http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071201977.html
(...)
After more than a decade of construction, it (((the International Space Station))) is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year.
And then?
"In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft," says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.
That's a polite way of saying that NASA will make the space station fall back into the atmosphere, where it will turn into a fireball and then crash into the Pacific Ocean. (...)
There's no long-term funding on the books for international space station operations beyond 2015.
(...)
Although there is no official lobbying going on to extend the mission, NASA is conducting a thorough review of the station to see what it would take to certify it as operational through the late 2020s, Suffredini said. Even in the vacuum of space, things break down, get old, wear out. ((("Gothic High Tech.")))
Critics have long derided the orbiting laboratory as a boondoggle. Originally called Space Station Freedom during the Reagan years, it became the international space station when the United States lured Russia into a partnership in 1993, agreeing to alter the orbit of the station to make it pass over the Russian-run space complex in Kazakhstan. That agreement helped keep Russian scientists and engineers employed at a time when the United States feared they would become rogue agents in a chaotic world. (((American engineers as rogue agents in a chaotic world. Oh wait, aren't American engineers mostly Chinese and Indian guys now? How about American *financiers* as rogue agents in a chaotic world?)))
The rap on the space station has always been that it was built primarily to give the space shuttle somewhere to go. Now, with the shuttle being retired at the end of 2010, the station is on the spot. U.S. astronauts will be able to reach the station only by getting rides on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft. (...) (((There's probably some awesome way to tie human presence in the Space Station to American real-estate speculation. I hope I get a chance to do this; kinda itchin' for the job!)))
The station has repeatedly been hit with budget cuts and design modifications. Much of its science funding was cut earlier this decade. A centrifuge had been planned as a crucial scientific component of the station, but it didn't survive the budget axe. Until the end of May, the station had a crew of three, barely enough for housekeeping. (...) (((Time for 'em to start spray-bombing the outside of the joint with cool street-art.)))
... a prominent critic of human spaceflight, physicist Robert L. Park of the University of Maryland, said putting astronauts on the space station is akin to "flagpole-sitting." He argues that the station fundamentally lacks a mission. (...)
Park has a different suggestion: "Give it to China. Let them support the damn thing."
(((How 'bout giving it to India, Brazil, AND China? THAT should be interesting.)))
