FYI,

It's All Decked Out. Give It Somewhere to Go
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102394.html

: Consider the International Space Station, that marvel of
: incremental engineering. It has close to 15,000 cubic feet of
: livable space; 10 modules, or living and working areas; a Canadian
: robot arm that can repair the station from outside; and the
: capacity to keep five astronauts (including the occasional wealthy
: rubbernecking space tourist) in good health for long periods. It
: has gleaming, underused laboratories; its bathroom is fully
: repaired; and its exercycle is ready for vigorous mandatory
: workouts.

: The only problem with this $156 billion manifestation of human
: genius -- a project as large as a football field that has been
: called the single most expensive thing ever built -- is that it's
: still going nowhere at a very high rate of speed. And as a
: scientific research platform, it still has virtually no purpose and
: is accomplishing nothing.

: I try not to write this cavalierly. But if the station's goal is to
: conduct yet more research into the effects of zero gravity on human
: beings, well, there's more than enough of that already salted away
: in Russian archives, based on the many years of weightlessness that
: cosmonauts heroically logged in a series of space stations
: throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s. By now, ISS crews have also
: spent serious time in zero gravity. We know exactly what
: weightlessness does and how to counter some of its atrophying
: effects. (Cue shot of exercycle.)

: And if the station's purpose is to act as a "stepping stone" to
: places beyond -- well, that metaphor, most recently used by NASA
: Administrator Michael Griffin is pure propaganda. As any student of
: celestial mechanics can tell you, if you want to go somewhere in
: space, the best policy is to go directly there and not stop along
: the way, because stopping is a waste of precious fuel, time and
: treasure. Which is a pretty good description of the ISS, parked as
: it is in constant low Earth orbit.

: This is no doubt why, after the horrifying disintegration of the
: space shuttle Columbia in 2003, the Bush administration belatedly
: recognized that, if we're going to spend all that money on manned
: spaceflight, we should justify the risks by actually sending our
: astronauts somewhere. So NASA is now developing a new generation of
: rockets and manned spacecraft. By 2020, the Constellation program
: is supposed to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first
: time since Apollo 17 returned from the moon in 1972. Yes, that'll
: be almost 50 years. Where will they go? To the moon -- the only
: place humans have already visited.

: Which leads us right back to the expensively orbiting ISS. It
: hasn't a fig-leaf's role left. The moon is the new "stepping
: stone," with Mars bruited as a next destination. Although NASA
: officials will never quite say so, their current attitude seems to
: be that the station is essentially a high-maintenance distraction,
: even a mistake. Their plan is to finish assembling the thing ASAP
: and hand the keys over to the Russians, Canadians, Europeans and
: Japanese, with minimal continuing U.S. involvement. This should
: happen by the shuttle's mandatory retirement in 2010. Meanwhile,
: we're still writing a lot of high-denomination checks and preparing
: the two remaining shuttles for risky flights to finish something we
: then plan to be largely rid of. This seems absurd. I have an
: alternative proposal:

: Send the ISS somewhere.

: The ISS, you see, is already an interplanetary spacecraft -- at
: least potentially. It's missing a drive system and a steerage
: module, but those are technicalities. Although it's ungainly in
: appearance, it's designed to be boosted periodically to a higher
: altitude by a shuttle, a Russian Soyuz or one of the upcoming new
: Constellation program Orion spacecraft. It could fairly easily be
: retrofitted for operations beyond low-Earth orbit. In principle, we
: could fly it almost anywhere within the inner solar system -- to
: any place where it could still receive enough solar power to keep
: all its systems running.

: It's easy to predict what skeptics both inside and outside NASA
: will say to this idea. They'll point out that the new Constellation
: program is already supposed to have at least the beginnings of
: interplanetary ability. They'll say that the ISS needs to be
: resupplied too frequently for long missions. They'll worry about
: the amount of propellant needed to push the ISS's 1,040,000 pounds
: anywhere -- not to mention bringing them all back.

: There are good answers to all these objections. We'll still need
: the new Constellation Ares boosters and Orion capsules
: -- fortuitously, they can easily be adapted to a scenario in which
: the ISS becomes the living-area and lab core of an interplanetary
: spacecraft. The Ares V heavy-lift booster could easily send aloft
: the additional supplies and storage and drive modules necessary to
: make the ISS truly deep-space-worthy.

: The Orion crew exploration module is designed to be ISS-compatible.
: It could serve as a guidance system and also use its own rocket
: engine to help boost and orient the interplanetary ISS. After
: remaining dormant for much of the one-year journey to, say, Mars,
: it could then be available to conduct independent operations while
: the ISS core orbited the Red Planet, or to investigate an asteroid
: near Earth, for instance.

: But, the skeptics will say, the new Orion capsule's engines
: wouldn't be nearly enough; a spacecraft as large as the ISS would
: need its own drive system. Here, too, we're in surprisingly good
: shape. The ISS is already in space; the amount of thrust it needs
: to go farther is a lot less than you might think. Moreover, a drive
: system doesn't have to be based on chemical rockets. Over the past
: two decades, both the U.S. and Japanese programs have conducted
: highly successful tests in space of ion-drive systems. Unlike the
: necessarily impatient rockets we use to escape Earth's gravity and
: reach orbit, these long-duration, low-thrust engines produce the
: kind of methodical acceleration (and deceleration) appropriate for
: travel once a spacecraft is already floating in zero gravity. They
: would be a perfect way to send the ISS on its way and bring it back
: to Earth again.

: This leaves a lander. A lunar lander substantially larger than the
: spidery Apollo-era LEMs is currently on the drawing board. It's not
: nearly as far along in development as the Ares booster and Orion
: spacecraft components of the Constellation program -- which is a
: good thing. While I question the need to return to the moon in the
: first place, I wouldn't exclude it as a possible destination, so I
: think we should modify the lander's design to make it capable of
: touching down on either the moon or Mars and then returning to the
: ISS with samples for study in its laboratories. Such landers could
: also investigate the moon's poles, where we think water may be
: present, or one of the near-Earth asteroids -- which may have raw
: materials suitable for use by future generations of space
: explorers.

: But, our skeptics will sputter, this will all cost far more money
: than the Constellation program. Who'll pay for it?

: Actually, it will in effect save all the money we've already spent
: on the ISS. And the station is already an international project,
: with substantial financial and technological input from the
: Russians, Canadians, Europeans and Japanese. In recent years, the
: Chinese, who have developed their own human spaceflight
: capabilities, have made repeated overtures to NASA, hoping to be
: let in on the ISS project. They've been unceremoniously rebuffed by
: the Bush administration, but a new administration may be more
: welcoming. An interplanetary ISS -- the acronym now standing for
: International Space Ship -- would be a truly international
: endeavor, with expenses shared among all participating nations.

: How likely is any of this to happen? Not very. A lot depends on the
: flexibility of a NASA that hasn't always been particularly
: welcoming to outside ideas. On the other hand, the agency also
: collaborates with outsiders all the time. So it's not impossible.
: The reason the ISS went from being a purely American, Reagan-era
: project ("Space Station Freedom") to one including the Russians and
: many other nations was a political decision by the Clinton
: administration. A similar political vision will be necessary here.

: All the billions already spent on the space station would pay off
: -- spectacularly -- if this product of human ingenuity actually
: went somewhere and did something. But it would also serve as a
: compelling demonstration that we're one species, living on one
: planet, and that we're as capable of cooperating peacefully as we
: are at competing militaristically. Let's begin the process of
: turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an
: interplanetary butterfly.

: michael.benson@...

: Michael Benson, the author of "Beyond: Visions of the
: Interplanetary Probes," writes frequently on space science issues.

Mark Reiff