NASA Plans To De-Orbit ISS In 2016 554
NewbieV writes "The international space station is by far the largest spacecraft ever built by earthlings. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it often passes over North America and is visible from the ground when night has fallen but the station, up high, is still bathed in sunlight.
After more than a decade of construction, it is nearing completion and finally has a full crew of six astronauts. The last components should be installed by the end of next year. And then? 'In the first quarter of 2016, we'll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft,' says NASA's space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini."
Re:What gives them the right (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not preserve it? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it's less hazardous for future space missions to clear them out of orbit while we still can, rather than having to track new orbiting material.
Re:Wait, before you do! (Score:3, Informative)
The first rule of goverment spending: "Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?". It's a great quote out of "Contact"
Re:Sounds like a negotiation (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds to me like the first move in a series of negotiations.
"Give us more money, or we drop it in the ocean".
This is not the last article on the subject that we will see...
It's not exactly the first move, since this has been the publicly available schedule since before construction on the ISS even began.
Re:W.T.F. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, you're discounting the fact that they've been able to do experiments and science up there in it for over a decade already. It's not as if those last four years will be more valuable than all of the previous years combined. I'd imagine that a significantly greater quantity of research of greater importance would have been carried out in those first thirteen years, as compared to the last four years, given the newness of the station and the length of time it was in use.
Wrong, almost no manned science has been happening on the ISS so far, only automated experiments (and no manufacturing). This is because the ship needs a three-person crew to run it. Only now, with six astronauts, is there crew available for science.
Re:What gives them the right (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why not preserve it? (Score:3, Informative)
That takes way too much energy. It'd be a very big mission in itself, and it's not something that ISS is designed to do. A higher orbit might be an option, but still costs a lot of energy. De-orbiting is cheap.
International (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It'll never happen (Score:2, Informative)
The Mars rovers were supposed to to have a very high degree of probability of full functionality for a minimum of 90 days. Warranty jokes aside, you can't design something to work perfectly until it breaks down on day 91. To be really sure it will work for 90 days, you've got to design it probably work for much,much longer. That they have managed to limp along for years is awesome, but not entirely shocking. In terms of the science produced, the fairly small cost (of staff on Earth) to keep the rovers operating is pretty reasonable, since they are already on Mars.
The IIS is a whole different story. It costs insanely more money, and doesn't produce any science. It's mission, and it's end date, are entirely political. With construction complete, it's not quite as good a way for politicians to give aerospace companies money, but there isn't much better until the shuttle-replacement ramps up, so expect great gnashing of teeth about how horrible it will be if we don't have astronauts bravely exploring the inside of a can they built as it skims along barely above the atmosphere.
It never ceases to amaze me... (Score:1, Informative)
...that so few people grasp the concepts of the various orbital distances from the Earth's surface. Here's a rough comparison of low earth orbit where the ISS resides. It's only a couple hundred miles up from the surface, somewhat less than the distance between Minneapolis and Des Moines. Geostationary orbit is more than two orders of magnitude greater, 22,236 miles. That's like driving from the south side of Minneapolis to the north side by going south, around the planet one time via the south pole, then heading north until around the north pole until you get back to Minnesota (well not quite that far, but once you're past 20K miles, a couple thousand more doesn't matter) . Basically GEO is about a thousand times greater distance than LEO.
Another pet peave of mine is everyone calling the space just outside the Earth's atmosphere, "outer space". It ain't "outer". It only qualifies as simply "space". "Outer space" is a term reserved for space outside our solar system.
Another thing that irks me is how decompression in a spacecraft is always portrayed (in TV, movies, books, etc) as being an explosively violent event with huge winds blowing around inside a spacecraft as everything gets sucked out thru some hole or blown-out window. Few people realize that there is less than 15 PSI difference in the atmospheric air pressure at the surface of the Earth and the "vacuum of space". An air leak on a spacecraft is a very subtle (but deadly) thing. A sudden decompression of a whole spacecraft would be very little more violent than a big fart.
!Permanent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unfortunately, it will never happen. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a waste (Score:1, Informative)
Re:You gotta be kidding me! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait, before you do! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It'll never happen (Score:3, Informative)
Once the Shuttle is no longer required to visit the ISS, they can consider boosting it to a higher orbit that requires fewer reboosting visits. That 220 mile limit is an artifact of being the highest the Shuttle can reach with maximum cargo.
Re:So what does that make the IRR? (Score:3, Informative)
No, ideally you want an orbit in the plane of the ecliptic to do that, not the Equator.
The Equator is inclined 23.44 degrees from the ecliptic, so a station orbiting at the Equator would have just as much trouble as the current ISS for a launch to Mars, the Moon, etc.
Re:So what does that make the IRR? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, I remember all that talk - because that's all it was, talk among people who haven't kept up with the times or don't know what they are talking about.
Being a base for staging missions was an early feature of Space Station Freedom. That feature was deferred during one of the rounds of redesign/down scoping (in the late 1980's) and removed completely when Freedom became ISS in the early 1990's. The change of orbital inclination to accommodate the Russians essentially made it impractical to stage missions from the station because of the resulting low altitude and lowered cargo capacity (because of the payload hit required for launches other than Russian to the new orbit).
What's the Big Deal? (Score:2, Informative)
Hang on a second... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not even sure that NASA has the power to make that decision.
The ISS will fall out of orbit without a boost every so often, and can be deliberately de-orbitted with a boost in the other direction. Thing is, NASA isn't going to be boosting the station in 2016. It will be boosted by Russian Progress and European ATV spacecraft, and possibly by other supply craft from other partners or (maybe) private corporations.
What gives NASA (or more accurately, commentators on NASA) the impression, that with the shuttle retired and Orion only just getting going, they are going to have any real ability to dictate the fate of the ISS? Do Americans just assume they own and control everything without checking?
Re:Unfortunately, it will never happen. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unfortunately, it will never happen. (Score:3, Informative)
An ion drive is currently being used with the Dawn Mission [nasa.gov], where the delta-v requirements are certainly as comparable to going from LEO to L-5. That mission started in 1997 (yes, it is in space right now and flying with the engine running and producing thrust right now) and it will ultimately last until at least 2015, reaching Vesta in 2011. Using that as a rule of thumb, I would expect at a maximum of a similar duration of time to get the ISS to L5... about 3-4 years if you use this comparison. I would expect it to happen much faster, and certainly not take decades.
The ISS is clearly intended to be boosted up into a higher orbit, and the hardpoints to keep the vehicle together are well understood... at least with moderate thrust velocities. I would expect accelerations similar to that provided by Progress boosters to be similar, and there are designs to put the engines directly on the ISS for altitude control. An ESA resupply module docket to the ISS and provided a delta-v that accelerated to an additional 2.65 m/s [softpedia.com]. I don't know how long that took (giving some idea on the acceleration tolerances of the ISS), but it was a conventional rocket. Surprisingly, this is nearly half of the delta-v that is necessary to get to L-5.
Using the previous example, I don't think the ISS would spend all that much time in the Van Allen belts, and to leave it unmanned for a brief period of time wouldn't be the end of the world either. This is something that certainly could happen if there was an objective to make it happen, and even just moving the ISS to L-5 as a place to "park" the structure as a historical monument to future generations rather than having it crash into the Earth causing potential damage or even death may make the effort worthwhile.
Heck, it may even be cheaper in terms of boosting the ISS to a very high altitude rather than using a similar booster to attempt a more controlled re-entry over what would be presumably an uninhabited part of the Earth like the Pacific Ocean. Sending a crew up to the ISS to perform the dismantling process, getting multiple boosters onto each ISS module, and simply trying to deal with the thing may on the whole be easier to even crash it on the Moon.