What is the value of the ISS?

> From: Joe Strout
> Sure. But do we have the equivalent of a $20k machine-built car in
> space? No, we don't, so let's not claim that the hand-built
> SUV is no better than no vehicle at all.

Nuh uh. That's a shell game. Mir was deorbited BECAUSE the ISS was going to
replace it. Without the ISS they would have found some way to keep it going.
ISS was after all redesigned around the replacement parts for Mir.

> At the very least, we're
> getting more
> experience building vehicles. (And as an engineer, my experience is
> that you have to build something by hand a few times before
> you can do a decent job of automating the process anyway.)

You are mixing your metaphors. Mir was designed to be assembled via
automated docking. ISS was designed to be completely dependent on the US
shuttle. NASA threw out a working and proven automatic docking system to
give the shuttle a reason for existing. That is what I mean by 'hand built'.
As another engineer, I appreciate the need to hand build prototypes. But
it's still stupid to *destroy* a working CNC machine and light bulbs simply
so you can practice your craft skills by candle light. This I feel is going
too far. That is in fact a good definition of sabotage.

And something some things you simply don't practice. You buy from
manufactures. You can practice making chips for as long as you want. You'll
never be as good as AMD or Intel, and it's a waste of time to try.

> It's easy to imagine that, just as it was easy in the 60's to
> imagine

That's half the fun of 'what if'. It's so easy. But you're right. A what if
doesn't make something real. Neither though that a dismissal make it
impossible.

> If you mean competition between governments, then who
> exactly? If the U.S. doesn't have a space station,
> then the only players left would be the Russians.

I wasn't referring exclusively to the station but the shuttle as well. There
is no reason for the US manned space programme to cost $10B a year when
multiple design studies going back decades show the R&D cost of a fully
reusable low cost launcher is in the $1-10B range in current money. Immortal
mathematics (combined with real world data) show it doesn't require new
technologies or materials either. Paying that once is in the region of any
G8 nation, and several others, as are the $100M annual costs for a low-cost
programme. Try and explain this though and the answer is, "Surely NASA can't
be that stupid..." If NASA wasn't continually 'proving' space travel is
impossibly expensive, and obstructing competition, there might have been a
lot more interest over the past couple of decades.

You can't use real history to predetermine the outcome of a what-if. If it
was anything other than space travel, I'm not certain you would question the
notion that 'if American doesn't, someone else will', or that monopolies are
really bad for advancement.

> But that's easy to say in a hand-wavy, ignoring-the-details
> sort of way. To do it real life requires mastery of many
> thousands of
> details, and that mastery comes from experience in actually reaching
> and operating in space.

Most of those skills are present in any aerospace company. Those that aren't
(handling LOX for example) can easily be contracted for. You're taking
proven engines and firmly attaching them to a well built fuel tank. It's
only rocket science if the tolerances are stupidly fine. The engineering is
complex, but not significantly more so than any other aerospace project. The
maths aren't that much worse either. The only real difference is the human
factor: space travel sounds 'scarier' than building 747s or piper cubs. It
isn't. As long as you meet common sense specifications (and the not so
common sense LOX specs), test what you build in a sane testing programme,
then what you build will work and will be safe.

> > Remember job hunting. Experience is only useful if it's relevant.
>
> I have to disagree on pretty much every point. Was experience
> building cars one by one irrelevant when Henry Ford sat down
> to design the first assembly line?

Forget the hand-built-car thing. I'm not saying the ISS is a hand built car.
I'm saying it's a hand built *steam engine*. Whatever follows the ISS will
be *nothing* like the ISS. It will be as different as cars were from steam
trains. Or like bikes and cars. Or horses and cars. It is so flawed and out
of date that I honestly do not think any experience we gain with the ISS
will be useful for any other space station - ever. Except as a systematic
guide of how not to do it.

> If you're talking about Bigelow's crafts, they don't count because
> they do not (and can not) support humans.

True, but they're only short a few dozen kilos of life support. If he wanted
to Bigelow could put up another one tomorrow that could support people.

I mentioned them only to show that ISS technology is already redundant. It's
been over taken by something better.

Oh, and out of interest: How exactly would one go about benefiting from ISS
experience with (say) the common birthing module? If that's top secret what
are the chances that private industry can obtain enough information about
more important ISS systems for the 'experience' to be at all useful to them?
Being told that something went wrong, in some way, and it was fixed with 'a'
method... Even if you are correct, and I am wrong, without having detailed
information (which NASA apparently can't give you) much of what they say is
simply not informative.

John