[emailking]

So we all know when peak oil hits it's going to be bad and that's been covered ad nauseam. But today the shuttle landed and I got to thinking what about those poor guys (and gals) up in the space station? How are they going to fare when the zombie hordes start roaming down here? I don't think they have provisions much beyond 6 months. I just feel so bad knowing the brave astronauts are going to be trapped maybe?? They can't even prepare for it. Not like they can grow a garden or raise some chickens. Anyway, discuss.

[mercurygirl]

Oh dear...wiping my eyes.

You're thinking PO is a matter of hours or days? In any case, the "brave astronauts" will get back, hopefully. There are many contingency plans. People who think their plans are among the few which will provide safety may or may not be correct. That's life.

[BigTex]

The astronauts will be the lucky ones.

Unless the zombies get their hands on a space shuttle to fly up there and eat their brains.

Worrying about the astronauts up in the space station is low on my list of concerns, but I wish them the best and I think they will probably be able to dodge the peak oil bullet.

[kpeavey]

A national space program means your nation has reached the highest level of development. This is one reason China wants to launch shortly. Giving up a space program is undesirable. It would show the world your nation is in trouble. At the end of the cold war, with the Soviet Union crumbling, funding for the space program dried up. There were cosmonauts on Mir while Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank. International assistance helped keep the program limping along. The cosmonauts made it home.

The US shuttle fleet mission ends I think in 2010. There will still be plenty to do. Satellites to monitor, data to receive and interpret, and of course working on the SSTO-Single Stage To Orbit program. I suspect manned flight will still continue with an occasional shuttle flight. The ISS is still up there with folks on it right now.

In the long run, I figure the space program will find its budget cut with each passing year. The ISS will be depopulated and pushed to a higher orbit. One by one all the satellites will fall out of the sky. Men will look at the moon and tell their grandchildren that man walked on it once. A long as there are still kids, the sky will still be full of mystery and awe.

[Cog]

A Soyuz escape craft is kept permanently attached to the space station. They aren't going to be trapped up there regardless of what happens.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Soyuz capsules are used both to return astronauts from the ISS and as escape spacecrafts in case the ISS suffers some kind of critical failure and can no longer sustain life support.

[dorlomin]

The manned space programs future is supposed to be the Orion space vehicle. Its a huge well thought out pork barrel so will be very difficult to kill politicaly, (not well engineered just well planned as pork) however at near enough $15 billion it is much more likely to be the economic problems from the housing at credit markets and the US national budget deficit that will strangle it than peak oil per se.

Having said that I strongly suspect that a space program will remain and be with us long long after the collapse has begun. Things like maintaining the GPS network, weather satalites, millitary comms sats are such huge force multipliers that they will be maintained at nearly any cost. Resource depletion will make them even more valuable than they currently are.

[freddyseven]

Agree, they will bide time until things settle down, until their food is all gone then return to the west coast.

It is more likely that the high altitude pulses that will be used will likely remove them accidentally however.
They'd never know what hit them.

Remember, the end of everything is always less than an hour away. You also could be hit by a car in thirty minutes, or an earthquake. Those are more unlikely though.

[Ferretlover]

It now no longer matters--the orbiter has made its last trip.

[Cog]

Good. Now we can stop wasting money in low earth orbit.