Impossible to support ISS or Repair ISS w/o Shuttle!!
Soyuz lacks shuttle's ability to repair space station, warn space experts US politicians and space veterans warn of rising costs and risk of 'catastrophic re-entry' of space station without space shuttle Share 26 inShare 1 Email Tom Parfitt in Moscow The Guardian, Thursday 7 July 2011 13.14 EDT Jump to comments (7) Unlike the space shuttle, Soyuz can't be used as a base for spacewalks to repair the space station. Photograph: Bill Ingalls/Getty Images Russia's looming monopoly over the delivery of crew to the International Space Station is causing disquiet in the US as the last space shuttle prepares for take-off. Once the shuttle Atlantis – due to launch on Friday – returns to Earth after a 12-day mission, Russia will be solely responsible for sending astronauts to the $100bn station in its Soyuz spacecraft. Several US astronauts, including the legendary Neil Armstrong, wrote to Nasa administrator Charles Bolden on 30 June warning of an "unacceptable flight risk" because the Soyuz lacks the airlocks, life support systems and robotic arm that allow the shuttle to act as a base for spacewalks to repair the ISS in the event that a systems failure or accident on board the station makes it uninhabitable. Christopher Kraft, the former head of Nasa's Manned Spaceflight Centre, one of the authors of the letter, warned of a "catastrophic re-entry" of the 400-tonne station into the Earth's atmosphere and showers of debris if there was no capability to fix it in the event of a "terrible failure". "It is never wise to play Russian roulette in space," he added. Some Republican senators and space veterans have also protested that the US will be paying large sums to Russia's Roskosmos to put its astronauts into orbit. Nasa announced in March that Russia was increasing its fee for each astronaut from $56m (£35m) to $63m from 2014. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, predicted last summer that Russia's prices would "increase substantially" and said preserving the shuttle was a better option. "Our astronauts will have to be launched in Russian spacecraft, from a Russian base in Kazakhstan [Baikonur], to go to our International Space Station," he said, adding that "for the 'world's greatest spacefaring nation' that is hard to accept." The decision to scrap the shuttle was taken after the Columbia disaster in 2003, and last year Barack Obama, the US president, announced that responsibility for ferrying crew and light loads to low Earth orbit would be passed to private companies developing their own spacecraft such as SpaceX. However, it could be at least five years before manned flights are possible on those craft, leaving what some critics see as an overreliance on Russia's ageing technology. George Abbey, a Houston-based space policy expert and the former director of the Johnson Space Centre, told the Guardian he was troubled about safety and the experimental capacity of the ISS, which is due to work until 2020. "The US relied on Russia in the past after the Columbia accident, and the Russians have been good partners to us," he said. "What I'm concerned about is the continued operation of the space station without the shuttle." Abbey added that the Soyuz – designed in the 1960s – was incapable of delivering and bringing back to Earth large racks of equipment for life science experiments, as the "heavy-lift" shuttle has done. He also backed Kraft's concerns over the vulnerability of the space station to accidents without the shuttle, and lamented its future absence as a tool for developing "an explorational architecture for going beyond Earth's orbit". Obama has spoken of sending a crew to Mars by the 2030s. Meanwhile, Russian experts denied that there would be any triumphalism from Moscow after the Soyuz gains a monopoly on trips into space. "This is not some kind of victory," said Yury Karash, a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. "Imagine an American in the Arabian desert whose car breaks down and who is forced to pay $63m to ride back to his hotel on a Bedouin's camel. "This is the Nasa astronaut riding Soyuz, and Russia is the Bedouin thinking he has done well to make this money without paying up for an expensive car. But we have to think about building our own new craft and where we will send them." Construction is due to begin this summer on Vostochny, a new $800m spaceport in Russia's far east that will reduce dependency on Baikonur, the launch pad rented on the Kazakh steppe. Crewed flights are expected to start in 2018, but frequent grand statements by Russian officials in recent years about sending crews to the moon or Mars have yet to be fleshed out. Igor Lissov, an editor at Novosti Kosmonavtiki (Space News) in Moscow, played down speculation that Russia could crank up charges for sending Nasa crew to the ISS. "There's mutual understanding and cooperation on both sides," he said. "In any case, the US solar panels on the station provide about 90% of the energy supply. If some Russian thinks one day about raising the price for sending astronauts, then he might find himself with a big electricity bill."
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