and do an separate mars mission would be far cheaper than sending ISS to mars.

[cpast]

Why 2024, does that year require some serious refit or is it just budgeting? If just budgeting I think its an high chance it get extended as keeping it would be cheaper than building an follow up station.

Russia talked about reusing one module, this might just be temporarily as its an core module who make it an good base for making an new station, you can then add another core and remove the old.

Anyway keeping ISS and do an separate mars mission would be far cheaper than sending ISS to mars.

The specific date is a combination of budgeting, age, and intergovernmental relations; it's set by agreement between ISS partners. There's never a firm predictable cutoff date; it's just that as the years go by, maintenance becomes harder, things get less reliable, and it starts becoming a better idea to just start over. And I do think they'd start over, rather than do module-by-module replacements, not least because the oldest modules are at the center of everything.

With all these programs, there has to be *some* cutoff after which you don't send more crew (unmanned craft get away with running till failure, manned craft do not). You can't really do a full overhaul in orbit for a sane price (this is one of the issues with reusing modules for a Mars mission); at some point you decide to replace instead of repairing. This takes a lot of planning and prep work, so you want a good deal of advance warning (hence the extension to 2024 coming 5 years before it was planned to end in 2020). It might get extended more as budget permits and NASA and Roscosmos feel like continuing it, but I don't think it's likely to get extended much beyond -- maintenance and operations are a big chunk of the cost, and a new station allows starting over with lessons learned from ISS (like ISS started over from Mir).

[Nibb31]

so your saying engineering,retofiting and building a ship to be built in mind of useing iss parts would cost more then 50 billion (half the cost of the iss because i dont see using every single piece use in the construction) over building a brand new ship from scratch

It would be like converting a camper van into an airliner. You could do it if you really wanted to, but it would cost more than building an airliner from scratch and it would end up being a pretty crappy airliner.

The only things that could be reused from the ISS are small mundane things likes screws and hinges. You're not going to save money by dismantling modules and recycling screws on orbit.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Nibb31

[KSK]

so your saying engineering,retofiting and building a ship to be built in mind of useing iss parts would cost more then 50 billion (half the cost of the iss because i dont see using every single piece use in the construction) over building a brand new ship from scratch

Definitely. Being able to take advantage of 10-20 years experience in materials science, engineering of all kinds, and building spacecraft? Being able to design a new craft from scratch that isn't hobbled by the need to make half assed compromises to accommodate legacy equipment? Everything else being equal, designing from scratch is almost guaranteed to be cheaper I'd say.

Witness all the redesigns, false starts and money spent on PowerPoint slides that we've seen thrown at the problem of reusing Shuttle hardware in a next generation launcher (Aries and then SLS).

[Dkmdlb]

Witness all the redesigns, false starts and money spent on PowerPoint slides that we've seen thrown at the problem of reusing Shuttle hardware in a next generation launcher (Aries and then SLS).

You forgot one - Jupiter. Which only serves to demonstrate your point.

http://www.directlauncher.org/