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According to the plan as stated in the article, China is planning to have its own space station in 2020. By the time ISS is scheduled to retire in 2024 [1], Chi

• drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Who cares? I'd rather have more rover and deep space missions and non-LEO manned missions than the propagandist wins of a floating bucket in LEO. Space stations aren't progress, they're just money wasters with a roadmap that leads literally to nowhere - being burned up in the atmosphere. I never understood this mentality that when the US is between launchers everyone suddenly has a renewed appreciation for last-gen achievements. We did the LEO psce bucket with the ISS. It leads to nowhere and had questionable space science utility. Its not a stepping stone to anywhere[1]. We're building the SLS and investing in SpaceX, Blue Origin, ATK, Sierra, and ULA to get out of LEO and to have a variety of spacecraft on tap. Nations still stuck in LEO with 60+ old launch systems are going to be left behind and they shouldn't be applauded for it. A few years of downtime will be forgotten the same way we've forgotten the time between Apollo and the STS. Meanwhile, anti-US biased people will dance during this peroid and project questionable attitudes like the US not being interested in space (No one comes close NASA's achievements, missions, and budget) or how the US is declining because a pig like Soyuz can still fly to LEO. [1] by the time the ISS was built we had enough know-how to do things like permanent moon bases and other achievements that were within our technical grasp but not within our political one. Its very easy to vote for splitting the bill on a space station with a bunch of other countries. Its a whole other thing to propose risky things like moonbases and to have them funded by Congress. Thankfully with the SLS and SpaceX we're back to doing risky things.
  • kl4m 10y ago
    How are the effects of long duration spaceflight on humans to be studied without some sort of space presence?
  • spapin 10y ago
    This year, China will have their maiden flight for 2 new rockets CZ-5, CZ-7. Launched a new space station: Tiangong2, is making steady progress in their space program. Russia is developing Angara-5, a new rocket that made its debut in 2014. Russia upgraded in 2016 its soyuz capsule and is working on a new design crewed vehicle. Europe started developing its Ariane 6 next gen-launcher, following the success of its current Ariane 5. Europe also landed on a comet earlier this year. I am less versed in Japan launch schedules, but they also have a strong program. During this time, US is developing reusable launchers that land on their launchpad. Space is a global effort and every country is participating in this exploration. Each has strengths and weakness. For instance, USA can land rockets but cannot send crew in space. There is no more a 'me versus them' situation in space development. Everyone works somewhat together. Russia sends US astronauts in orbit. US refuels the ISS with Cigna cargo. Antares engines are Russian RD-181. The service of the orion capsule is made in France and Germany. The Chinese spacecraft is derived from Russian Soyuz.
    • blisterpeanuts 10y ago
      Don't forget India.[1] 1. http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/23/asia/india-space-shuttle-success/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/23/asia/india-space-shuttle-succe...
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • drzaiusapelord 10y ago
      >There is no more a 'me versus them' situation in space development. There absolutely is and frankly its the only thing that's ever worked - competition. Before it was between nation states and now it will be between corporations, which is going to be much more efficient. We are entering a new age of space travel here where nation states take a backseat to big centrally planned government programs, at least in the US.
  • ilostmykeys 10y ago
    Why are you bekng down voted? I wonder of it's due to race politics. I can't think of another reason why your opinion is being singled out for censorship by (supposedly) the "crowd" Weird
    • golergka 10y ago
      Race? Really?
      • ilostmykeys 10y ago
        What else? Why would a rationally stated opinion get so many down votes?
        • quirkafleeg 10y ago
          Probably more to do with (unnecessarily) starting with "Who cares?" rather than race, which wasn't even mentioned.
        • golergka 10y ago
          Do you have a magic ability to see the race of a HN user on will?
    • sctb 10y ago
      The guidelines ask us not to complain about downvotes in the first place, but to introduce an absolutely baseless accusation of racism is beyond the pale. Please do not do this.
  • exDM69 10y ago
    16 years of continuous human presence in space is the biggest achievement of the ISS program, along with a lot of knowledge on long duration manned missions. A manned Mars mission would be a complete venture into the unknown if it weren't for the space medicine research done at the ISS. Losing the ISS will be a step backwards for space exploration.
  • maverick_iceman 10y ago
    While I agree with most of the points you're making you certainly could have presented them in a nicer way.
• artursapek 10y ago
  Wow - I didn't know it was ever scheduled to be de-orbited. That's sad. I hope we find the bread crumbs in the federal budget to replace it.
  • hackuser 10y ago
    If we want to fund things, we'll need to pay taxes.
    • Zhenya 10y ago
      We already pay plenty of taxes. Let's focus on optimization of tax spend than on getting more of it. We can also reapproproate tax dollars from failed programs to science.
      • hackuser 10y ago
        > We already pay plenty of taxes Who is we? And by what standard is "plenty" measured? Less tax revenue will result in less accomplished by government; it's inevitable. Already, important programs are cut in the US and UK. For example, as people were dying the US Congress wouldn't fund Zika virus research, and CDC (or NIH) shifted resources from Ebola research and/or treatment. The US military has clearly stated they cannot defend the country and accomplish their mission with current funding. People can always claim they can 'trim the fat', etc.; it's just words; a promise of something for nothing, government services without having to pay for them. It's been used by politicians for as long as taxes have existed. I'd be interested in serious research showing where such inefficiencies exist and what can be done, but the claim by itself isn't substantive.
  • ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I continue to suggest to folks that with a couple of Falcon 9 payloads one could dock a module to boost it into the Earth-Moon L1 point. At which point station keeping would require minimum fuel.
    • Pinckney 10y ago
• Herodotus38 10y ago
  It could be, however I would bet against it as both the US and Russia have plans. The US is looking at the commercial market to deal with LEO while NASA focuses on larger things. I believe that Russia has plans as well but I haven't read about them as much. Here is a recent article that mentions a few possibilities: http://spacenews.com/companies-pitch-plans-for-commercial-space-station-modules/ http://spacenews.com/companies-pitch-plans-for-commercial-sp... Notably, the company Axiom plans on making their potential module be able to function independently after detaching from the ISS. Bigelow also has plans for using their inflatable technology, although they've been working on this for quite a while and I've heard rumors of that the management is dysfunctional so for them to be ready in time for 2024 seems unlikely to me, a layperson. My guess: 2024 will come and there will be perhaps some commercial space stations or modules attached but they will lengthen the date until ISS decommission at least one time.
  • sandworm101 10y ago
    NASA may be looking beyond, but the US is still very much focused on leo. The US military and surveillance agencies have plenty of birds. They are constantly launching new stuff. They long ago gave up using men in space, that's NASA's thing, but in terms of rockets and access LEO is still an American focus.
• deleted 10y ago
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• maverick_iceman 10y ago
  What exactly is the point of having a space station? I'm not aware of any scientific/space exploration reasons that can justify the money spent.
  • gakada 10y ago
    Having a space station is not important. Having the infrastructure to build and maintain a space station is important. When the US stopped sending people to the moon it stopped to be capable of sending people past LEO. A space station at least ensures that we can still send people to space.
    • nradov 10y ago
      But we (USA) can't still send people to space. We voluntarily gave up that infrastructure years ago and have no clear, funded plan to restore it. For manned spaceflight, NASA's top priority should be basic research into breakthrough propulsion technologies. It's pretty clear that we'll never be able to safely send a large number of people anywhere worthwhile using chemical rockets.
      • trothamel 10y ago
        We do have a funded plan to restore it. SpaceX and Boeing have contracts to ferry people to the ISS, starting in a year or so. Both of them have constructed serious amounts of hardware, both the capsules and the pads/towers required to launch them.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • Thimothy 10y ago
    China is replicating exactly, step by step, the soviet space program, and the next stop is their own MIR. There is a lot of technology to be learnt there about maintaining medium-term live in space and basic science research that could be done.
  • restalis 10y ago
• perilunar 10y ago
  Seems such a waste to de-orbit these stations (ISS, Tiangong-1, Mir, Skylab) given the cost of getting them into orbit. One day we will have space manufacturing capability, and a couple of hundred tonnes of aluminium scrap would be pretty useful I would have thought.
  • detaro 10y ago
    ISS needs 7 tonnes of fuel each year to stay in orbit, so it would need yearly refueling runs just to keep it were it is (or expensive modifications to get larger tanks, I think it only has enough capacity for a year right now). And if you deorbit it you can be sure it's safely gone, and stop worrying about defects that have it crashing down somewhere random anyways - you certainly don't want to have to go out and fix it. For a decade or so that might be worth it, but on a more long-term timeline it would be more efficient to just launch what you need when you actually need it. EDIT: what I didn't think about is that one maybe could push it further out and reduce atmospheric drag and thus fuel needs that way, but I suspect the safety aspect still wins.
    • david-given 10y ago
      The ISS is largely where it is due to a set of messy technical and political compromises: it needed to be in an orbit that both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle could reach. Because they both launched from places that aren't on the equator, all orbits reachable by them would be inclined, so there's only a limited set that both can get to. (Without doing a ruinously expensive plane change manoeuvre.) And of course the higher the orbit, the more fuel you need, which means less payload, so it ended up in quite a low orbit. Now the shuttle's gone, there's no realistic proposal for delivering heavy components to the station, so it could be reboosted into a higher orbit. You'd end up spending less fuel on stationkeeping, but more fuel on routine deliveries and crew transfers. I really have no idea whether this would be worthwhile. Anyone?
  • restalis 10y ago
    Extraterrestrial space is an expensive medium, and not only for putting things into. We may want space manufacturing capability but we definitely don't want space junk orbiting around. In the long term, the most important thing for all orbital objects is their safe decommissioning procedure. Keeping the space clean is paramount.