[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Analyst_*]

It began with the cancelation of several ISS parts essential for conducting science: X38, US Living module, Centrifuge module. 2004 they canceled HST SM4 for "safety reasons" (LOL). The next Discovery mission selection has been delayed and there will be only one flight opportunity (Dawn and Kepler have been selected several yaers ago). New Frontiers 2 opportunity is in limbo and JIMO, the flagship with nuclear propulsion and 1000 kg+ science payload is dead.

And now, to save even more money (a tiny fraction of the monthly cost of the Iraq afterwar), is it considered to shut down Voyager 1 and 2 and several other "old" spacecraft.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/voyager1-05a.html

All this to finance a "vision" that is still hopelessly underfunded. This administration is the worst for space science since the 1980's, when the US didn't launched any interplanetray probe for more than 10 (in words: ten) years (Pioneer Venus 1978, Magellan 1989).

Sorry for being political, but the next step will be shutting down two fully functional Mars rovers.

Analyst

[dvandorn]

I'm not going to get anti-manned flight on everyone - and I do think there's value in the ISS if for nothing more than the very experience of working in space and working internationally - but there's a LOT that's wrong with it and a lot that should be done differently.

I think ISS, while not very "sexy" as far as manned space flight is concerned, has been and continues to be a necessary "school" in long-duration manned flight. While the Russians already had considerable experience in long-duration flight, American experience in same had been limited to three Skylab flights, which all occurred more than 30 years ago.

The fact that the Russians had a lot of experience is not, in the final analysis, all that helpful to American planetary flight planning, because, face it -- the Russians haven't been forthcoming at sharing their findings, and the Americans had been reluctant to believe that the continuing repair efforts needed to keep earlier Salyuts and Mir operational were inevitable... I think NASA had always felt that the engineering issues with the Salyuts and Mir were typical of Russian bingling and not something *they* would ever have to face.

Now NASA knows better, and has a real basis of actual experience upon which to plan manned planetary missions. Experience that they perhaps would not have believed had they not earned it themselves.

If that is *all* ISS ever does for us, I'd say it was worth it.

-the other Doug