Presently the ISS spends all its days going nowhere at 17,200 mph. Would it be worthwhile to try to turn the ISS into a vessel capable of reaching lunar orbit or even mars? It's already set up to support crews for many months at a time. Those ion engines they're developing would be a potential source of propulsion. They are getting more powerful, the newer ones they're testing now have significantly greater actual thrust force than the older ones that powered DS1 and such like. You could actually just send up a lunar lander aboard a LEO delivery vehicle, and bolt it to the station and then let the station break out of LEO under thrust from its ion engines (attached earlier) and transit to lunar orbit over a longer period (than conventional Apollo / Constellation style moonshots). Then the lander undocks and sends some people down, while the station remains as a large and highly capable orbiting command center.
That's actually a really good idea. But space exploration in any government's hands is a boondoggle. Shame NASA was formed during that fucking Eisenhower "Big Government Knows Best" era and not privatized. Besides, coming from a family that made its income on space exploration, I've always been convinced we went the wrong way. Down below the waves was where the profit, scientific usefulness, and life changing technologies lay. Space should have been unmanned for satellites etc.
The ISS in low Earth orbit, where it is mostly shielded from the harmful radiation in outer space. Raise its altitude a few hundred miles and the crew will die of radiation sickness very quickly. So, no, it can't be turned into a spaceship unless someone install a whole lot of radiation shielding on it first. (The same thing is true, by the way, of the Space Shuttle. It does not have enough shielding for operations outside of LEO.)
The danger of solar radiation to astronauts outside the magnetosphere is generally overstated. None of the Apollo astronauts suffered ill effects, and the later moonshots involved spending almost a fortnight far beyond the magnetosphere. I think the only real danger would be solar storms. But you could provide for that by lining one particular compartment with concrete slabs or something, and having them retreat to that if a solar storm was incoming. (The harmful particles of a solar storm move at sublight velocity, allowing you to know they're coming before they hit. If you see a big solar flare you know the storm is coming in a few hours).
The Apollo atronauts only spent about 9 days or so outside of the protection of the Van Allen belts. You're talking about an extended stay outside of LEO. I think the ISS would need a bit more shielding. Probably wouldn't be very hard to do except we will have no more manned spacecraft after this year. Russia will have a manned spacecraft. So will China. But the nation that first set foot upon the Moon will not. Thanks for all the Hope and Change, Barry.
The crew of Apollo 17 spent 12 days far from the earth. A full week plus a working week, if you want to look at it that way. Paladin said astronauts outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field would "die very quickly". Since the Apollo 17 crew were in this environment for 12 days straight and didn't even get ill at all, a few months is unlikely to kill.
The ISS isn't designed for sustained acceleration of any kind. It'd break apart under any significant thrust above its design specs.
What Bear said. Spindley shit sticking out in every direction, attached by connectors never designed for lateral stress The station. Not Bear.
The ISS is able to tolerate some stress. They constantly have to reboost it back to higher orbits. An ion system might work. It has a slower, gentler thrust than conventional rockets. It might get out of orbit and take a few weeks to get to the Moon. Would an ion system be abe to slow it back down enough for the Moon's gravity to capture it?
Here's the issue: Escape velocity to leave Earth orbit is 25,000 KPH, escape velocity for the Moon is much, much lower, like 5,000 KPH. If you put the ISS on a course for the Moon, its going to take over a year for it to get there on a low-thrust engine like an ion (and that's with either a nuke plant onboard, or lots more solar panels added to it, BTW), and you're going to have to burn off a lot of momentum as you approach the Moon, even if you assume that its possible to get the ISS to the Moon using just enough thrust for it to travel at about 18,000 KPH (doable, instead of going straight to the Moon like Apollo did, you'll just be making an ever expanding spiral orbit around the Earth, when you get to a certain point, you'll be under the influence of Lunar gravity more than you will Earth's), you're going to have to carefully scrub all that excess speed to get you down to lunar orbit speeds. I seriously doubt that the station will be able to deal with the necessary stresses caused by this. Its not like you're dealing with going from one Earth sized mass to another, where you just need to chop a little bit of momentum in order to orbit, you've got to chop lots of momentum. Additionally, once in orbit, you'll have to deal with the fact that the Moon's gravity field is "lumpy" due to MASCONS, and the station will require much more adjustments to its orbit in order for it to remain in position. Then there's the radiation issue. The amount of time outside the Van Allen belts isn't the issue, what's the issue is: Where are you when the sun decides to have a large solar flare (something it does fairly routinely, on the order of a couple of times a year)? Without radiation shielding (and you're only going to have a few minutes warning), you're toast.
Why not just build a specific ship for the task instead of taking a space station and trying to turn it into a space ship? As for the Apollo guys.... they got damn lucky.....
When is that space ship from the future gonna crash land from out of the wormhole so we can bastardize the tech out of it and head off to Alpha Centauri? Actually, from what I read, the ISS is not designed to be an interplanetary vessel. But could it be the core of future builds? Why not just build the next gen space station off of the ISS? But the real issue is radiation. Even if we leave the solar system the cosmic rays can tear you apart if you're not in the protective envelope of the Sun.
