Findings from 15 years of the International Space Station

https://theconversation.com/five-key-findings-from-15-years-of-the-international-space-station-51540

by evo_9 • 11 years ago

77 33 11 years ago

peter303• 11 years ago

The AMS is interesting. It is CERN-like detector in space. Its the most expensive experiment on the ISS. It required a special act of Congress to extend the shuttle program one extra mission past its termination.

Early results show more anti-matter positrons in space than predicted. One interpretation attributes this to dark matter. AMS continues to collect data to refine results.

pavel_lishin2• 11 years ago

Are there any plausible theories for how dark matter would generate positrons?

jessriedel2• 11 years ago

Worth point out that (apparently) the only reason that the AMS was attached to the ISS rather than launched as an independent satellite is that it would have been hard to power it. So it leaches off the ISS solar panels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer

Obviously, this can't be counted as more than a tiny fringe benefit of the ISS, since one could always have built a bigger, independent version of AMS with more solar panels (for a lot less than $150B).

azernik• 11 years ago

Not sure that's a fair cost comparison - the ISS is reusable infrastructure whose power, propulsion (station-keeping), and structural investments are reused for multiple payloads. We just happen to be using the vast majority of it for life-support...

kens• 11 years ago

I looked at the ISS research in detail a few years ago, and there are several experiments counted as ISS research because they were on a space shuttle flight that went to the ISS. My point is that as you mention with the AMS, the benefits of the ISS are exaggerated in this way.

Overall, the research results of the ISS struck me nothing you'd put into even the top 100 discoveries of the year, and nothing worth the cost.

To see just how costly the ISS is compared to other research projects, see: http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/sad1015...

pavel_lishin2• 11 years ago

Looks like the site is being hugged too hard; I'm getting 503s.

sparrish• 11 years ago

Not much to show for $19.6 million per day for 15 years.

api2• 11 years ago

The highest value of the ISS is not as a scientific experiment but an engineering undertaking. It's given us a lot of operational experience on long duration space habitats and space flight, as well as constructing and operating large structures in space that are launched via many payloads and assembled in orbit. From the ISS we have learned how one might actually build and operate the life support and habitat systems of a sci-fi scale spaceship like Discovery 1 (2001). Now that we have reusable rockets, it will soon be possible to actually launch and assemble such things in orbit somewhat economically.

IMHO the money could have been better spent but also might have been much worse spent. I'll take it.

LoSboccacc2• 11 years ago

It's not even that much money compared to, say, F-35 research.

drjesusphd• 11 years ago

That operational experience dies out the longer we don't apply that hard-fought knowledge.

snsr• 11 years ago

Are you being serious? Maybe you need to do some reading?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

jackfoxy• 11 years ago

I've often wondered why NASA never considers artificial gravity through a rotating structure to dispense with the problem of long-term zero-G on the human body. At least I have never seen a media report of NASA taking this seriously, and I have followed media reports of space topics since I was a child. There must be a reason for this. Numerous science fiction writers treated this concept as a given decades ago.

If these are the 5 key findings of the lengthy construction and 15 years of operation of the ISS, this is a pretty lame return (in terms of science) for a huge investment. I suspect the only other thing we can say is we have a lot more experience of human operations (activity) in space. Something to be said for that.

maxerickson• 11 years ago

I expect it largely comes down to cost.

goodcanadian• 11 years ago

That and the fact that we have plenty of gravity on Earth. We go to space to study things that we can't study on Earth.

kaybe• 11 years ago

There is also about no experience with it, so a lot of work, money and mistakes are needed. Structural integrity is a big challenge. As I see it, it's not that people there do not think about it, it's just not feasible right now.

exDM69• 11 years ago

I've often wondered why NASA never considers artificial gravity through a rotating structure

They most likely have considered this several times.

But to make it work, they would have to build an impractically large structure (it would have to vs twice the size of ISS to work at a reasonable speed) and deal with the difficulties of large rotating structures.

During the ISS program, space medicine has advanced a lot. With a specialized diet and training regime, astronauts have no measurable loss of bone mass any more.

15 years of continuous human presence in space is a huge achievement. At 150 billion dollars, equal to three months of US military spending, it's a bargain.

sharp11• 11 years ago

I never knew that the chemistry of flames and burning was so complex and poorly understood. Beautiful that flames are spherical in microgravity!

Findings from 15 years of the International Space Station

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