Five years since Mir

Five years ago on 23rd March 2001, Mir was sucessfully deorbited. There is abit of an article on Russian space web with a small animation sequence. A good read as well.

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/mir_2001.html

Doesn't seem like it was five years ago, its gone fast.

Iain

and despite the billions thrown at our new station, ISS still hasn't lived up to what Skylab or MIR did

What do we expect when its sold to congres by the same folks or sold us the "space truck", aka the shuttle.

I'm not convince the CEV will be any better. NASA needs to get out of the design business and let private corporations beyond BoLockMart do the job. Falcon 1 failure notwithstanding, the smaller companies can do it for cheaper and better (dare I say faster?).

BoLockMart should spin off their space businesses into completely independent companies, that are significantly smaller, but without the overpaid upper management yes-men idiots who are afraid to tell the CEO the emporere has no clothes. The US Air Force has the same problem... too many fighter pilot yes-men afraid to cancel some airplanes (not that SBIRS does need to be cancelled and started from re-scratch too).

but I digress.

- Alistair

I disagree. ISS has hosted space tourists, Mir and Skylab never did.

ISS is still young. Wait 10 or 20 years and see if something good comes of it. I bet there is a lot of good that has come of it already. Very expensive, dull, engineering detail kind of good, but useful nevertheless.

ISS and STS are amazing and highly capable systems. Just not as capable and cheap as we would want. I think this is not a technical shortcoming as much as it is a problem of unrealistic expectations on the part of the public. For example, some people on this forum are hoping for it to be expanded into a real space colony. They will be disappointed. I am only expecting some good engineering and science knowledge to be gained. I am a little disappointed at the high cost, but hey, it is a government program!

I agree with Campbelp about ISS - it has a lot of potentail (In fact, I see far more potentail than campbelp - see the Space colonization thread where I argue that it can be called space's first coony - if you wish to debate that, we probably should move this conversation to another thread)

And as far as STS, the problem was we were forced to sacrefice margin costs through lower development costs. I still think that it could've been flown at the original predictions for flight costs and the like, IF more money could've been provided for during the developement.

As far as the CEV, I kind of agree with you, although not totally a total mistake. Frankly, my biggest problem is not with the CEV, but the CLV - why are they making it dependent upon a single launcher - Why not instead make it payload independent?

That is one of the things I have difficulty understanding. I think that the US should obviously have its own launch vehicle for the CEV but I see no reason the design couldn't have been made compatable with other launchers as well. Being able to use Ariane 5 would have made the CLV a less critical path and would have wound ESA more closely into the VSE, at present it seems that the US will pretty much have to go it alone. Everyone is still siting on the fence waiting to see how the ISS will eventually pan out.

Or even opening it up such that it can launch on the Delta IV HLV, or Atlas HLV, or the Falcon 9S9.

Time flys.