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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 04 2020, @02:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-goes-up-must-go-down dept.

Expanding, And Eventually Replacing, The International Space Station:

Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), humanity has managed to maintain an uninterrupted foothold in low Earth orbit for just shy of 20 years. There are people reading these words who have had the ISS orbiting overhead for their entire lives, the first generation born into a truly spacefaring civilization.

But as the saying goes, what goes up must eventually come down. The ISS is at too low of an altitude to remain in orbit indefinitely, and core modules of the structure are already operating years beyond their original design lifetimes. As difficult a decision as it might be for the countries involved, in the not too distant future the $150 billion orbiting outpost will have to be abandoned.

Naturally there's some debate as to how far off that day is. NASA officially plans to support the Station until at least 2024, and an extension to 2028 or 2030 is considered very likely. Political tensions have made it difficult to get a similar commitment out of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, but its expected they'll continue crewing and maintaining their segment as long as NASA does the same. Afterwards, it's possible Roscosmos will attempt to salvage some of their modules from the ISS so they can be used on a future station.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 04 2020, @07:30PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 04 2020, @07:30PM (#966647) Journal

    Starship will be capable of doing it, especially if ISS is hanging around up there until 2028-2032.

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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 04 2020, @09:09PM (3 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday March 04 2020, @09:09PM (#966693)

    Starship can land, but can it do it with a large payload?

    And, anyhow, it would take dozens of launches to get all the big modules back. It would cost billions and billions of dollars to do it, and no scientific benefit.

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    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday March 04 2020, @10:07PM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday March 04 2020, @10:07PM (#966718) Homepage

      We should ignite it on fire with Oxygen and then fire its thrusters to move it out of orbit, viking funeral style.

      • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday March 05 2020, @03:47PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday March 05 2020, @03:47PM (#966960)

        That is the best way to make sure it ends up in the Spacecraft Cemetery [wikipedia.org].

        Maybe set explosives on it to make sure it breaks up into lots of pieces, making it both look more spectacular, and making sure more of it burns up on the way down.

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 04 2020, @10:24PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 04 2020, @10:24PM (#966723) Journal

      The plan is for Starship to land with up to 50 tons. Launch cost of a Starship could be as low as $2 million. Not all of the modules would need to come back, since the Russians wanted to start a new station with theirs, for example. Total cost would be well under $1 billion.

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