ISS - Space Station

That is true, the band in which the ISS operates (as well as most Shuttle flights) is restricted by the inclination at launch (think of inclination as an arrow pointing towards the North Pole). A launch site near the equator gives you an extra centripetal push away from Earth, so normally you try to keept that inclination relatively low and you launch ideally from as close to the equator as possible.
When Russia launched the first element of the ISS they used their traditional inclination, which is heavily influenced by their launch site in Baykonur. The US would have preferred an orbit for the ISS with less inclination as it would have allowed them to carry heavier payloads (read elements for the station assembly) but instead NASA had to "waste" some of its energy by launching from FL on a higher inclination launch to meet the Russian orbit.

There is another problem and reason for why you don't see many arctic orbits/flights: The Shuttle would have to launch along the Eastern coast of the US instead of over the Atlantic, which could be problematic in case of a launch/ascent anomaly. A launch at Vandenberg airforce base (California's West coast) would have resolved that issue with a launch South over the Pacific, but after Challenger the DoD dismantled its (never used) Shuttle launch infrastructure at that base. Those flights would have covered the most arctic parts of any US manned mission. Eventually they were launched from Florida despite the obvious risks involved.

 

It is a bit of a bummer once you realize that orbital mechanics are the dominating force in the universe and that basically everything flies in smaller or larger circles (or elipsies). All that Star Wars stuff where we change direction (and orbital planes) is just nonsense.

Not that you can't change orbital planes, but it needs insane amounts of energy (basically reducing your orbital velocity to zero and then back to a new orbital velocity), which is just not feasible with our technology (maybe by the time Star Wars comes around, we have more efficient propulsion techniques).

So the ISS as everything thing else orbiting the planet is locked in place in elliptical/circular orbits. As is apparently the rest of the universe: Even stars are orbiting (black holes).

 

NASA's Prometheus nuclear powered robotic ship was to have this capability but it was shelved

 

Bummer. Nuclear is the way forward.

 

Did it go "BLACK"