Rand Simberg wrote:
On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:47:56 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Martha
Adams" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:


That's a lot of discussion up in this thread, but it misses a key point.
The idea of an orbiting supply station has been around for a long time
and I cannot believe anyone lost it before thinking of today's ISS. Yet
the ISS is placed 1) in such a low orbit that if not reboosted
frequently, it will come down shortly ("re-enter") and 2) in an orbit
very inclined from the Solar System's orbital plane so that *you cannot*
launch from the ISS out to the rest of the System except by extravagant
fuel usage to correct the bad velocity vector you have from the ISS
orbit.

That this would be the case, would be clear enough to any highschool
student interested in space travel; and so there must be *some reason*
the ISS is in such a useless orbit. Since the basic physics is so plain
and obvious, I think it's reasonable to believe the reason ISS is in
such an orbit is *just so* that it cannot be used for a System travel
launch resource. My guess is that the reason for doing this is to be
found in Washington's religious/ideological character: they thought, if
we don't do this now that's progress toward *never* doing it.

(Yes, I've heard the reasons that were given for this orbit, so far out
of the ecliptic. Isn't PR a useful resource for covering-up things? My
guess is some Big Names wanted that space money kept here, available for
coming wars.)

There are no earth orbits that remain in the ecliptic. And the reason
that ISS is in a 52 degree orbit is because the Russians can't reach
one in any lower inclination from Baikonur, your nutty paranoid
conspiracy theories notwithstanding.

I see my decision to killfile Ms. Adams some time ago has been fully
justified by subsequent events.

In addition to Rand's arguments on orbital inclination, the argument on
orbital altitude is that ISS had to be situated below the Van Allen
belts to minimize radiation shielding requirements, and had to be
reachable by both the space shuttle and Soyuz/Progress, the latter of
which has an altitude ceiling of 425 km.

That is the reason why ISS must be in such a low orbit. The basic
physics are so plain and obvious, I think it's reasonable to believe
that only an idiot or a paranoid schizophrenic could believe otherwise.