Tek-Bull

The International Space Station is finally complete

Today, 13 years later, the International Space Station is finally “officially” complete, at the cost of something between $50 Billion and $100 Billion. The ISS was launched in 1998 as an artificial Satellite to run a series of experiments, and after the billions of dollars and finally complete, the ISS continues to lose altitude every year. Not by much but regardless it continues to lose it’s altitude, eventually the ISS will crash against the earth several years from now.

The station was fitted with a laser extension boom for the stations robot arm, now just because the extension was added and the station is “officially” completed it does not mean that they are going to continue adding additional expansions.

The Russians are still planning to add another science module in 2012 called Nauka which will be the last major component to the station. Additional modules are going to be added in the future, including the Bigelow and the inflatable habitats, and of course in the future they are adding the VASIMIR Thrusters to keep the ISS at a steady altitude.

Now that the Station is completed, I guess other nations, and private companies can add additional modules to make an actual station, while the ISS is an amazing piece of technology, is not something that can sustain humans for an extended period of times, even if it could, the station is full of sensitive cables that can destroy it like the ones in the movies.

Via: Yahoo