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More rumors about a year-long mission on ISS

The possibility that NASA might finally agree with Russia’s repeated request to fly a year-long mission to ISS grew stronger this morning with two stories:

The first, by James Oberg, digs into the underworld of NASA politics to find that plans might very well be more advanced than NASA is letting on:

Specific mission dates and crew candidates are already being assessed. The sources discussed the plans on condition of anonymity because they were not yet due to be announced publicly.

Both articles point out the economic advantages to the Russians of longer missions, as they would free up seats on the Soyuz capsule for tourist flights. Both articles mention how this would also increase the likelihood that the rumored flight of opera star Sarah Brightman could take place.

And both articles note the necessity of completing long duration space flights as a preliminary to exploring the rest of the solar system. Astronauts need the experience. Doctors need to learn more about the long term effects of weightlessness on the human body. And ground managers need to understand better the problems of supplying a mission to Mars. All these things would addressed by longer missions on ISS.

Finally, flying year-long missions to ISS would help convince a very skeptical American public that the U.S. government is serious about exploring the solar system. As Oberg rightly notes,

So far, NASA’s strategy for exploration beyond Earth orbit has been mostly just talk and long-range planning for bigger rockets. Battles over booster designs and budgets, and even an unresolved issue as basic as selecting an actual destination in space for future astronauts, have contributed to the impression that little or nothing is happening.

A commitment by NASA to fly year-long missions would change that impression. One of the reasons I think the Space Launch System is merely a boondoggle and will never fly is because I, along with many others, do not believe the Obama administration (or Romney for that matter) is really serious about flying missions beyond Earth orbit. An agreement by NASA to fly long duration missions on ISS will help dispel that skepticism.

And even if NASA never flies a mission beyond Earth orbit because the budget deficit makes it unaffordable, the knowledge gained from these long missions on ISS will still make it more likely for someone else to move forward. If anything, the excitement generated will likely act to stimulate interest in funding a privately financed mission.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • wodun

    IIRC, the last time this was brought up, the article mentioned that NASA already had selected an astronaut for the mission. That would suggest they were pretty far in their planning but of course that doesn’t mean it is likely to be implemented.

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