space station

when nasa ends its full dedication to the iss they said they would leave it to their international partners, is there any chance that china will be able to get ships to it in a few years to keep it manned if russia pull out?

Certainly China should be very willing to participate. Also think X2 PRIZE or privatize the servicing of ISS and give a tax expemption to the company that maintains ISS.

I could see that happening but I tend to lean towards the fact that for right now China will probably do their own thing. It just depends on how well their manned flights go. If successful, don't look for them to do anything that won't benifit them. If they have disaster after disaster, then you can look to them for help with internationial partners, probably in exchange for figuring out how to repeat successful manned missions. I don't know, just a thought.

When NASA ends its assembly of the ISS the other international partners will pick up the supplying and house keeping of the ISS. NASA will keep a presents at the ISS to support the Moon-Mars mission research.

For China it has the Human Rights issue that kept them out of the initial ISS partnership. But this may change and they may become a miner partner at ISS but not a major partner. The Chinese spacecraft doses have the docking hatch needed to dock at the ISS so being able to go to the space station is not a problem.

Hopefully buy the time the shuttles are retired there will be several spacecraft from several groups and nations that will be able to reach the ISS so relying on the Russians to be the only support to the ISS will not be a problem “I hope”.

yea i agree, but please in the future have decent spelling and grammar in your posts DJBREIT, you're from america so you don't have an excuse to make painfully messed up posts.

Be nice TerraMrs!

I think that when the Shuttle flies again it will be on a limited basis and we will be cost sharing with the Russians, using their rockets to ferry people and equipment to the station and back (their program is much more cost effective than the Shuttle) NASA is really pushing the RLV program and will begin backing out of the Space Station as quickly as is politicaly possible. There are many new players to take our place China being just one.

Wouldn't it be nice if they resurected the X-33????

And then...Of all the insults! The Russians are Talkin Smack about the US space program.

****The Folowing is a cut and paste form MSNBC. you can read the entire article @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4286831/ ******

Koptev wouldn't say how long it could take to build the spacecraft or how much it would cost, but said that Energia had done a lot of work on the new vehicle already.

"It has already reached a serious project stage while the Americans are only talking about their spacecraft," Koptev said, referring to U.S. plans to build a new spacecraft.


George! They are taunting us!

http://members.lycos.co.uk/spaceprojects/x-33.html

Construction of the X-33 was more than 85 percent complete, with the liquid oxygen tank, avionics bay, flight umbilicals, reaction control system thruster controller and landing gear installed. However, the X-33 was cancelled in 2001.

X-33: How the Central Planners at NASA Wasted Another Billion Tax Dollars - http://www.spaceprojects.com/x33/

It's really really silly... so much money ($1.33 billion dollars)... for what ? for NOTHING
Imagen what a private business competition could have done with $1.33 billion dollar...

Even with all that complete there were still big problems

Of course the problems will not be solved now that there isn't a project that requires a solution

hah, .

i could say they have good reason to taunt us, which they do, our current rlv programs suck terribly.

Who really wants to save the ISS?

Its been up there almost as long as previous stations but its not even finished yet?!?!

Once NASA has returned to big boosters three flights would but up a station dwarfing the current station. (3 x 140Tons = 420 Tons versus current ISS with 200Tons) A more monolithic station would be easier to boost around and could be free of a lot of the design compromises of the ISS.

Then again it would still be NASA built. Design by commitee can really really hurt, witness will you the X33.

Why have the space shuttle? So we can build the ISS. Why have the ISS... so the Space shuttle has something to do.

Really, retaining the ISS but this imaginary requirement onto the new Nasa space launch vehicle to be able to lift new 60T elements.

Bah... what a mess.