International Space Station - History And Structure, Science, Controversy
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The International Space Station (ISS), formally designated International Space Station Alpha, is a habitable orbital facility that has been under construction since 1998 and is scheduled for completion in 2006. When finished, it will contain about four times as much working space as the Russian space station Mir (1986–2001), the former record holder, and will weigh about one million pounds (453,000 kg). The ISS orbits at an average altitude of 240 mi (387 km). A number of science experiments are to be conducted aboard the ISS in such fields as health effects of radiation, molecular and cell biology, earth science, fluid dynamics, astronomy, combustion physics, and crystal growth.
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The ISS was originally proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984, and was slated to cost $8 billion. Thirty-six U.S. shuttle flights plus nine Russian rocket launches will be required for ISS construction. Today there are 15 major partners in the ISS effort, including the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and 11 of the member states of the European Space Agency. The United States, throu…
The ISS is intended to serve as a platform for the performance of scientific experiments that can only be carried out in space. The presence of a crew allows more complex experiments to be performed with simpler equipment than would be possible using purely robotic space vehicles; on the other hand, human beings require much complex gear to survive in space. Further, the ISS is not a particularly …
The ISS is enthusiastically supported by many people who are interested in space travel for its own sake and by those scientists who hope to fly their own experiments on the platform. However, it has long been heavily criticized by a majority of the scientific community for delivering too little science for the dollar and thus, in effect, diverting money from more effective research. Some scientis…
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