SpaceX Scores $843 Million NASA Contract To De-Orbit ISS In 2030 (techcrunch.com) 141
In a contract worth as much as $843 million, NASA announced today SpaceX has been selected to develop a vehicle that will de-orbit the International Space Station in 2030. "As the agency transitions to commercially owned space destinations closer to home, it is crucial to prepare for the safe and responsible deorbit of the International Space Station in a controlled manner after the end of its operational life in 2030," the U.S. space agency said in a statement. TechCrunch reports: Few details about the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, as NASA calls the craft, have been released so far. However, NASA clarified that the vehicle will be different from SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which delivers cargo and crew to the station, and other vehicles that perform services for the agency. Unlike these vehicles, which are built and operated by SpaceX, NASA will take ownership of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle post-development and operate it throughout its mission. Both the vehicle and the ISS will destructively break up as they reenter the atmosphere, and one of the big tasks ahead for SpaceX is to ensure that the station reenters in a way that endangers no populated areas. The launch contract for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will be announced separately.
NASA and its partners had been evaluating using a Russian Roscosmos Progress spacecraft to conduct the de-orbit mission, but studies indicated that a new spacecraft was needed for the de-orbit maneuver. The station's safe demise is a responsibility shared by the five space agencies that operate on the ISS -- NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and State Space Corporation Roscosmos -- but it is unclear whether this contract amount is being paid out by all countries.
NASA and its partners had been evaluating using a Russian Roscosmos Progress spacecraft to conduct the de-orbit mission, but studies indicated that a new spacecraft was needed for the de-orbit maneuver. The station's safe demise is a responsibility shared by the five space agencies that operate on the ISS -- NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and State Space Corporation Roscosmos -- but it is unclear whether this contract amount is being paid out by all countries.
expensive clean up (Score:2)
expensive clean up.
But necessary
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I've never understood why it wouldn't be cheaper and safer to put it in a parking orbit somewhere outside geostationary orbit. Leave it there as a museum, or possibly spare parts for some future endeavor. IIRC that was the original plan for MIR, but the Kremlin was afraid some phantasmagorical classified information might be pillaged by a visiting US Space Shuttle visit so they crashed it.
Re:expensive clean up (Score:4, Interesting)
https://x.com/thesheetztweetz/... [x.com]
My summary of the ISS options NASA analyzed:
Uncontrolled reentry: Bad.
Disassembly + return: Impractical/expensive.
Disassembly + LEO repurpose: Not worth it.
Disassembly + deorbit: Can't break up and still operate.
Boost: No vehicle and very risky (short and long term).
Give to commercial: No proposals.
Continue operations: Possible.
Re:expensive clean up (Score:5, Informative)
ISS orbit altitude (maximum) - 460 km
Geostationary orbit altitude - 35,786 km
ISS velocity - 28,165 km/h
Geotationary orbit velocity - 11,052 km/h
It's much cheaper, easier, and requires vastly less fuel to slow the ISS down the few hundred km/h needed so it gradually de-orbits and hits the atmosphere than it is to move it 35,000+ km higher and slow it down by 17,000 km/h.
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Yeah, after I posted that I rethought the "cheaper" part. I don't know about "easier" though, it's pretty difficult to believe that the thing isn't going to break into pieces with solar panels and various modules coming down wherever they damn well please. Maybe the core can be dropped on Antarctica or the Southern Ocean, but the joints holding the other segments together were never designed to handle that kind of stress and unless they cut it into chunks and zip tie the whole thing into one big blob it's
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It's much cheaper, easier, and requires vastly less fuel to slow the ISS down the few hundred km/h needed so it gradually de-orbits and hits the atmosphere than it is to move it 35,000+ km higher and slow it down by 17,000 km/h.
Is it though? They're talking about a contract worth nearly $1 billion dollars to develop a new vehicle, which does not appear to include the cost of actually performing the de-orbit (since NASA will be operating it, not SpaceX). I'm not familiar with the topic, but surely it would be possible to use existing vehicles and relatively inexpensive thrusters to boost the ISS into some kind of parking orbit which, even if not permanently stable, would keep it aloft for another 15-20 years until we figure out a
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And if it was left as is? How long would it take for it to deorbit itself? (probably in less controlled process?).
Or just keep it orbiting with minimum effort?
I am curious though I am sure all these were already evaluated.
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Boeing Starliner (Score:2)
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Grab the aloe, STAT!
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US: Here's a billion bucks, please deorbit safely.
China: Safe deorbiting? What's that?
It would be a damn shame if ... (Score:2)
Re:It would be a damn shame if ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would that matter? It's pure symbolism. How about we take the time to design the next thing even better so it has more value and put it up when ready?
Re:It would be a damn shame if ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would that matter? It's pure symbolism.
Symbols have meaning. That's why we use them.
Consider the symbolism of the Terra Nova Expedition reaching the South Pole only to find a flagpole with the Norwegian flag indicating that the Amunsen Expedition got there first. Reaching the South Pole is symbolic in that it indicates a capability not seen before. Planting a flag symbolizes that accomplishment. If there's a time in which there's no humans in orbit then that symbolizes a falling back in human capability. If this isn't quickly rectified then it can symbolize even greater decay in human civilization.
We plant literal markers in human accomplishment to show to others, and ourselves, what we can do. If those markers are lost then that indicates a failure somewhere in our desire to progress in technology, capability, knowledge, or some other area.
I doubt there is such a thing as "pure symbolism" since to be a symbol it must have some meaning beyond its existence.
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Given a choice between "let's throw something up there fast so we don't have to reset the clock!" vs "It'll take an extra 5 years but we have to live with this thing for at least 20-30 years so let's do it right", which sounds like the adult decision to you?
Do you think the average citizen has any clue how long it's been up or will really care if there's a short gap while the next better thing gets finished?
Symbolism is about morale boosting rah rah. No one important cares.
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We have dozens of symbols out in space already though... plenty of dead and working satellites, probes still in orbits some places, the Voyagers out past the heliopause and hell the JWST is probably one of the modern Wonders of the World.
The ISS unfortunately is dying and sometimes you just need to let go. Like an old dog are you keeping it alive for it's sake or yours?
We shouldn't be mad about the ISS getting burned up, we should be mad if we haven't made progress on better things when 2030 rolls around.
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Why would that matter? It's pure symbolism.
No it would be a failure. It would indicate a backsliding on our commitment to space, much like after the Apollo program was ended.
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We're where we're at. You'd prefer to toss some crap up there just so we don't have to "reset the [imaginary] clock" than do it right?
I don't want limited dollar wasted on useless junk for symbolism's sake. There will be another. When it's ready.
Holy fuck, we haven't had a new GTA6 since fucking forever! Everyone is still playing GTA5! The entire GTA series is a failure! What happened to our commitment to video game based crime?
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We're where we're at. You'd prefer to toss some crap up there just so we don't have to "reset the [imaginary] clock" than do it right?
No, I'd prefer that were we genuinely committed to furthering our presence in space for scientific, commercial and environmental reasons.
Re:It would be a damn shame if ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of "even better" designs, and have been since before the ISS was even launched. What is lacking is the funding. This is why we can't have nice things:
2024 NASA budget - $24.9 billion
2024 Pentagon budget - $825 billion
Space Farce portion of Pentagon budget - $29 billion
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We need a base on the moon. The next space station is supposed to be "Lunar Gateway" which is going to be in lunar orbit .. I think we need to actually be on a base on the moon and skip the half-ass lunar gateway step.
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Re:It would be a damn shame if ... (Score:5, Informative)
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If you count China as part of humanity ...
Of course. The Soviet Union was a pretty f'd up thing, but their space program was one of the few great things they did. Why would China's peaceful accomplishments in space be any different?
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China's Tiangong station [wikipedia.org] also exists, and has a continuous crew rotation [wikipedia.org]. It's fair to think that China will maintain a manned space station for the foreseeable future, so even if ISS disappeared tomorrow, the "clock" would keep running.
That should cover the legal costs (Score:2)
You never know when the Big Jeff teams up with his lawyers to get his rightfull share of the action with with BlueOrigin space tourist attraction.
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Lauren Sanchez' BF or hubbie (never know with celebrity tabloids) can't even launch into orbital space realms (LEO, MEO, GEO), so what has he got to sue for when his "pet toy" of a company can't even perform like SpaceX?
Srsly the folks at BO need some form of "rocket v1agra" for their inventions to get them to perform any better than their past suggests.
Doesn't anyone else think that BO is nothing more than very expensive "Billionaire Envy" (of Leon Musk' SpaceX) on the part of Bezos?
Liability (Score:3)
NASA will take ownership of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle post-development and operate it throughout its mission
This is certainly for insurance purposes. No non-government entity would assume the liability of being sued out of existence if their actions resulted in injuries, death or property damage due to deorbiting the ISS. The government is much harder to sue than anything else. It's a certainly that large portions will reach the surface of the earth. It's mainly a matter of where.
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I believe one of Randal Monroe's books - How To or one of the What If books, contains an interview with Chris Hadfield on how to survive on the ISS as it de-orbits. Not that the odds are good, but it's theoretically possible if you choose the right section to shield you during the majority of the trip.
Presumably at some point you have to abandon your 'safe' tumbling debris, and then reduce your terminal velocity with a parachute you've fashioned out of some available materials on the ISS. You WERE stitch
huh? (Score:2)
"...transitions to commercially owned space destinations closer to home, "
What does that even mean? You could hardly get closer to home than the ISS which inhabits such a shitty low orbit it's practically skipping on atmosphere.
That means more stealing from the public for (Score:2)
private profits. See private prisons, charter school scams, and the disastrous US health care system for further reference. There are more corporate parasites than anything else.
US Space Force (Score:2)
Give me the controls, I'll do it free! (Score:2)
How cool would it be to say you're the guy who sent the flaming wreckage of a space station into the earth?
I mean like ok I don't make any promises where it will hit or what section of what high density city might get wiped out but you get what you pay for.
So a modified Starship? (Score:2)
Let's be honest here, Elon is looking at a modified Starship to do a controlled burn. Probably a dock on the nose and push the station's perigee down until the station comes down at Point Nemo? That would be cheapest and make the most sense with existing technology.
Any bonus in the contract? (Score:3)
Does SpaceX get a bonus if they manage to land it on a barge? 8-D
Basics (Score:2)
In takes you forward,
Forward takes you out,
Out takes you back,
Back takes you in.
Time to hook up a Back motor.
Why not use Starliner (Score:2)
It is already there and apparently not man rated...
you cannot protect your roof enough (Score:2)
Florida man knows.
What does it take? (Score:2)
Scott Manley on Youtube has a great video [youtube.com] explaining this in lay terms. You need to supply a delta-v of about 100 m/s. A single Progress supply mission can do about 4.5 m/s. You c
Why not sell it to reuse? (Score:2)
Sell it to someone rich who can take over?
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Or just send it into deep space. No worry about deaths or adding to our climate poisoning.
Don't understand why you got down modded.
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:5, Informative)
Or just send it into deep space.
Do you have any idea of the delta-V (and thus fuel) needed to send 400,000 kg of junk to deep space?
Hint: Way more than 400,000 kg.
Launching all that fuel will cause far more damage to the climate than deorbiting.
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I don't know. What is the delta V to raise the orbit a couple thousand km? /. by then.
A fully refuelled Starship is 1200t propellant, initial mass 1750t, 3.7km/s Isp, makes 3.3km/s delta V. How high would that push the orbit?
I hope it is possible to get orbital fuel transfer by 2030.
We might even be able to use a delta symbol on
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I don't know. What is the delta V to raise the orbit a couple thousand km?
Much more than it takes to deorbit. It deorbits on its own, you just need to guide it.
A fully refuelled Starship is 1200t propellant, initial mass 1750t, 3.7km/s Isp, makes 3.3km/s delta V. How high would that push the orbit?
Very high. But how much fuel would you need to put that 1200t starship in orbit next to the ISS in order to push it higher?
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But how much fuel would you need to put that 1200t starship in orbit next to the ISS in order to push it higher?
Starship is aiming for 200t payload to LEO, so six fully reusable launches to be fuelled in LEO. Though that is more than needed.
3.3km/s is about enough for a lunar flyby. The Starship could separate and take a free-return trajectory home, while the ISS could use the gravity-assist to raise perigee high above Earth.
I guess they need full reusability for this armchair plan to be in budget.
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But alas, I don't expect you to have a witty or intelligent comeback for that.
How about this: it takes way more fuel (thus, cost) to accelerate 4000 metric tons from a current orbital velocity of ~18,000mph to ~25,000mph of escape velocity, than it does to let the atmospheric drag that ISS already experiences do most of the work for you, and then perform a single deorbit burn to let atmospheric drag and gravity do the rest of the work to put it down in the middle of the ocean?
And that's not even considering that to "add ion thrusters to ISS and guide it towards the Sun" would mean ha
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Do you have any idea of the delta-V (and thus fuel) needed to send 400,000 kg of junk to deep space?
IANARS(rocket surgeon), but I'm not sure it'd be as much as you imply.
Escape Velocity is a misnomer; It should be Escape Speed. Velocity is the speed of something in a given direction, but the direction of escape speed does not matter. Whether you reach that speed going straight up, at a 45 degree angle, or on a tangent to the earth does not matter. IE: you don't need to change the velocity of the craft into one away from earth; you don't need to change the direction of the ISS at all; you just need to incr
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but it's less than double the current speed.
The fuel needed is proportional to the energy, which is the square of the velocity.
So, double the speed means four times as much fuel.
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but it's less than double the current speed.
The fuel needed is proportional to the energy, which is the square of the velocity.
Thanks. Can you provide units, or a link to a calculator or something? (squaring m/s or squaring km/s? and that relates to what unit of fuel?)
So, double the speed means four times as much fuel.
Four times an unknown is unknown, so this doesn't get to an answer without more info; Info I don't have.
The ISS is currently traveling at an average of 28,000km/h, and would need to reach just over 40,000km/h to escape. They had enough fuel to get to 28. From 28 to 40 is 1.4x increase. Square of 1.4x is 1.96x. So they'd need 1.96x's as much fuel to increase from 28,00
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You need velocity to get your escape speed. Boosting to escape from orbit is only efficient if the boost vector is aligned with the orbital vector.
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You don't need to get to escape velocity, just push it up to a parking orbit outside the geostationary satellites. Attach an ion rocket and let it sit there firing for several years.
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It would need an additional push to get it a bit higher out of the atmosphere, but for $843 million they could certainly build a big ion drive or drive cluster (they're not bleeding edge tech any more), and a Falcon 9 launch is under $1200/pound currently. Solar panels to power it are already there, and if you use krypton ($290/kilo) the SI is lower but you'll still end up ahead of using xenon ($1800/kilo, if you could even round up that much).
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Or just send it into deep space. No worry about deaths or adding to our climate poisoning.
Don't understand why you got down modded.
Sure, why not. Let's just pollute space like we've polluted the only (known) place in the universe we can live.
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Do you have any idea how big space is?
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:4, Funny)
It's big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
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Right. Let's go ahead and do an untold amount of launches to keep sending fuel up to it, so we can shove a few thousand tons of metal to escape velocity into a solar orbit where we could not reach it again for generations, because reasons.
Or, we could do one launch, with one vehicle, with enough fuel to clamp on and slow it's velocity by a tiny fraction of what is needed to do what you suggest, allowing for "free" velocity shedding through aerobraking in the upper atmosphere until you get to the desired ta
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would need a crazy amount of energy to raise its orbit. You'd be talking the most expensive Hohmann transfer ever attempted by humanity, to say nothing of it being the most complicated.
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It's all good mate. And, yeah, the amount of propellant needed to get something that big out of Earth's gravity well would be significant—I don't think NASA has that kind of funds.
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It's all good mate. And, yeah, the amount of propellant needed to get something that big out of Earth's gravity well would be significant—I don't think NASA has that kind of funds.
You don't have to get it out of the gravity well, just out beyond LEO with its atmospheric drag. ISS loses 70 meters per day because there's still too much air. That's why it would come crashing down on its own in only a couple of years without periodic boosting. Bump it up past about 2000 km, and you can pretty much ignore the atmosphere.
Medium Earth Orbit (1200 miles and up) kind of sucks because you're in the Van Allen belt, but that also limits the use of that region somewhat. AFAIK, pretty much the
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Not to steal your thunder, just to illustrate [xkcd.com]
In case people look at that and think "The sun's gravity well is really, really deep, it'd be easy to send it there", that's not how orbital mechanics works. An Earth satellite, like the Earth, is carrying an enormous amount of velocity keeping it in orbit around the sun. To drop something into the sun you need to shed that velocity, which means expending an enormous amount of energy. Raising the ISS' orbit around Earth would take enormous energy, getting it out of Earth's orbit would take even more, and
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Homann transfer? To where? A parking orbit doesn't have to be around some other planetary body, just somewhere beyond 36,000 kilometers above Earth so beyond the geostationary satellites.
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Hohmann transfers are used to move from one orbit to another, in this sequence:
1. burn at some point along your current orbital path to increase orbital eccentricity (more oval, less circle) until the new orbital maximum intersects with the desired orbital altitude
2. when the spacecraft reaches that desired altitude, another burn is executed to reduce orbital eccentricity (less oval, more circle) and raise the height of the orbital minimum to establish the new orbit at the desired altitude
They can be used f
Re: Why not boost it? (Score:2)
True, I had forgotten.
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not boost it up to a higher orbit, if only to use as raw materials for a Starship-refueling depot ?
Because it's on the wrong inclination for a refueling depot.
The original point of the ISS was as a refueling depot and general "rest stop" for missions to the moon, Mars, and perhaps other places in the solar system. Then the politicians got involved and thought it might be a good idea to invite participation from USSR, European nations, and perhaps more to make this a truly international effort. The problem then was that Russia (or rather the USSR at the time) didn't have launch facilities close enough to the equator, and/or rockets powerful enough, to reach an orbit that was useful for a space station that could serve as a refuel depot for destinations in the solar system. So the orbit of the ISS was changed to accommodate the limitations of the Russians/Soviets and then that killed the ability of the ISS to operate as a refueling depot to missions to the moon or anywhere else in the solar sytem. The orbit of the ISS was such that using the station as a refuel depot cost more in fuel than just going to the moon (or maybe Mars) directly.
The ISS needs periodic boosts to its orbit to account for atmospheric drag so I wonder if these boosts can't be used to slowly bring the ISS into an orbit that is conducive to using the station as a place to refuel, rest, repair, or whatever, a mission to the moon or Mars without the expense of adjusting for the high inclination of its orbit. If atmospheric drag is causing the orbit to decay then maybe this drag can be shifted somehow to allow the orbit to be inclined such that its no longer too costly to use as a refuel stop. Maybe put the solar panels or something in a position that it "steers" the station to a beneficial orbit. They will see drag regardless so maybe they can use this drag to their benefit by using it as a force to bring the station to a shallow orbit. Maybe with a combination of adjusting the drag, directing the necessary boosts, the orbit could be shifted to something more useful as a refueling depot.
The USA has launch facilities in Florida which makes it nearly trivial to hit an orbit optimal for sending people or probes to the moon or any planet on the solar orbital plane. ESA also has facilities for this through a launch site in French Guiana. Canada is a participant in the ISS project but also a member of ESA, and as a close ally of the USA has access to NASA's facility in Florida, so while Canada may lack direct access to land close enough to the equator for a "good" orbital inclination like Russia they have friends that have useful sites on a seacoast so its easy for them to put anything they want in orbit on a ship for a cheap trip to a proper launch site. The Soviets, and later on the Russian nation, didn't have such a site or "friends in low places" so the best they had was a spot in Kazakhstan.
The politicians in the USA, Europe/ESA, Japan, and Canada had a choice. They could include the Soviets/Russians in the ISS project or have the ISS useful as a spaceport for refueling/whatever for mission to the moon, Mars, and other planets in the solar system. They chose to include the Soviets/Russians.
To make the ISS useful as a refueling depot would take more than boosting it to a higher orbit. It would require shifting the inclination of that orbit closer to the planetary plane. As I understand the issue it would cost less to build a whole new space station in this better orbit than it would in fuel to put a decades old, and largely obsolete and worn out, space station in a useful orbit.
In short, the ISS is old and obsolete, its becoming a maintenance nightmare and was never in an orbit useful as a refueling depot to explore beyond Earth orbit. It would be far less costly to drop the ISS in the sea and start over with a new station than to try to drag the old ISS into a useful orbit and bring up new gear to update its systems and replace what is worn out.
As I recall there is a private company that will use the ISS as a starting point for their own space station. They will ship up modules to the ISS that will temporarily be a part of the ISS, then when the ISS is retired it will detach to be an independent station and effectively take over much the same orbit and function of the ISS. Maybe this private company can take on some artifacts from the ISS for the sake of preserving history but the bulk of the station will still burn up in Earth's atmosphere with the reamins ending up in the sea.
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:4, Informative)
The only quibble that I have with your otherwise good analysis is that it wasn't the politicians who wanted to include the Russians, it was NASA itself when DC made it evident that they had no intention of funding the building of more Space Shuttles much less of allowing the creation of a replacement. They told Congress that either they fund a replacement for the SLS or the station was going to have to be manned with launches from Baikonur. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the plans for a replacement for Mir had been cancelled, so the Russian space agency jumped at the chance. American corporations, still under the illusion that they would soon be looting the country's vast natural resources, supported the choice of including Russia.
For my part, I'd prefer that it were boosted into a parking orbit and left as a museum, an artifact for future generations to view the way we today look at log cabins.
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Also with the USSR dissolving, their space program was being defunded. Meaning there would be unemployed missile experts (civilian rockets are extra-reliable non-explody missiles). So the ISS program could save some money, keep those experts employed in a civilian job, improve relations with an unstable nation with an itchy nuclear trigger finger. The single-use Russian launchers were much cheaper than the "reusable" shuttles. Overall there were a lot of reasons for the ISS.
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The orbit of the ISS was such that using the station as a refuel depot cost more in fuel than just going to the moon (or maybe Mars) directly.
Regardless of the orbit, you still have to expend the fuel required to get that fuel to orbit. There's no such thing as a free lunch. The mass has to get up there somehow. I mean yeah, you save weight on the fuel tank itself, and larger fuel tanks weigh less per unit volume, but compared with the mass of the fuel itself, I can't imagine you saving enough energy by carrying it in vast quantities to an orbital depot over just bringing the extra fuel with you at launch time to be worth the hassle.
Better use
Re:Why not boost it? (Score:4, Informative)
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That will be expensive. Like, 4 or 5 starships would need to attach to it and boost it. Much rather use that money building a lunar base.
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Why not boost it up to a higher orbit, if only to use as raw materials for a Starship-refueling depot ?
Because no part of the ISS was designed as a Starship-refueling depot, if such a thing even made sense.
There are two things that drive the cost of stuff in orbit -- the cost of the launcher plus ground operations, and the cost of the space-flight qualified hardware that is launched. I didn't mention "fuel" or "energy" cost because it is round-off error (less than 1%) the cost of either of those two things. With reductions in launch costs from reusable boosters, and routine ground operations the cost of putt
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We also have museums, and preserve log cabins and castles.
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If you push it to a higher parking orbit you're not dropping anything on populated areas.
Damn, ACs are getting dumber by the year.
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How about canceling the utterly useless F-22 and using some small portion of that money? Or the even less useful multi-trillion dollar "upgrade" and expansion of the nuclear arsenal? What about stopping the almost unknown multi-billion dollar subsidies to the fossil fuel industry? Or stop subsidizing the already highly prosperous ADM and Monsanto? (I'm pretending that the money actually has to come from somewhere, rather than just being created out of thin air.) Does the Pentagram really need more mone
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That or the ISS is well past its prime and in need of de-orbiting. It can be replaced by something better.
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Be honest, do you really think that's a possibility when all the purse strings in the US are held by politicians and generals?
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Yes. Easily. How do you think the first one got built? There will be another.
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... he says, completely ignoring how Skylab and the ISS managed to end up in orbit to begin with.
Re: We lost our hope for a better future (Score:2)
By the time this even happens, starship will be a thing, and it's expected to have slightly more habitable volume than the ISS. And on top of it all, it can land, and even take off again.
In other words, the ISS won't just be technologically obsoleted, by then it will have been outclassed in every way by...rockets. More than that, starship would enable the construction of a much larger space station at a fraction of the launch cost of the ISS.
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Oh shit, for the first time in human history the idea of wiping out your neighbors to the last is now globally considered a bad thing and that's only come about in the last 80 years. We are so doomed now that humanity is kinder and gently to each other than ever! /s
Where do you kids get the idea that everything is so dark and getting worse? Read a history book from literally any time or place before ww2 if you want to understand how literally 99% of humanity has treated each other.
Genocide, slavery, expan
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Huh? Deorbiting the ISS will allow us to build Lunar Gateway and a base on the moon. We are launching more mass into space than ever before.
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Will allow? Are you under the impression that the ISS is somehow in the way and can't be moved? The only way that the ISS impedes rather than aids the construction of the Lunar Gateway is if you mistakenly believe that the funding for the former is going to be redirected to latter, as though it's some sort of dedicated revenue stream. Government project don't work that way (and very few corporate ones do).
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What, is the ISS in the way or something? Seems like we launch all kinds of shit right past it all the time, just by making sure the ISS is on the other side of the planet when we launch stuff that may even remotely be in danger of an intersecting orbit.
Why is dropping a really big thing we spent the last 30 years building down the gravity well into an ocean a prerequisite for any of what you mention?
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They've already upgraded the solar panels and batteries, most recently in 2021. They did it leaving the original hardware still intact, wired in, and functioning, so the original 14% efficiency panels are still in place and functioning at (IIRC) about 80% of their manufactured rate.
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And they absolutely cannot ever be serviced or replaced, because that would be impossible.
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It seems that as a global society we lost our dream of a better future, an optimistic outlook that things will get better and humanity will progress futher by working together and solving our global problems, including a vision of Space Exploration that was mirrored in Sci-Fi books and series (like Star Trek etc.) - and it has been replaced by an inward look, focusig on the ecological destruction of our planet, a bleak future dominated by capitalistic, autocratic societies overexploiting our natural resources, and no or little hope of a better future..
But the tech you dreamed of back then does exist today, better and sooner than anyone back then imagined it would be, and SpaceX specifically is responsible for a large part of it. It will be exploited by people with the same mentality as once piled into ships setting forth from Cork and Genoa for a new world. You, on the other hand, are one of the "Europeans" shaking your fist at them from onshore.
Re:We lost our hope for a better future (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a messaging problem. We've cut acid rain and smog by an order of magnitude, made huge progress fixing the hole in the ozone layer, creeks you couldn't eat the fish from near me growing up are now drinkable (with filtration for cysts), and we're at 7 decades of nearly linear increase in life expectancy, The problem is that talking about that doesn't drive clicks, eyeballs, or donations so you're not going to hear about it unless you go looking for it.
I don't think people realize how much doom and gloom we've fed the last few generations. By and large they genuinely and unquestionably believe that the planet and everyone on it is doomed. That's a huge problem; People with no hope have nothing to live for
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
What could possibly go wrong?
I don't know but a guess would be the station goes off it's target to land in some remote part of the sea and as the station breaks up on entering the atmosphere the toilet seat ends up hitting and killing a young woman that's a college drop out on her lunch break from a temp job that she hates.
That's what could go wrong.
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Skylab? Overall, Skylab was a success, but the pieces of it landing over Australia was something that could have gone bad quickly.
What would be interesting is a way to not just de-orbit stuff, but actually be able to disassemble the ISS into component parts and get them back to earth in one piece. However, reentries are expensive and require a lot of shielding (SpaceX has gone with two layers of shielding -- normal shielding over ablative shielding as of this past week.), so this may not be a usable idea.
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What would be interesting is a way to not just de-orbit stuff, but actually be able to disassemble the ISS into component parts and get them back to earth in one piece.
That's what I thought SpaceX might attempt when I first read the title, oh well...
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What would be interesting is a way to not just de-orbit stuff, but actually be able to disassemble the ISS into component parts and get them back to earth in one piece. However, reentries are expensive and require a lot of shielding (SpaceX has gone with two layers of shielding -- normal shielding over ablative shielding as of this past week.), so this may not be a usable idea.
I would rather seal the ISS up and nudge it into some high decay-proof orbit. Years from now, it could become the centerpiece of a space Smithsonian.
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Smell the farts of our ancestors.
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What could possibly go wrong?
You are confusing the companies, this isn't Boeing. /s
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Make a small model of it, stick it in a museum along with a full size piece of a door or something and call it a day. I'd rather limited funds be spent going forward not looking back.
It has served its purpose. Let's go on.
I didn't keep a piece of my first car, first house, first girl I fucked, or first anything else. What for? Eyes forward.
Re:Preserve a peice of history (Score:4, Interesting)
An ion engine could be attached and left running for a couple of years to push it into a safe parking orbit, once a regular rocket had pushed it far enough out of the atmospheric drag. That alone would be an interesting experiment.
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It is very expensive to boost the ISS significantly. You could leave it and it'll come down on its own due to drag (there's still a tiny amount of air at its altitude). You need to spend more to try and control that deorbit so the debris field does not overlap where people will care.
But yes, if it is at all affordable it should be boosted to a stable high Earth orbit as a permanent museum piece. Test out some ion engines and let them take years to get the job done. Whatever.
However, I strongly suspect t