[meteorite-list] Send the ISS to the moon

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:21:46 -0400
Message-ID: <1nfq7451n0dpjk4q3ns73tl3vbl4eqlah6_at_4ax.com>

Sounds good to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102394.html

It's All Decked Out. Give It Somewhere to Go.

By Michael Benson
Sunday, July 13, 2008; B03



Consider the International Space Station, that marvel of incremental
engineering. It has close to 15,000 cubic feet of livable space; 10 modules, or
living and working areas; a Canadian robot arm that can repair the station from
outside; and the capacity to keep five astronauts (including the occasional
wealthy rubbernecking space tourist) in good health for long periods. It has
gleaming, underused laboratories; its bathroom is fully repaired; and its
exercycle is ready for vigorous mandatory workouts.

The only problem with this $156 billion manifestation of human genius -- a
project as large as a football field that has been called the single most
expensive thing ever built -- is that it's still going nowhere at a very high
rate of speed. And as a scientific research platform, it still has virtually no
purpose and is accomplishing nothing.

I try not to write this cavalierly. But if the station's goal is to conduct yet
more research into the effects of zero gravity on human beings, well, there's
more than enough of that already salted away in Russian archives, based on the
many years of weightlessness that cosmonauts heroically logged in a series of
space stations throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s. By now, ISS crews have also
spent serious time in zero gravity. We know exactly what weightlessness does and
how to counter some of its atrophying effects. (Cue shot of exercycle.)

And if the station's purpose is to act as a "stepping stone" to places beyond --
well, that metaphor, most recently used by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is
pure propaganda. As any student of celestial mechanics can tell you, if you want
to go somewhere in space, the best policy is to go directly there and not stop
along the way, because stopping is a waste of precious fuel, time and treasure.
Which is a pretty good description of the ISS, parked as it is in constant low
Earth orbit.

This is no doubt why, after the horrifying disintegration of the space shuttle
Columbia in 2003, the Bush administration belatedly recognized that, if we're
going to spend all that money on manned spaceflight, we should justify the risks
by actually sending our astronauts somewhere. So NASA is now developing a new
generation of rockets and manned spacecraft. By 2020, the Constellation program
is supposed to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since
Apollo 17 returned from the moon in 1972. Yes, that'll be almost 50 years. Where
will they go? To the moon -- the only place humans have already visited.

Which leads us right back to the expensively orbiting ISS. It hasn't a
fig-leaf's role left. The moon is the new "stepping stone," with Mars bruited as
a next destination. Although NASA officials will never quite say so, their
current attitude seems to be that the station is essentially a high-maintenance
distraction, even a mistake. Their plan is to finish assembling the thing ASAP
and hand the keys over to the Russians, Canadians, Europeans and Japanese, with
minimal continuing U.S. involvement. This should happen by the shuttle's
mandatory retirement in 2010. Meanwhile, we're still writing a lot of
high-denomination checks and preparing the two remaining shuttles for risky
flights to finish something we then plan to be largely rid of. This seems
absurd. I have an alternative proposal:

Send the ISS somewhere.

The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at least
potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage module, but those are
technicalities. Although it's ungainly in appearance, it's designed to be
boosted periodically to a higher altitude by a shuttle, a Russian Soyuz or one
of the upcoming new Constellation program Orion spacecraft. It could fairly
easily be retrofitted for operations beyond low-Earth orbit. In principle, we
could fly it almost anywhere within the inner solar system -- to any place where
it could still receive enough solar power to keep all its systems running.

It's easy to predict what skeptics both inside and outside NASA will say to this
idea. They'll point out that the new Constellation program is already supposed
to have at least the beginnings of interplanetary ability. They'll say that the
ISS needs to be resupplied too frequently for long missions. They'll worry about
the amount of propellant needed to push the ISS's 1,040,000 pounds anywhere --
not to mention bringing them all back.

There are good answers to all these objections. We'll still need the new
Constellation Ares boosters and Orion capsules -- fortuitously, they can easily
be adapted to a scenario in which the ISS becomes the living- area and lab core
of an interplanetary spacecraft. The Ares V heavy-lift booster could easily send
aloft the additional supplies and storage and drive modules necessary to make
the ISS truly deep-space-worthy.

The Orion crew exploration module is designed to be ISS-compatible. It could
serve as a guidance system and also use its own rocket engine to help boost and
orient the interplanetary ISS. After remaining dormant for much of the one-year
journey to, say, Mars, it could then be available to conduct independent
operations while the ISS core orbited the Red Planet, or to investigate an
asteroid near Earth, for instance.

But, the skeptics will say, the new Orion capsule's engines wouldn't be nearly
enough; a spacecraft as large as the ISS would need its own drive system. Here,
too, we're in surprisingly good shape. The ISS is already in space; the amount
of thrust it needs to go farther is a lot less than you might think. Moreover, a
drive system doesn't have to be based on chemical rockets. Over the past two
decades, both the U.S. and Japanese programs have conducted highly successful
tests in space of ion-drive systems. Unlike the necessarily impatient rockets we
use to escape Earth's gravity and reach orbit, these long-duration, low-thrust
engines produce the kind of methodical acceleration (and deceleration)
appropriate for travel once a spacecraft is already floating in zero gravity.
They would be a perfect way to send the ISS on its way and bring it back to
Earth again.

This leaves a lander. A lunar lander substantially larger than the spidery
Apollo-era LEMs is currently on the drawing board. It's not nearly as far along
in development as the Ares booster and Orion spacecraft components of the
Constellation program -- which is a good thing. While I question the need to
return to the moon in the first place, I wouldn't exclude it as a possible
destination, so I think we should modify the lander's design to make it capable
of touching down on either the moon or Mars and then returning to the ISS with
samples for study in its laboratories. Such landers could also investigate the
moon's poles, where we think water may be present, or one of the near-Earth
asteroids -- which may have raw materials suitable for use by future generations
of space explorers.

But, our skeptics will sputter, this will all cost far more money than the
Constellation program. Who'll pay for it?

Actually, it will in effect save all the money we've already spent on the ISS.
And the station is already an international project, with substantial financial
and technological input from the Russians, Canadians, Europeans and Japanese. In
recent years, the Chinese, who have developed their own human spaceflight
capabilities, have made repeated overtures to NASA, hoping to be let in on the
ISS project. They've been unceremoniously rebuffed by the Bush administration,
but a new administration may be more welcoming. An interplanetary ISS -- the
acronym now standing for International Space Ship -- would be a truly
international endeavor, with expenses shared among all participating nations.

How likely is any of this to happen? Not very. A lot depends on the flexibility
of a NASA that hasn't always been particularly welcoming to outside ideas. On
the other hand, the agency also collaborates with outsiders all the time. So
it's not impossible. The reason the ISS went from being a purely American,
Reagan-era project ("Space Station Freedom") to one including the Russians and
many other nations was a political decision by the Clinton administration. A
similar political vision will be necessary here.

All the billions already spent on the space station would pay off --
spectacularly -- if this product of human ingenuity actually went somewhere and
did something. But it would also serve as a compelling demonstration that we're
one species, living on one planet, and that we're as capable of cooperating
peacefully as we are at competing militaristically. Let's begin the process of
turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary
butterfly.

michael.benson at pristop.si


Michael Benson, the author of "Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes,"
writes frequently on space science issues.
Received on Tue 15 Jul 2008 08:21:46 PM PDT