Transportation to International Space Station
Transportation is important to the International Space Station because The United States still has to complete previous contracts to complete our part of the International Space Station. So, now in 2012, the United States has no way to continue operations on the International Space Station because there are no projects ready to replace the Space Shuttle Program (SSP). “For the next four to five years, the United States will rely on Russia for transportation to the International Space Station”. This means two things, the first is that Russia will become the sole country in the world that can send astronauts to space and the second is that Russia will charge money to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Contracts have been signed with Russia through 2016 to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.
Projections of Money Allotments
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This is a bar graph showing the amount of money NASA plans to use for the International Space Station, Commercial Spaceflight, and the Space Shuttle program. The graph shows that with steady, smaller, amounts of money toward commercial spaceflight we can still have missions, but with less capital towards them.
These contracts list the expense of sending one astronaut to the International Space Station for the price of $63 million. The overall planned costs to ferry the appropiate amount of astronauts to the International Space Station to fulfill previous contracts of work on it will be an overall estimated cost of $753 million. If we compare this number to the $1.6 billion the United States spent on the SSP in 2011, this is a savings of near a million per year, and over the next four to five years the sum will be $5-6 million dollars. However, a drawback to this solution is that Russia will stand to be the lone power in the world to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Current American commercial projects have a timeline of operational use by 2015 with full missions starting in 2016 to the International Space Station. Right now NASA has chosen the preferred option of using Russia as a taxi service to the International Space Station.
U.S.A vs. Russian Space Program
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This is a side by side comparison of the two Space Shuttles by the United States and Russia respectively. Now with the Space Shuttle Program gone, the United States will now rely on Russia as our transportation. this is the model of Space Shuttle the United States will have to use to fly to the International Space Station.