Can Engineers Really Move the ISS?
Earlier this month, Michael Benson jump-started a lot of the public talk about the real future of the ISS in an op-ed for The Washington Post. Deciding that the station is simply in the wrong place, Benson proposed that it be refitted as an interplanetary spaceship. Benson’s idea suffers from several flaws. The ISS is designed for operations in low Earth orbit (LEO), but that is a unique environment. Had trips beyond that altitude been the station’s intended use, both the requirements and the design would have looked very different. Tom Jones, a four-time shuttle astronaut and PM’s guru on space who’s looked at the future of the ISS here before, notes that the station is designed for LEO and should stay there: “It isn’t designed to operate for long periods of time without resupply of things like food, water and spare parts for maintenance. You’d have to develop a duplicate interplanetary system anyway just to deliver the supplies and rotate the crew.” Another flaw to making the station
