NASA Voices Concerns About Space Station

Washinton Post ^ | Friday, October 24, 2003; Page A05 | By Kathy Sawyer and Eric Pianin

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If NASA is forced to abandon the international space station temporarily because of deteriorating health conditions for the crew on board, there is a high risk of losing the $30 billion orbital laboratory, NASA officials and astronauts said yesterday.

"We've done some analysis, and it shows that we have a fairly high probability that if we have the wrong components fail, and there's not a crew on board to change it out, we could have [the] station in a degrading manner," space station program manager William H. Gerstenmaier told reporters in a teleconference yesterday from Russia. He was there to monitor Monday's scheduled return to Earth of a Russian Soyuz capsule carrying two station crew members who were replaced this week.

A space station engineer at Johnson Space Center in Houston, speaking on condition he not be named, said studies conducted after the grounding of the space shuttle fleet in February showed there is a "50-50 chance" of losing the orbiting space lab if there is no crew aboard.

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Once upon a time I would have bet the farm on the fact that it was Russian equipment had failed. Now I wouldn't take that bet at all considering the state of our space program. I have heard the ISS dwellers were once getting a bit sick form the poor grade plastics used in Russian componants. I guess they were out-gassing some nasty stuff.

[Brett66]

The thing costs too much to let it fail. Congress will just open up the purse strings if it comes to that.

[org.whodat]

What was it built for in the first place.

[Experiment 6-2-6]

Um, if anybody's interested, I'll go up there and housesit until the crew gets better......

They wouldn't even have to pay me!

[July 4th]

What was it built for in the first place.

Science and end-of-the-Cold-War cooperation.

The hell with it. If we're going to have a space program, let's make it our own national mission to get to Mars, or some other lofty goal. You don't need any mission beyond that, like "science" or "cooperation". The act of building all of the necessary components will reap scientific benefits along the way, and like Apollo, the advancements in technology will eventually work their way into our everyday life. Just to see if we can do it is the ultimate goal.

[GeronL]

I wouldn't bet on Congress trying to save it.

[org.whodat]

The hell with it. If we're going to have a space program, let's make it our own national mission to get to Mars, or some other lofty goal. You don't need any mission beyond that, like "science" or "cooperation". The act of building all of the necessary components will reap scientific benefits along the way, and like Apollo, the advancements in technology will eventually work their way into our everyday life. Just to see if we can do it is the ultimate goal.

That's what I was thinking, the space station is nothing more than a fish bowl. When we should be putting most of the money in a program to go somewhere. And building something that will get us there and a rocket is not the way to get there from here.

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The thing costs too much to let it fail.

Not to mention the big splash or crash it will make somewhere coming in uncontrolled.

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))