Space Station to be Abandoned?

In article ,
"Jeff Findley" wrote:

Because it would likely be cheaper and faster than any US solution to
regenerative O2 production. The Russians would be doing the overhaul, the
US shuttle would just be used for transportation. I believe I read
somewhere that an Elektron is 300 lbs. That's not very much extra mass to
put into an MPLM for a ride up. As for the ride down, the MPLM is already
used for disposing of trash.

The American OGA (Oxygen Generator Assembly) was in dev testing as far
back as the late 80's. Testing continued all the way through the early
'90's when the design was finalized and the developer went through its
CDR - I seem to recall that all but a few RIDs were closed out before
SSF transmorgrified into ISS. I'd bet lots of money that the U.S. qual
unit is sitting in a warehouse at MSFC if it's not actually being used
in a closed-loop development lab somewhere. I think (but I don't
recall) that it weighed less than 300 pounds, too. Also, the U.S. ECLSS
racks were spec'd (and built, I hope) to be stubbed out to simply plug
in the OGA and a CO2 Reduction Assembly unit, funding permitting their
fabrication and launch. I'd bet lots of money that the dev units for
that one are lying around somewhere, too.

We can thank this whole mess on the short-sightedness of Congress and
NASA HQ for cutting these two units out of the program baseline in 1993.
*sigh*

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
~ Robert A. Heinlein
http://www.angryherb.net