Congress Extends ISS, Tells NASA To Get Moving On Private Space Stations (arstechnica.com) 69
A recently-revised Senate authorization bill (PDF), co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, would extend the International Space Station's lifespan from 2030 to 2032 while pushing NASA to accelerate plans for commercial space stations to replace it. Ars Technica's Eric Berger reports: Regarding NASA's support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:
- Within 60 days, publicly release the requirements for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit
- Within 90 days, release the final "request for proposals" to solicit industry responses
- Within 180 days, enter into contracts with "two or more" commercial providers for such stations
Cruz is trying to inject urgency into NASA as several private companies -- including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Vast, and Voyager -- are finalizing designs for space stations. All have expressed a desire for clarity from NASA on how long the space agency would like its astronauts to stay on board, the types of scientific equipment needed, and much more. These are known as "requirements" in NASA parlance.
[...] Cruz and other senators on the committee appear to share those concerns, as their legislation extends the International Space Station's lifespan from 2030 to 2032 (an extension must still be approved by international partners, including Russia). Moreover, the authorization bill states, "The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability." With this legislation, the U.S. Senate is making clear that it views a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit as a high priority. This version of the authorization legislation must still be passed by the full Senate and work its way through the House of Representatives.
- Within 60 days, publicly release the requirements for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit
- Within 90 days, release the final "request for proposals" to solicit industry responses
- Within 180 days, enter into contracts with "two or more" commercial providers for such stations
Cruz is trying to inject urgency into NASA as several private companies -- including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Vast, and Voyager -- are finalizing designs for space stations. All have expressed a desire for clarity from NASA on how long the space agency would like its astronauts to stay on board, the types of scientific equipment needed, and much more. These are known as "requirements" in NASA parlance.
[...] Cruz and other senators on the committee appear to share those concerns, as their legislation extends the International Space Station's lifespan from 2030 to 2032 (an extension must still be approved by international partners, including Russia). Moreover, the authorization bill states, "The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability." With this legislation, the U.S. Senate is making clear that it views a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit as a high priority. This version of the authorization legislation must still be passed by the full Senate and work its way through the House of Representatives.
I'm a bit surprised (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't think Ted Cruz realized the earth was round.
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If you think you're doing something noble in the defense of human rights, why aren't you proud to have your name on it? Why are you instead posting as a coward? You can't be both a brave defender of human rights and a coward.
This July it will have been 250 years since 56 men signed their names on a document that they knew would be their death warrant. An act of treason against the most powerful nation in the world, fo
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In retrospect, legally changing my name to "93 Escort Wagon" might not have been the right choice...
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Re:I'm a bit surprised [at who or what?] (Score:2)
Really pointless to argue with an AC, even though an AC might be trying to claim a legitimate use of anonymity. If the legitimate argument just vanishes into a cloud of fog, then did it make any sound? I think not.
However the main reason to reply is that I'm reading another book where some anonymity is justified for the people discussed in the book. AI-related crimes and the book is mostly about the victims... (I think.) Mixed feelings about including a citation. First of all, is anyone on Slashdot actually
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Space civilizations needed (Score:3)
The Earth has started to suck. People are too tribalist and idiotic. The only temporary escape is space colonies. But what's going to happen though when "nations" start claiming entire zones of space? Fuck that. Tribalism must end.
Re:Space civilizations needed (Score:5, Funny)
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8D In space no one can hear you scream, "Freeedom."
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Joke tit for joke tat?
So one day Musk's pet GROK told the YOB that the summary of Article 2 of ye olde Constitution is "You can do whatever you want." And look what happened.
Are we seeing a proof by contradiction of Kant's Categorical Imperative or is the YOB about to refute ye olde Kant thusly?
Oh yeah. #YOB = YUGE Orange Buffoon. I reject the YOB's personal brand thusly.
For the substantive part of my response I'll just cite A City on Mars again. Basically the authors like the idea but argue quite persuas
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The Earth has started to suck. People are too tribalist and idiotic. The only temporary escape is space colonies. But what's going to happen though when "nations" start claiming entire zones of space? Fuck that. Tribalism must end.
Why? Because you think humans suck at ironically predicting their own fate?
Might as well sit back and accept the fact that Star Wars is gonna happen, while feeling confidently depressed that it might not be a meatsack-based battle, no thanks to that assholes prophesizing about our demise via Skynet. (Side note: If humanity is going down, make better fucking names already. Beaten by a “Claude”? Fucking hell.)
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To be fair, a lot of scientific endeavors are using "Don't Build the Torment Nexus" as blueprint... to build the Torment Nexus. I think we're safe with respect to our downfall being perpetrated by something with an appropriately villainous name.
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Re: Space civilizations needed (Score:2)
Also vacuum around ISS sucks.... although in a different way.
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The Earth has started to suck. Also vacuum around ISS sucks.... although in a different way.
Settle down. You'll get all the nerds hyperventilating about sex toys in space.
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The Earth has started to suck. People are too tribalist and idiotic. The only temporary escape is space colonies. But what's going to happen though when "nations" start claiming entire zones of space? Fuck that. Tribalism must end.
Greed, irresponsibility and selfishness are far worse, tribalism is nothing compared to classsim, rich people are powerfil and self-serving, they have literrly hoovered up all our capital and now most people are wallowing in poverty
that's the real problem
qwcan't have capitalism without capital, so we get economic slavery, yes boss, no boss, right away boss
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Re: Space civilizations needed (Score:2)
People who were born poor, overwhelmingly.
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if you can't see global economic inequality, you're deliberately not looking
if you haven't heard that the gap between the richest and the poorest is large and growing, you aren't listening
if you are unaware of how many people are suffering and dying because of classism it's because you're close minded, in denial and are a part of the problem
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I don’t think it’s accurate to say that classism is just another form of tribalism. Tribalism is mainly about identity and group belonging. It’s the tendency for people to divide into “us” and “them” based on shared culture, beliefs, ethnicity, or other markers of one's identity. The key feature is loyalty to one’s own group and suspicion or favoritism in relation to other groups. It doesn’t necessarily imply that one group is objectively higher or lower
You can't maintain the rich ruling elite (Score:2)
Tribalism is the trick the wealthy/powerful use to keep everyone else fighting among themselves while they steal all the good stuff.
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I won't argue it's one of the methods used to keep people oppressed. United we stand, divided we fall.
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It is the foundation of Communism that social and economic classes deprive the 'lower' classes of their rightful share of economic output.
It is the effect of Communism that, having been instituted, a new class is formed, that of ruler. And they operate to their own benefit, usually with little benefit for any other class.
Unlike Capitalism, Communism will resort to physical violence when the rulers are threatened. Capitalism has this interesting feature of self reinvention. New classes spring up where opport
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The Earth has started to suck. People are too tribalist and idiotic. The only temporary escape is space colonies. But what's going to happen though when "nations" start claiming entire zones of space? Fuck that. Tribalism must end.
Nations? It'll be companies. This move is away from international cooperative space operations, and toward privatizing space operations. Because we have a weird idealism that for profit companies do everything better. Probably because somebody can get kickbacks for supporting it.
But, in the end, if there are real space colonies at any point, I expect them to be 100% private company owned, or possibly labeled for whatever billion/trillionaire owns the largest share of stock in the company. I think the nation
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We should be ending the ISS, NASA needs the cash for other, far more important projects.
But without ISS, how will those poor defense contractors earn their corporate welfare? Won't someone think of the corporations?
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We should be ending the ISS, NASA needs the cash for other, far more important projects.
Before the taxpayers hand over another trillion or seven to the agency that burns dollars like they were reentering an atmosphere, care to justify any of those far more important projects with valid needs and budgets? Say, compared to SpaceX?
Those doing it better and cheaper, isn’t up for debate anymore. Political or otherwise. The ISS needs to be decommissioned. Along with ancient ideologies about funding space stations.
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"But without ISS, how will those poor defense contractors earn their corporate welfare? Won't someone think of the corporations?"
Buy making weapons of course - Trump has got us into a 20+ year war with Shia Islamso we will need plenty of million dollar missiles to shoot down $50 dollar drones...
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But without ISS, how will those poor defense contractors earn their corporate welfare? Won't someone think of the corporations?
But you miss the point of this entire effort, this is about kicking out the old defense contractors to start feeding the "new space" and "defense tech" contractors instead with commercial space station leases!
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But without ISS, how will those poor defense contractors earn their corporate welfare? Won't someone think of the corporations?
But you miss the point of this entire effort, this is about kicking out the old defense contractors to start feeding the "new space" and "defense tech" contractors instead with commercial space station leases!
In case you somehow missed it, my post was sarcasm.
There are good reasons to keep ISS running, the most obvious one being that it exists and is up there now. It is useful as a location for space-based experiments, and now that they have stopped the leaky Russian module from leaking, the most critical reason for shutting it down no longer exists.
Mind you, given the political situation, it would be great to not have to keep paying Russia to keep their parts operational, but the most critical "Russian" parts
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Probably unwilling to now that China has one.
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We should be ending the ISS, NASA needs the cash for other, far more important projects.
Don't know why you've been modded into oblivion...is it troll just to have an opinion?
Sustaining humans in low-Earth orbit is ludicrously expensive and with the rapidly growing amount of space junk in low-Earth orbit, is ludicrously dangerous. Prioritizing other types of space exploration would produce more science for the same cost and be much less dangerous. We need to do so much more science and discovery before we could even be close to consider living in space or other locations in our solar system;
Why send people to space? (Score:1)
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They should privatise the Public sector, and regulate it.
Yes, for-profit space exploration by the lowest bidder...what could possibly go wrong...
Re: WOKE, DEI Public Sector WASTES your TAXES. (Score:2)
No, he's even dumber than that, he wants the entire government turned over to corporations to reimplement in their own image
Totally insane (Score:2)
Re: Totally insane (Score:2)
America gets smarter, cleaner, and younger?
"Requirements" (Score:2)
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How does this play out (Score:2)
for Space Las Vegas? How will I play blackjack in 0G? And golfing, will that require a trip to the moon? Can alcohol be distilled in space? Is it any good? Probably a good idea to have 3D Roombas for floaters.
Lots of details to address.
NASA (Score:4, Informative)
1) Give NASA a proper budget
2) Congress should stop interfering
Did congress or the president micromanage them during the 1950s thru 1970s?
Re: NASA (Score:1)
Yes. They told them to spend all their time and money on a manned moon landing to the exclusion of anything else. Nasa was something like 4% of the federal budget back then and funded at roughly 3x of taday in real dollars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I can assure you that that kind of money is not a blank check and comes with all kinds of micromanagement politely referred to as "oversight."
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What I have been able to find are claims that NASA labs and offices were becoming increasingly micromanaged by N
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Think of the oodles of comments this could have generated on this site in response! But now we'll just have to speculate...
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I asked Bing, that's about as far as I got with running it through an LLM. It wasn't very helpful. "Search the congressional records your own damn self", I think it said.
And yes, Bing. No, I'm not ill, I just hate Google. Its results are worse and more indistinguishable from ads every time I use it, and I'm too lazy to switch to DDG on my work laptops, which sign in with 365 accounts anyhow so why bo
Congress has ALWAYS micro-managed NASA (Score:2)
Witness Houston Space Flight Center, which was LBJ's quid pro quo for getting the Apollo program through Congress, and is responsible for the handoff of manned launches from Florida to Texas just after the vehicle clears the tower.
uhhhhh... physics anyone? (Score:2)
"The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability."
So Cruz and the other senators on the committee think they can tell gravity to wait until they are ready? Surprise!
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Not sure what you mean about the committee telling gravity to wait. I assume they meant that NASA and the ISS partners should maintain the ISS orbit until a replacement station is up and running.
No doubt you're aware that the ISS orbit decays, but it's not because of gravity. It's because of atmospheric drag (physics again), losing altitude by about 100 m per day. Its orbit is boosted roughly once a month to compensate.
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so it falls toward the Earth just because it likes that direction?
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so it falls toward the Earth just because it likes that direction?
Short answer: the ISS "falls" toward the earth because of gravity. But ... it's orbiting the earth at just the right speed so that the earth curves out of its way by the same amount that the ISS falls towards it. An object in a stable orbit doesn't get any closer to the earth, and can exist in this orbit pretty much indefinitely. (I'm assuming a circular orbit, not an elliptical orbit which has variations in altitude, but the basic idea applies in both cases.)
However, the above only holds if there is no atm
What did they contribute for this? (Score:2)
What about the Russian Orbital Segment? (Score:2)
Yes, the US Congress can give instructions to NASA, but half the ISS is run by the Russian Government.
NB: I am only discussing Russian modules here, NASA and its suppliers have already demonstrated the ability to build, launch and maintain the American modules.
The Russians wanted to quit the ISS in 2024, subsequently extended to 2028 at which point Unity and Zarya will be 30 years old. Zvezda, launched 2000, has had a persistent air leak in the transfer tunnel since 2019. While repairs have been made, the
Bad weather (Score:2)
There must be REALLY bad weather coming if Ted Cruz needs to escape to space rather than Mexico to avoid it.