How NASA plans to destroy the International Space Station, and the dangers involved:
NASA has announced plans for the International Space Station (ISS) to be officially decommissioned in 2031. After dozens of launches since 1998 got the station up and into orbit, bringing it down will be a feat of its own—the risks are serious if things go wrong.
NASA's plans for the decommissioning operation will culminate in a fiery plunge into the middle of the Pacific Ocean—a location called Point Nemo, also known as the "spacecraft graveyard," the furthest point from all civilisation.
Finding Point Nemo will be the final stop in a complex and multi-staged mission to transition the operations of the ISS to new commercial space stations, and to bring the remaining structure safely down to Earth.
Originally commissioned for a 15-year lifespan, the ISS is outliving all expectations. It has already been in operation for 21 years, and NASA has given the go-ahead for one more decade, thereby doubling its total planned time in orbit.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @08:37AM (7 children)
Just privatise it!
By the time the new neoliberal owners are done cutting costs and syphoning assets, the whole station will plummet within 20 years max
The only risk is the space entrepreneurs coming back looking for a public bailout as the vessel tumbles towards reentry
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:42AM (4 children)
That was kind of the plan but I guess it's dead in favor of creating new replacements in low Earth orbit. With the exception of Axiom Space, which will connect modules to the ISS temporarily before using them to form a new station.
We could have the Lunar Gateway orbiting the Moon, unless that gets cancelled, and cheaper stations in LEO that take advantage of cheaper launch costs, decades of experience managing the ISS, inflatable modules, better solar panels, etc.
NASA reviews private space station proposals, expects to save over $1 billion annually after ISS retires [cnbc.com]
Supermold is on the list of reasons not to use ISS anymore.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Taxi Dudinous on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:26PM
First thing that I thought of when I read...
So Axiom is potentially going to introduce cultures to give the mold a head start on their station? NICE!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:49PM (2 children)
Hopefully the lunar gateway gets canceled. The ISS might not have had much use, but at least it didn't hurt anything. The lunar gateway only exists to make moon missions harder and worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:34PM (1 child)
The Lunar Gateway exists to give lunar landers a logistics hub, which is a good idea. SLS's shortcomings require it to be in a sub-optimal location, but taking it out of the critical path for the first mission is what put Dynetics' Alpaca lander overweight. The big question is if it can be moved to a better location after it's built.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:15PM
There is literally no benefit to having the lunar gateway except that it gives space contractors another giant expensive boondoggle to overcharge for.
It's such a terrible idea that it's hard to come up with analogies for. The closest I have is, imagine you want to fly from New York to Lisbon, except you have to go through customs in the Azores. It's like that, except much more so. Yeah, it's technically "on the way," but it actually really really isn't.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:07PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:27PM
The ISS has between five and ten years of life left due to old age. If privatizing it extended that by a decade I'd call it a win. (Hint: There is a reason nobody is offering to buy it)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 22 2022, @09:03AM (3 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jec6ZKuYgxU [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfdUi13sFZs [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Ingar on Tuesday February 22 2022, @10:37AM
You nuke ground-based targets from orbit,
not the other way around.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @01:24PM (1 child)
Actually the videos you linked to (in particular, the first one) explain why it would be a very bad idea to do so.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:45PM
It doesn't matter if it is a bad idea.
Imagine the thrill of getting to use a nuke! IN SPACE!
Nukes don't kill people. People kill people.
A good guy with a nuke will stop a bad guy with a nuke.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @09:51AM (3 children)
Half a dozen billionaires were able to take vacations there.
And also there have been great benefits to science and humanity as a whole. Uh, right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:54PM (1 child)
Just two pages quickly found with a simple web search:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/science_results.html [nasa.gov]
https://www.ibanet.org/scientific-research-iss-france [ibanet.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23 2022, @04:34AM
Does that report state which of those things could only be done in space? You should probably read Bob Park's testimony to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on the ISS [spaceref.com] and see how the science impact of the ISS is way overblown (ok, that's the nice word, but people don't like to say "they lie all the time about it"). The game behind a lot of these claims is that experiments carried out on the Shuttle or ISS do not lead to any significant breakthroughs, but they are either part of larger programs on the ground, or are similar to other experiments on the ground that do come up with advances, then they claim credit for them. The ISS wasn't going to be, was not, and will never be a platform for producing breakthrough science. Almost every scientific society in the world took great umbrage at NASA and its contractors using science as the primary reason for building it. And 21 years later they have been proven correct. I've always shared Park's objections. There are many reasons to argue building one (and probably many more arguing against it), but be honest about it and don't hold science up as the noble champion of the cause.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:54PM
ISS did do a lot of valuable work and it would have done a lot more if not for budget cuts to critical scientific modules [wikipedia.org] and being chronically understaffed due to the Shuttle's limitations, disasters, and retirement. It has only been since Commercial Crew started flying that they've had a full crew full time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @10:04AM (5 children)
For an object in space, they sure are looking for a strange location to get to a furthest point from all civilization.
I know it doesn't have the engines to go out in space, at this time. But that's quite a lot of useful materials that can be recycled for use elsewhere in the star system. Maybe a spacecraft graveyard is more suited on Mars / the moon / any other location we are interested in.
It wll not be simple or easy to get it there, but it's apparently already "not simple and easy" to let it fall down anyway. So I hope they consider it and would love to have an idea of what it would take to do that.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:33AM
It's only 250 miles up - about the distance from Chicago to St. Louis. Most of the time it's not really that far from civilization at all.
There's no real use for most of it, aside from existing as the ISS. The only parts that could maybe be reused are the solar panels, which are new.
(Score: 2, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:41AM (1 child)
In any case it won't deorbit at Point Nemo, due to a strange rounding error it'll be erroneously redirected to some obscure place no-one has ever heard of called Donetsk where it'll land on top of some mostly empty farmland that definitely doesn't have masses of Russian troops and tanks milling around in it. Terribly sorry about that, a miscalculation on our part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 23 2022, @12:59AM
It'll be a costly miscalculation.
When Skylab landed on Western Australia, NASA were sent a fine for littering by a Council Ranger.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:51PM
It's easy to get it out of orbit; just stop correcting its trajectory.
The hard part is deorbiting it in a controlled and safe manner so it doesn't possibly come down on a populated area.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Wednesday February 23 2022, @08:16AM
Yeah, not sure why they would want to destroy a billion dollar investment. Even if some parts become uninhabitable, it's still a place to install/protect equipment.
Let's say we crash this thing down, what now? Build skylab 3.0? Can't we just attach skylab 3.0 to ISS?
Not sure how people will travel through space when we cannot even keep a station going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @10:22AM
It was all a false flag so they could steal the toilets from the ISS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @11:33AM (2 children)
I'm old enough to remember Skylab. From Wikipedia, "It disintegrated in the atmosphere on July 11, 1979, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and Western Australia."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:55PM (1 child)
I remember that too.
I remember the news coverage too. Several interesting facts the news pointed out:
I wonder if the insurance company would then claim the space junk was now their property? That was not mentioned.
It was summer. I was starting college in the fall. The super modern (at that time) cash register I operated had 4K BASIC inside it according to the tech I quizzed during a service call.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @06:01PM
Why would they? If you get hit by a car, does the health insurance that covers your health cost then own the car that hit you?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:28PM
If they fly like they drive, it'll be a wreck in no time flat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @03:37PM (2 children)
I remember when the ISS was officially taken into service. One of the things was that someone said that from that point on there would always be a human in space. This gave me a nice feeling about human future in space exploration. yet, with this things taken out of service... I'm not sure about that any more.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @03:42PM
Always 1-15 humans in space doesn't matter. Hundreds, thousands, millions matter. Or was it trillions? [nbcnews.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:57PM
Once the ISS is out of service, the Chinese will have humans in space. So will the Indians. Maybe the Russians.
The US might, if private industry does it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.