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Russia To Save Its ISS Modules
jamax writes "According to the BBC, 'Russia is making plans to detach and fly away its parts of the International Space Station when the time comes to de-orbit the rest of the outpost. ... To facilitate the plan, RKK Energia, the country's main ISS contractor, has already started developing a special node module for the Russian segment, which will double as the cornerstone of the future station. ... Unlike many Nasa and European space officials, Russian engineers are confident that even after two decades in orbit, their modules would be in good enough shape to form the basis of a new space station. "We flew on Mir for 15 years and accumulated colossal experience in extending the service life (of such a vehicle)," said a senior Russian official at RKK Energia...' Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires? There used to be a lot of equipment manufactured by various countries (Germany is the first one that comes to mind) that lasted virtually forever — old cars or weapons systems, but one rarely sees anything of the sort these days."
In college, I wrote a web browser. It was fully functional and supported everything that IE supported at that time. My professor was amazed. Not only because I was able to implement such a complicated thing in VB, but also in that I was able to do it over the weekend.
I got an A, but I never told anyone the secret. Now, years after I graduated, I can divulge my methods. Or, should I say *heh heh heh* Microsoft's methods. I simply reused Microsoft's IE COM component and wrapped it in a slick VB shell. Code reuse, not only at the code level, but at the binary level!
So in the real world, it also makes sense to reuse technology and existing parts rather than rebuild them from scratch. Especially so for space-based things that require huge investment per kilogram just to get them up there. And by reusing older parts, we can standardize on the interfaces and create Lego-like systems that can easily work together instead of needing custom parts every time.
The only thing I really worry about is all that Russian fungus.
http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_fungus_000727.html
The problem is that orbits aren't permanent. There are faint traces of atmosphere, micrometeor impacts, lentz/faraday deceleration (as an object travels through the Earth's magnetic field, electrical currents form in the metal components which produce a magnetic field that is in the opposite direction). Because of all of these effects, satellites, and the space station itself, all have station keeping rockets. These need to be refuelled every once in a while. So, it's not as if you could just leave the ISS unattended. It will come down.
Besides, why not leave it where it is? It's not like it's in the way or anything. Boosting it to a higher orbit will be an expensive undertaking, and will add to the cost of resupply missions.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
On a long enough scale, no, no orbits are permanent. However, if you get above 3-400 miles or so orbital lifetimes start heading up into centuries. Above a thousand miles of so, millenia.
He's talking about after the station is shut down.
Here is a better graph. At 800km up your orbit only lasts 200-300 years. You'd need another couple hundred kilometers before you get to the thousands of years realm.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!