Will Russian-US cooperation in space continue after the crews leave the ISS?
"The Americans no longer have money for the ISS." "NASA's short budget will be saved, the ISS project is being phased out." "The US government wants to force NASA to stop supporting the ISS." The news channels spread like an absolute sensation the amendments to the American budget, spied on by one of the journalists, for as much as 2025.
The subtext of the publications is generally simple: the Americans decide to withdraw from the project, abandon their partners - Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese, the Canadians. And then, apparently, they will personally work ahead of the curve - forging their own lunar program.
And now about what is really happening.
A quarter of a century is too much
A few years ago, the countries that created the International Space Station agreed: it flies until 2024. Well, look, our Mir station has been flying for 15 years. Rather, its base unit, the rest of the modules were significantly younger. And in this base unit, after 11 years, unpleasant things began to happen: for example, fluid was leaking from the system that maintained the correct temperature on board. The last crews leaving for the station, for the most part, were engaged in its repair. And the Zvezda service module - the brain and muscles of the ISS - is in fact an analogue of the Mira base unit. And he has been flying for almost 18 years. True, there are, fortunately, no such problems on it as on the Mir. But by 2024, the "Star" will wind its orbits over the Earth for almost a quarter of a century - too much.
There is talk among space engineers to extend the ISS flight until 2028. But in this case, a reasonable question arises - why?
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Russian orbital station / DMITRY POLUKHIN / kp.ru
What next?
By and large, not only American financiers understand that the further operation of the ISS is throwing money down the drain. We have gained experience in the construction of serious residential spaces in space: now the station's mass is almost 450 tons, a whole train. This is important for building a Martian spacecraft in the future (it will be assembled from modules in orbit in the same way). It remains to complete biological experiments for the same Martian program - it is not yet very clear how to keep the crews working during the entire 500-day flight to the Red Planet and back. The Americans are planning to conduct several more important experiments on living people - ten astronauts will work for a year in orbit.
Well, the ISS is needed to test the flights of new manned spacecraft - they are now being developed by both the United States and Russia. These ships will make up the fleet of mankind that will fly to the moon, to asteroids and to Mars. The remaining six years should be enough for everything.
The main question is what will happen after 2024? And you need to answer it now.
Humanity cannot stop manned flights. Simply because the loss of experience, which is gained constantly, can in the end cost much more than the savings from stopping programs. It's like an athlete - if he doesn't train, it will be very difficult for him to get back into shape, sometimes impossible. The Americans, on the other hand, had their own Skylab orbital station (three crews worked on it in 1973-74). And in the 90s, the United States had to cooperate with Russia, create the Mir-NASA program, send its astronauts to our station simply because the experience of long-term flights into orbit was lost and it had to be accumulated anew.
By the way, it is not by chance that Elon Musk is making such successful progress - Space X was not created from scratch, many engineers came to the company from the closed project “Space Shuttle”.
We fly further
That is, by 2024 (or at least by 2025) there should already be something in orbit where astronauts and astronauts will fly. What could it be?
Russia has a clear answer - a national orbital station will be created in near-earth orbit. It will be based on relatively new modules undocked from the ISS by 2024.
At the recent Royal Readings at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Evgeny Mikrin, General Designer for Manned Space Systems and Complexes, RSC Energia, described everything clearly.
By 2019, the construction of the Russian segment of the ISS should be completed - the multipurpose laboratory module "Science" (it will become the largest module of the station), the nodal module "Prichal" and the scientific and power module (NEM) will be docked to it. They are designed so that at any time they can be undocked from the ISS and turned into a separate station. A gateway module and a transformable module will be added (it is being tested just now). NEM will become the brain of the station.
In general, the completion of the ISS operation for the Russian cosmonautics will not be a tragic event. We fly further.
Configuration of the International Lunar Station by 2030 / DMITRY POLUKHIN / kp.ru
Is the USA still with us or without us?
The story with the Americans is more interesting. They do not plan to build a new station in low-earth orbit. They are going to start the Deep Space Gateway program - "Gateway to deep space". And the first step here should be a station in a circumlunar orbit.
By the way, they do not plan to carry out this program alone. Last year, NASA and Roscosmos signed a cooperation agreement and working groups of Russian and American specialists are working on the contours of the future star port. The lunar station should be the base from which the crews will leave to study the Moon and build a base on the satellite's surface.
On preliminary estimates, Russia's contribution to the lunar station is the lunar mission support module and the airlock module. The question is: will the countries participating in the project have time? The Japanese, Canadian and European space agencies have already announced their readiness to participate, Russia assumes that China and the BRICS countries will be interested in the project.
If, in general, everything is clear with the Russian station: the modules are ready, undergoing tests and will go into orbit in the next year or two, then there is still no specifics with the circumlunar station. It is highly doubtful that in six years it will be possible to agree on the configuration, create the main modules and "hang" them over the natural satellite of the Earth.
What does this mean? It is very likely that Americans will have nowhere to fly after 2024. Why this is bad - I have already explained. They will either have to force the Deep Space Gateway or extend the operation of the ISS. For us, nothing will change - we will be able to fly both to the International Station and to our own.
However, there is another option - to turn the ISS into a hotel for tourists. The idea is beautiful - it's a pity to lose such a station. But will it be possible to maintain such a colossus only with investors' money? Moreover, professional cosmonauts will have to accompany rich fans of stellar travel - and their training also costs a lot of money.
BTW
2024 is the most suitable year
Not everything is clear with the procedure for de-orbiting the ISS 450-ton colossus. When the 140-ton "Mir" was drowned in the Pacific Ocean, the problems were over the top. Only the art and intuition of our specialists (and how could it be otherwise, if at some point the structure falls into the dense layers of the atmosphere and becomes completely uncontrollable) allowed the station to be carefully lowered almost into the calculated square.
But during the flooding of the ISS, about 120 tons of unburned debris can fall to the ground, Rafail Murtazin, head of the ballistics department of the RKK, said at the Royal Readings. And the likelihood that the ISS will get to the desired area is much less - the design is much more complicated.
But even if the descent passes with pinpoint accuracy, the debris will scatter over an area of about 6 thousand square kilometers.
According to Murtazin, it is economically feasible to heat the station in 2024. This is the year of the active sun. Then less fuel is needed to lift the ISS from orbit.
- If we slip through again, then, most likely, it makes sense to keep the station until the next cycle, and it will be somewhere between 2034-2035, - the ballistician said.
ALEXANDER MILKUS