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Old April 20th 04, 02:38 PM
jeff findley
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Default NASA Studying Russian 12-month Plan

"JimO" writes:

Any progress on NASA's studying
the Russian proposal for the next ISS
crew to stay up for 12 months?

From what i can hear, there's
a major internal debate over this
idea -- go for it, or be cautious.


I find some of the comments (in your article) by NASA astronauts very
disturbing. They make it sound like they wouldn't consider taking
that long of a mission. If that's the case, perhaps NASA needs to
"clean house" very soon. If we aren't flying astronauts now that are
willing to perform long duration missions, how do we ever expect to
get to Mars?

If there really are medical issues with flights this long, wouldn't it
be prudent to find out about them a.s.a.p.? If this does turn out to
be the case, the solution could be an engineering one. You split your
ship into two parts, separated by a long cable, and spin the thing for
the trip to and from Mars. If it turns out such a solution is
necessary, it would be nice to know about this as far in advance as
possible so prototype designs can be built and tested in LEO.

Jeff
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