Never mind that a 1,000 ton water-filled asteroid-shooting spaceship could be launched and filled with EELV class launch vehicles too.

Nope, the call is for fair, competitive and redundant procurement, nothing more, nothing less. Most people here are sympathetic to the entrepreneurial startups, but we’re not asking for special favours. Most of us anyway.

And personally I think the established aerospace players would stand an excellent chance of developing a commercial RLV if NASA provided a large market for propellant in orbit.

“Someone remind me why the Atlas V is considered a hobby rocket? Or a company like Boeing is a hobby rocketeer?”

Anything that isn’t an HLV to build 1,000 ton water-filled asteroid-shooting spaceships is a hobby rocket.

I thought Gary Church (i.e. VirgilSamms) had made that abundantly clear by now. In his mind, it’s literally all or nothing, and no middle ground helps or is worthwhile.

Actually, anything having to do with human spaceflight that does not involve SpaceX or one of the other hobby rocketeers will get wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Someone remind me why the Atlas V is considered a hobby rocket? Or a company like Boeing is a hobby rocketeer?

How dare you!
That is the space station vacation with Elon destination you are blaspheming; it is the cash cow of private space.

This crowd will make up anything to justify it’s existence, just like they will make up anything to shout down anything that threatens their private space fantasy football dreams. Like HLV’s. Actually, anything having to do with human spaceflight that does not involve SpaceX or one of the other hobby rocketeers will get wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The US would not have tolerated having a smaller space station than the Russian MIR in the cold war.

“It isn’t about what ISS does for us. It’s about what ISS does for us that can’t be done much more inexpensively in other ways.”

Space is hard, and space is very expensive. So far all the previous space stations never created an enduring presence. The previous station before the ISS, the Soviet/Russian Mir, lasted for 15 years before succumbing to a combination of age and lack of funds.

Discussion about the cost and use of the ISS are all valid, but what ever it took to get us to this point with the ISS in LEO is really immaterial. The money is spent, whether it cost $20B or $200B. No one is going to pay us back if we don’t want to use it anymore. The real choice is what do we do from here?

The ISS currently weighs about 920,000 lbs. If we wanted to put up an equivalent amount of mass today using Delta IV Heavy, and assuming $300M/flight, it would cost at least $6B just to get it up there.

Why does that matter? With the ISS costing somewhere north of $100B to construct, what it shows is that the cost of building stuff in space is NOT being held back by existing transportation. In fact when Falcon 9 Heavy comes on line, that same cost drops from $6B to $2B. That’s right, more than 1 Million lbs of mass in LEO for less than $2B. What is stopping us from building more space stations is the cost of the actual space hardware.

So why do people want to throw away perfectly good space hardware that in some cases is still “new” (the ISS)? This doesn’t make fiscal sense, and it doesn’t make expanding into space any easier, or quicker. If you don’t like what the ISS is doing, then fine, change it’s mission and reconfigure it. But you’re not going to expand into space any quicker by dumping it in the ocean.

We have to get away from the mindset that every mission to space has to be with new equipment. Here on Earth, after we have built an expensive new building, it may go through periodic changes of ownership and function. Today a laboratory, tomorrow a mixed use facility, then office space – the buildings and infrastructure are not torn down and rebuilt every time a new tenant takes over.

So I think any talk of dumping the ISS, for any reason, is pretty silly. A better conversation to have would be what do we build next, and whether we use the ISS components as a starting point, or build something completely new.

What’s everyone think?

“Yes, but nothing that couldn’t be established FAR more cheaply on the Earth by locking people in a can. ”

No not really. Unless you have a deep sea station for example. And you would not have the effects of micro/no gravity.

Not just 6 people, but 6 people with different nationalities and diverse backgrounds; scientists, engineers, military.

“Y’all seem to forget one tiny detail about ISS. A great technological feat indeed.”

Not really. See Saylut, Skylab … and MIR for details. The ISS is just a more expensive and bigger ‘model kit’ with more pieces required for construction. It represents past planning from an era that has ended. It has been little more than a works program for the aerospace industry for two decades. And as far as the taxpayers are concerned, it has yet to deliver any significant return for the investment.