"Glen Overby" wrote in message
...
Jeff Findley wrote:
What he says is sort of true, at least as far as "exploration" goes.
While
there is lots of experimentation on ISS, it's not exactly "exploring".
And
yes, it's cost so much money (especially if you include the costs of the
shuttle program as used to support the ISS program), it's pretty much
gobbled up most of the manned spaceflight budget for decades.

The first flaw in his argument is arguing for unmanned over manned. Human
spaceflight is about humans flying, not about humans building robots to
fly.
I've observed that the humans-vs-robots argument is a fairly polarizing
one:
either you're for HSF or you're against it.

I thought the real purpose of building a space station was to learn how to
live and work in space. We do that in earth orbit so we can try many
different things to see which one works best and, if the worst happens, be
able to evacuate the station and come home.

True, but in practice, Mir has shown that the astronauts, and the engieners
on the ground, are very reluctant to evacuate a space station even in the
face of life threatening situations like fire and decompression. One of the
main reasons for this is that they're designed to be operated and maintained
by astronauts on the spot. Without continuous manned operations and
maintenance, there is the very real possibility that something critical will
break that can't be fixed from the ground.

A space station could also be used to assemble the parts of the larger
spacecraft that leaves earth orbit. This technique was advocated by some
for
the moon landing. Whether ISS is in an orbit that is useful for that is
something I'll leave to those who understand orbits better than I do.

It could, but considering its high inclination orbit, it's not in an ideal
location for such a task. The high inclination causes a payload penalty for
anything launched from a lower lattitude, like KSC. Also, tt could be done,
but it would likely wreck the zero gravity environemnt inside its labs,
which might not make the international partners very happy since they've
spent quite a bit of their own money to build and fly their attached labs.

I wouldn't mind seeing a suspension of the manned space program (outside
of
ISS and Orion-lite) for the next 5 years just so we can get our house in
order. NASA currently spends far too much money on manned space programs

You're willing to sacrifice human spaceflight for robotic spaceflight.
You
might want to check with the astronaut corps on that one

For the next five years. We have far too many astronauts as it is. A five
year pause in flights (except for ISS, which will provide precious few
flights without the shuttle) will only weed out the surplus that won't be
needed in the future.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon