For those of you who do not yet know, NASA now wants to de-orbit the International Space Station in 2016.  Personally I think that’s absolutely ridiculous, and I just sent a letter to the president asserting my position on the subject:

Dear Mr. President:

It has come to my attention that the Space Policy Review Panel has recommended that the International Space Station be de-orbited as early as 2016, decades ahead of schedule.  As an American taxpayer, I am against this recommendation for the following reasons:

1. It is not our space station.  It is an international space station, and it is therefore not our call to destroy it after a mere six years of full operational life.
2. The United States taxpayers have poured billions of dollars and ten years of construction into the International Space Station.  A mere six years is not an acceptable payoff for that investment.
3. For the first time in history, humans are living permanently off the Earth, an achievement comparable to Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon.  Terminating the Space Station early is a nonsensical waste, as illogical as canceling the last three moon missions even though the spaceships and hardware for those missions had been built.
4. The review panel has evidently decided that the International Space Station does not fit with NASA’s new mission of returning to the Moon and going to Mars.  This is simply not true.  Most at NASA – at least at Kennedy Space Center – have repeatedly asserted that the Space Station is a vital step to Mars.  Astronaut Thomas Mattingly has stated flat-out that we need the Space Station if we want to go to Mars.  Astronaut John Blaha, who spent four months aboard Mir, was more specific that we cannot put astronauts on the surface of Mars in the condition in which they are returning to Earth from the ISS; hence more research aboard the ISS is vital before we can attempt a mission to Mars.
5. The International Space Station provides research, technology, services and infrastructure beyond the goals of NASA, affecting everything from biomedical research to the classroom.  Losing the Space Station would be a tragedy for the country and for the world.

Mr. President, if our space program is to succeed, we must stop restricting it to mere components.  The Space Transportation System was originally conceived to consist of the Space Shuttle, Space Tug, and Space Station; but budget restrictions pared it down only to the Space Shuttle.  We don’t treat the DOD that way, do we?  We don’t fund the building of a bomber but not the bombs.  We can return to the Moon without getting rid of the International Space Station.  And we cannot go to Mars without the International Space Station.  I urge you to reconsider.

Thank you for your attention, and good luck.

Collin R. Skocik