DailyTech - Moving ISS May Have Left Permanent Damage

Submit News

Science Moving ISS May Have Left Permanent Damage
Michael Barkoviak - February 3, 2009 1:24 PM

44 comment(s) - last by Bubbacub.. on Feb 4 at 3:27 PM

Last month's maneuver may have left permanent damage aboard the ISS, but it's unsure how much damage was done

The International Space Station (ISS) may have suffered permanent damage after Russian space engineers were forced to move the space station's position to properly receive a robotic spacecraft last month, NASA announced on its website.

Rockets necessary to help move the ISS suddenly cut off rather than gradually shut down, which led to increased shaking aboard the ISS. The long-term effect of the shaking could mean that the station's "useful life" has been reduced, although it's unsure by how much.

Flight engineers do not like moving the ISS using rocket thrusters, and normally only move the multi-billion space station when a piece of debris may impact it, NASA officials said.

NASA engineers are now thinking about whether they should use a different set of rockets to move the ISS or scrap the idea entirely during a scheduled maneuver ready to go tomorrow. The ISS must also be moved next month so a Russian spacecraft is able to dock and let two new astronauts board the ISS while two crewmembers stationed at the ISS can head back to Earth.

NASA plans to launch shuttle Discovery to the ISS to deliver the last solar arrays on February 12, with five total shuttle missions planned for 2009. The U.S. space agency desperately wants to have the ISS fully operational, but does not plan to use the orbiting space lab after 2015. The 13 other nations who helped construct the ISS want to continue using it until 2020.

Since the ISS hasn't been completed, only crews of two or three people have been able to stay long-term aboard the ISS -- once completed, six people will work aboard the ISS.

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Till 2015

By RMSe17 on 2/3/2009 2:15:37 PM , Rating: 2

The station is not finished, or fully manned, and the plan was to only use it till 2015? That's a lot of money spent on a 5-6 year operational period. I wonder how much useful research they will get done in time. It would make sense to build something more lasting.

RE: Till 2015

By MrBungle123 on 2/3/2009 2:23:37 PM , Rating: 5

much of the useful research was probably done just building the thing. also part of the point of the station was to learn how to live in space for long periods of time which can easily be done in 5 years. But I agree, we spent so much money on the thing we might as well use it till it breaks.

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By Murloc on 2/3/2009 2:58:20 PM , Rating: 2

this ain't a rover or something, it contains humans, they will never use it until it breaks.

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By mindless1 on 2/3/2009 6:16:31 PM , Rating: 2

So what if the damage we're reading about had been worse and it "broke"? Wouldn't that have meant we used it till it broke? Didn't we use a space shuttle till it broke too?

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By FITCamaro on 2/3/09, Rating: 0

RE: Till 2015

By gevorg on 2/3/2009 5:12:21 PM , Rating: 3

"also part of the point of the station was to learn how to live in space for long periods of time which can easily be done in 5 years"

Actually, Mir already accomplished this one. (~12 years).

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By mac2j on 2/3/2009 2:26:36 PM , Rating: 2

I get the impression it basically went like this:

1) Get money for ISS
2) Dole out inflexible contracts and start building/launching ISS components
3) Realize that everything about the way the ISS is supposed to be deployed, constructed, resupplied, used, and maintained should have been been completely different.
4) Make the best of what youre getting and use everything you learned by screwing up the ISS to make sure the ISS-II isnt as much of a giant piece of space trash.

Really the next space station we get should be a useful orbital waystation for deeper space launches, telescopes, maybe even managing space-based power systems for earth launches and deep space deployments ... and probably very tied to the moon base if we ever build it ... but this one's most useful function is kind of a "proof of concept" learning tool...

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By grath on 2/3/2009 8:52:17 PM , Rating: 3

Most useful locations for stations (IMHO) are:

High equatorial Earth orbit, just past the geostationary belt, where it can access our old communications satellites for refuel and service if possible, or cannibalization for parts.

Low polar lunar orbit, supporting lunar base(s) at the Moons poles. Assuming theres enough ice in those craters to get lunar LH2/LOX rocket fuel procduction up and running, this one would be the main gas station and the start of the pipeline as it were, as well as the transfer point for in and outbound traffic to the lunar surface.

An area of stable gravitational equilibrium between the Earth and Moon, meaning the regions around the 4th or 5th Lagrangian point, where objects remain stationary relative to other objects in the same region. This is where we can build alot of large stations close together without requiring constant station keeping. It is the logical place to build and stage vehicles for further deep space missions.

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By slashbinslashbash on 2/4/2009 12:46:09 AM , Rating: 3

Obviously those positions would be more useful. L4 and L5 have been the holy grail positions since early spaceflight. The problem is they would require a whole lot more fuel to get up there. And more fuel to reach higher orbit = more fuel to get THAT fuel up to the point where it is used, etc. Fuel requirements go up non-linearly with increasing height of orbit. LEO has been the operating envelope for all manned spaceflight besides Apollo. Kind of scary when you think how huge the Saturn V was, compared to the payload.

Parent

RE: Till 2015

By Aloonatic on 2/4/2009 3:53:22 AM , Rating: 2

I hope that the ants nest was not harmed else...

"...we will never know if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws"

Defend the queen!

Parent

Moving the spacestation to dock something ?

By Boushh on 2/3/2009 5:33:42 PM , Rating: 3

Wouldn't it be easier to move the thing that was docking ? It's not like there is no room in space to do that...

It's like moving your garage because your cann't make the turn in one go. Or I'm I missing something here ?

And why is it that we still do not have a rotating space station like in 2001: A Space Oddisey ? Instead we have some boxes clued together with solar pannels which simple looks dead ungly, and which on the inside looks even worst.

Come on people, make peace and stop making war, and put all that money into a rotating spacestation...

RE: Moving the spacestation to dock something ?

By mindless1 on 2/3/2009 6:25:47 PM , Rating: 2

Tie Fighters FTW!

Parent

RE: Moving the spacestation to dock something ?

By JS on 2/3/2009 7:07:48 PM , Rating: 3

This is how you do it:

1. Line up perfectly between the station and the planet. You know that you are lined up perfectly when you look out your side windows and you have both the planet and the station in the middle of your respective crosshairs. Come to a full stop.

2. Turn 90 degrees towards the space station, so that its docking bay appears in the middle of your front window crosshairs.

3. Carefully increase thrust and gently rotate to match the rotation of the space station docking bay.

4. Enter the docking bay and sell your commodities at a profit. Use money to buy a docking computer.

Parent

RE: Moving the spacestation to dock something ?

By Bubbacub on 2/4/2009 3:22:26 PM , Rating: 2

5: buy luxury goods from sol

6: sell luxury goods in barnards star and buy robots

7: sell robots in sol and go to step 5: until you have tons of money

8: do the cargo space cheat, by an eagle mark 2 fit a class seven hyperdrive and a large plasma accelerator and everything else

9: the galaxy is all yours....... bwah hah ah ah hah

Parent

RE: Moving the spacestation to dock something ?

By Bubbacub on 2/4/2009 3:27:52 PM , Rating: 2

correction - eagle mark 1 - greatest hyperspace range

Parent

mission completed

By Bubbacub on 2/3/2009 4:00:41 PM , Rating: 3

to my mind it seems that the main purpose of the ISS was to justify the existence of an equally incredibly expensive launching system that is similarly superfluous.

In this sense it has been an unqualified success.

Think how much more space exploration could have been achieved without the shuttle and the ISS. We could have sent large numbers of probes and robotic explorers throughout the solar system. It may be less glamorous than manned exploration and less pr worthy than a semi-reusable launcher (that costs more than a disposable one) but i think its important to have pragmatic missions designed to answer scientific questions. with the ISS and the shuttle the hardware came first and then they belatedly thought about doing some low grade science to attempt to justify the expenditure.

RE: mission completed

By grath on 2/3/2009 9:19:54 PM , Rating: 4

Without the Shuttle and ISS... hmmmmm...

[Begin technicolor daydream sequence]
We would have built some more Saturn Vs at least, and directed the R&D toward a Saturn derived future launch system. Skylab would have stayed useful for maybe a decade and we would have had time to learn not to do some of the things we did with ISS, things that were indeed learned on Mir but largely ignored. The Apollo program would have had more landings of increasing duration and likely to a polar site, where we would have found out then if there is enough ice in those craters. Perhaps most importantly is the Apollo Applications Program would have continued, which was tasked with developing uses for the Saturn-Apollo system other than just landing on the Moon. That would have likely evolved into using the remainder of Apollo for setting up groundwork for a permanent base that would be established with the next generation of hardware, say maybe circa 1990. By 2009 we would have been building many parts of our spacecraft from lunar derived materials, with several hundred people living permanently on the Moon or in space stations around Earth, and the beginnings of our presence on Mars, meaning stations at Phobos or Deimos with limited surface excursion, but probably not a real surface base there yet.
[End technicolor daydream sequence]

Damn you reality!

Parent

Wow

By Ben on 2/3/2009 10:20:22 PM , Rating: 3

Another example of NASA and their POS space craft.

Why does everything they send up resemble a house of cards more than a piece of equipment?

I know, I know. Weight.

How about composites?

I know, I know, costs.

How about trimming some of the corporate fat?
How about advertising? You can't tell me that no one would pay to put their logo 20ft high across the fuel tank on the next launch.

NASA has become a big fat whale that has to be spoon fed to survive.

Things are going to change when we get some competition.

Really only for debris? No.

By Griswold on 2/4/2009 5:44:09 AM , Rating: 2

"Flight engineers do not like moving the ISS using rocket thrusters, and normally only move the multi-billion space station when a piece of debris may impact it, NASA officials said."

The orbit of the ISS is decreasing every day between 50 and 150m. It is for that reason that the ISS has to be moved quite a few times (no fixed interval, its done when its needed) per year and not only to avoid space debris. For that they use the thrusters of the shuttle, sojus, progress, svesda or ATV module. Moving the ISS isnt something special. But it appears that doing it right isnt that easy either...

LOL

By DigitalFreak on 2/3/09, Rating: 0

????????

By Bender 123 on 2/3/09, Rating: -1

RE: ????????

By Doormat on 2/3/2009 2:22:31 PM , Rating: 2

Agreed, maybe its a PR issue - that they aren't doing a good job explaining why we need a manned space presence.

As romantic of an idea it might be for manned space stations and trips to Mars, we might just be better off figuring how to get payload off the surface of the earth with less expense for now.

Parent

RE: ????????

By JasonMick

(blog) on 2/3/2009 2:28:10 PM , Rating: 4

Dumb, but sadly typical comment.

The ISS may not have rocked the research community with any huge development, but its contributed much worthwhile research.

Among its programs are research into space exposure effects on humans including muscle atrophy, bone loss, and fluid shifts. A number of experiments studying the effect of near-weightlessness on evolution, development and growth, and the internal processes of plants and animals have also been run. Microtissue and protein growth in a weightless environment are also being studied.

Low gravity/low temperature reaction and materials experiments on superconducting materials or other valuable materials have also been performed. The station has yielded great improvements in fluid theory, particularly fluid behavior in microgravity.

How valuable those advances are versus the high cost of the station is debatable, but considering the station's greatest function is to prove technology for future largely orbiting installations, it definitely seems worth the cost in that respect at least.

Even if you did not feel that the costs were justified by the progress, though, its ridiculous to say that its never been of use.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Spookster on 2/3/09, Rating: 0

RE: ????????

By Pirks on 2/3/2009 3:23:03 PM , Rating: 3

I guess building it on the moon would be much more expensive.

Parent

RE: ????????

By mindless1 on 2/3/2009 6:30:40 PM , Rating: 2

except the moon isn't particularly low gravity.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Machinegear on 2/3/2009 3:10:24 PM , Rating: 2

Mick, it's a turd. An expensive flying space turd. Sure it may have resulted in some scientific benefit, though most regular folks see the ISS as a failure assuming they remember it at all. Projects as pricey and large as the ISS better have some bling to it, or meet some fantastic imagery in the common man's mind, like perfecting a warp drive or introducing the first steps toward teleportation, otherwise it is just another big waste of taxpayer money.

Sure, you like ISS. But realize, most don't care. Most folks I know are simply trying to make their expenses day-to-day and the ISS has failed to stir any positive emotions. If the ISS fell out of the sky tomorrow, it would be news again... for a day.

Parent

RE: ????????

By William Gaatjes on 2/3/2009 3:36:36 PM , Rating: 3

It's called basic science. This does not immediatly lead to practical situations.

Parent

RE: ????????

By GaryJohnson on 2/3/2009 4:09:52 PM , Rating: 2

You're talking about something with around 75 times the mass of Columbia. If it fell out of the sky tomorrow it could cause some serious ground damage.

Parent

RE: ????????

By mindless1 on 2/3/2009 6:38:05 PM , Rating: 2

How do you expect us to get from point A to point B?

A) Earth dwellers not able to envision all the effects of space on ourselves or equipment, until we test these things in space.

B) Getting Scotty to go down to the space dock to sign for the warp drive repair parts delivery.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Bender 123 on 2/3/2009 3:23:26 PM , Rating: 1

In comparison to what? Aren't there enough problems that 10s of billions could go toward? The reason the moon was so valuable in the sixties was to prove it could be done and build spirit in the fight with the USSR...A trip to Mars would be similar. MIR was up there, so we already know what drifting around in low earth orbit will do. I would rather invest the money into a way to get other stations into orbit cheaply and efficiently. The ISS was just putting the cart before the horse and thus hamstringing its own use.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Pirks on 2/3/2009 3:31:56 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I would rather invest the money into a way to get other stations into orbit cheaply and efficiently.

So instead of finishing the first of the space stations you would just forget about it and start building others? What for? To drop these unfinished as well and go for building something else, to leave it unfinished yet again? Sounds silly.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Bender 123 on 2/3/2009 3:46:16 PM , Rating: 2

I think you miss the point...

Lets get a viable, cost effective way to transport men and supplies into orbit, before we start grand ideas about having permanent bases. AS we learned from the space shuttle and Scotty's burial in space, chemical rockets and current systems are dangerous, costly and of limited use in expanding humanity beyond earth.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Pirks on 2/3/2009 4:53:42 PM , Rating: 2

So, when they get a viable cost effective way to get people to orbit, you'll protest again by saying it's not cost effective enough so please don't build new space stations until the price of getting people to orbit is exactly zero. Now that's ridiculous.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Solandri on 2/3/2009 7:18:06 PM , Rating: 2

I'm holding out more hope for hypersonic aircraft advancing space technology than the actual space program itself (though to the fair, the two complement each other). Rockets were a shortcut taken in the 1950s/60s to get a payload into space quickly, without developing a lot of new technology, and without really much consideration for cost or cost effectiveness. Long-term, the solution is probably going to be something which lifts itself out of the lower atmosphere with the aid of aerodynamic forces, then blasts itself into orbit.

Parent

RE: ????????

By Pirks on 2/3/2009 7:23:31 PM , Rating: 2

Why holding out? Why not develop both the space lifting and the space station building technologies at the same time? While rockets get improved the space station get built. Multitasking, man.

Parent

RE: ????????

By grath on 2/3/2009 10:11:20 PM , Rating: 2

A hypersonic spaceplane would be well suited for crew and some limited internal cargo such as the International Standard Payload Rack modules used for ISS systems, but anything larger than that, and certainly anything the size and mass of a major station component, would be too bulky to fit into a sufficiently aerodynamic payload fairing, and too heavy for the vehicle to achieve enough lift in the upper atmosphere. So you still put your big stuff up on rockets, but crew transfer and resupply can be done by spaceplane. The Shuttle tried to do it all and its success in any one area was compromised by the others. Jack of all trades but master of none as it were.

Since you mentioned long term, nothing will really be anything you can call efficient as long as it relys on a local chemical reaction to generate the energy. Barring anti-gravity or some kind of inertial reduction to make stuff weigh less, any launch vehicle that carries its own propulsion system wastes far too much upmass on that system, every pound at the expense of payload. That leaves what, a space elevator, laser propulsion, superguns, electromagnetic mass drivers, or something else new or exotic. The space elevator seems the best choice, but of course is the most difficult to build, and takes the longest to reach orbit. Lasers or superguns might be useful for launching small amounts of material at a high rate, but nothing complex and certainly not humans. Mass drivers have to be very long and straight, but are built from repeated elements so there could be an economy of scale, but to launch at G forces a human could tolerate would require a prohibitively long launcher, unless perhaps it could be suspended in the atmosphere from a string of high altitude baloons, as described in a short story I read. Blah.

Parent

Moving ISS May Have Left Permanent Damage

By bulldog01 on 2/3/09, Rating: -1

RE: Moving ISS May Have Left Permanent Damage

By FITCamaro on 2/3/2009 4:20:52 PM , Rating: 2

If you're so smart why don't you present your brilliant design that's cheap to build to NASA?

Seriously. If it was that freakin easy they would have done it.

Parent

RE: Moving ISS May Have Left Permanent Damage

By Pirks on 2/3/2009 4:25:40 PM , Rating: 2

Such station would cost much more than current gravityless version. Baby steps, just baby steps. Maybe next version will be done as you wish, maybe... if there's enough money to build it this way, with a gravity ring and stuff

Parent