What exactly are we still doing with the ISS? As far as I know the great leap of progress it was intended to demonstrate is that international astronauts can live together in the same tin can.
Congratulations, nobody's been murdered up there.
Now what?
I'm sure they are still doing some science up there. Microgravity experiments of the sorts we were running back when Mir and Skylab were around. Yay.
But if the ISS is performing some important, inspiring work, I don't hear about it.
Lets do something else. Something bigger, on which the microgravity experiments are a side hobby. We can even keep the station, if it can play a useful part in whatever it is. Orbital truckstop for big rockets going out into the solar system. Mount one of those fancy orbital telescopes on a hardpoint for relatively easy maintenance. Something. At the moment, the whole project seems stalled and going nowhere fast.
What exactly are we still *doing* with the ISS? As far as I know the great leap of progress it was intended to demonstrate is that international astronauts can live together in the same tin can.
Congratulations, nobody's been murdered up there.
Now what?
I'm sure they are still doing *some* science up there. Microgravity experiments of the sorts we were running back when Mir and Skylab were around. Yay.
But if the ISS is performing some important, inspiring work, I don't hear about it.
Lets do something else. Something bigger, on which the microgravity experiments are a side hobby. We can even keep the station, if it can play a useful part in whatever it is. Orbital truckstop for big rockets going out into the solar system. Mount one of those fancy orbital telescopes on a hardpoint for relatively easy maintenance. **Something**. At the moment, the whole project seems stalled and going nowhere fast.
What exactly are we still doing with the ISS? As far as I know the great leap of progress it was intended to demonstrate is that international astronauts can live together in the same tin can. Congratulations, nobody's been murdered up there.
Now what?
I'm sure they are still doing some science up there. Microgravity experiments of the sorts we were running back when Mir and Skylab were around. Yay. But if the ISS is performing some important, inspiring work, I don't hear about it.
Lets do something else. Something bigger, on which the microgravity experiments are a side hobby. We can even keep the station, if it can play a useful part in whatever it is. Orbital truckstop for big rockets going out into the solar system. Mount one of those fancy orbital telescopes on a hardpoint for relatively easy maintenance. Something. At the moment, the whole project seems stalled and going nowhere fast.