Russia, Georgia, and the International Space Station?

Question

From a blog posted 8-15-08 on Astronomy magazine:

What does the war between Russia and Georgia have to do with America’s space program?

Apparently, the space shuttle program is scheduled to end in 2010, leaving the United States and its partner countries dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the International Space Station.

Is this true?

Answer 1

1) Yes.

2) Yes, since only the US, Russia and China (barely) have the capability to get manned spacecraft to and from that orbit. In 2010, the US will no longer have that acapability.

3) Depends on the rocket. Some do.Some don't.

Some use liquid hydrogen, and some use solid propellent.  The shuttle uses both at launch. Space-X's engines use

I *think* the difference with different stages have more to do with nozzle and pressure flow design than what kind of fuel is used, though there may well be a desire to use specific fuels that pack more punch per pound once you are on orbit.  That is part of your payload mass after all, and it may be worth extra expense and engineering to recover some mass for other purposes on the spacecraft.

Try reading about kerosene rocket fuel on Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-1

Here is a NASA page about rocket propellants in general:

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasaf...

As for 'bad planning by NASA' this is the ONLY planning that manages to fulfill Bush's essentially unfunded mandate that NASA return to the moon. Killing shuttle launches saves a billion or so/year. There was some new funding promised however even that hasn't materialized. This is not the fault of anyone at NASA.

.

Answer 2

yup, some good "thinking-in-advance" by NASA

dontcha think?