NEW YORK — It would be incomprehensible to shut down the International Space Station after 2015, even though that is what current law envisions, a senior NASA figure said.
Alan Ladwig, senior advisor to NASA, noted that the station, which is a $100 billion investment, only now is nearing the end of its construction, and only now is beginning to realize its full potential. Ladwig, who was associate NASA administrator for policy and plans under President Clinton, spoke before the Space Business Forum New York 2009 presented by The Space Foundation at the Hilton New York Hotel.
Ladwig last year served on then-President-elect Obama’s transition team for space programs.
Some analysts question Obama’s commitment to major space programs, including the Constellation Program to produce the next-generation Orion-Ares spaceship system, especially the Ares I rocket. Obama might rather switch to using an already existing military rocket, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. (Please see separate story in this issue.)
“Our international partners are just now getting their equipment up there,” he observed. Space Shuttle Endeavour, for example, is poised to launch Saturday on a mission installing an addition to the Japanese Kibo Laboratory on the station. (Please see separate story in this issue.)
And a Russian Soyuz spaceship just transported three crew members to the station, bringing its complement to six people for the first time. Previously, there was a permanent crew of just three aboard the station, and much of their time was consumed by running the immense orbiting laboratory, leaving little time for scientific work. With six aboard, however, the amount of research accomplished will multiply.
Construction of the artificial moon will be finished next year. If a decision isn’t made to extend the life of the station, then in 2015 it would be shoved into a reentry trajectory, burning up or ripping apart over the ocean.
“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to ditch it in the ocean [only] four years after its ready to actually start being used,” Ladwig said. He painted a grim verbal picture, in which the first mission of the next-generation U.S. spaceship system Orion-Ares would be “to deorbit the space station.” Ares I is the rocket that will lift the Orion space capsule to orbit.
Ladwig also addressed a critical issue for NASA: the largest space agency on the planet is mandated to retire the space shuttle fleet next year, and won’t have a replacement Orion-Ares spaceship system ready for manned missions until 2015. That means for half a decade, the only way the United States can get even one of its astronauts to the International Space Station built in large part with $100 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money is to hire the Russians to provide taxi service with their Soyuz vehicles.
During that half-decade gap after shuttles cease flying, another critical need will be moving cargo to the space station, Ladwig noted.
And there, eh said, NASA must hope that private firms develop spacecraft after to offer commercial cargo transport services.
“We need commercial delivery of cargo to the International Space Station,” Ladwig said. “Otherwise, we’re in a world of hurt.” Soyuz vehicles are far smaller, with much less cargo capacity, than the U.S. space shuttles.
On the plus side, he said NASA may pick up some spare funding when the National Institutes begin paying $450,000 for each experiment taken up to the weightless environment at the station, under a peer-review grant program.