Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I.S.S. to end in 2016?!!


Yep you are reading that right! According to an article in Popsci.com send in by Shaun Saunders, NASA plans on de-orbiting the international space station in 2016! If that little fact don't grind your ass, think of it this way....this would mean that the ISS will have spent more time being build than fully functional!!! As idiotic as this sounds...it really is just an add on to a list of what would be construed as blunders by any other commercial entity. Allowing the shuttle program to shudder to an end without a follow-on transportation system at the ready is bad enough but ending the only continuous space presence that humanity has available?!!! Oh and it gets better...

From the article:
  • Many of the station's research programs have already been cut and the US Space Shuttle program is ending in 2010, which leaves few big-ticket programs left on the agenda (save for the station's yet-to-be-installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which searchers for dark- and anti-matter).
Unbelievable! Where are the international partners in this boondoggle?

So we have the new lifting system that is still in R&D but heavy lift to where? The Moon?!!! Lets get real here, if the ISS has this many opponents what does an ongoing presence on the Moon have for a chance? Give it one or two launches before they start to understand the staggering cost of a manned Luna presence and they will question NASA's sanity.

And NASA's spin? Well seems there is a "study" to study an extending its lifespan into the 2020s...
NO KIDDING! I have a strong suspicion that if the decommissioning plan trickled down to the general public, there would be calls for a lynchin!

As Shaun puts it:
  • "Is it any wonder why space will be left to the small commercial outfits? Heinlein (i.e., 'the Man Who Sold the Moon') was right after all.
read complete article here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard to believe something this big wasn't trumpeted on all the major news services. Am thinking it's another internet rumor.

Beam Me Up said...

anon
one would hope for a rumor but this came from on high

There's been a fair amount of outcry this week regarding a quote in the Washington Post from International Space Station program manager Michael Suffredini that the ISS would be decommissioned, de-orbited and destroyed in 2016. Suffredini made that statement to the Augustine Commission, the presidential panel reviewing NASA's future plans,

That from Universe Today. Now to be fair they said also...its far from a done deal, but this is a NASA head honcho talking to a respectable group.

As for the "media" come on! They have their heads so far up their collective asses with the MJ thing that the world ending wouldnt make front page for a week after it happened.

This is earthshaking news only in our ever shrinking community. I got blank stares today when I tried to engage people in discussion about the fate of the ISS. But everyone could describe the MJ autopsy photos....do I have to go on?