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Space Station To Be Deorbited After 2020
astroengine writes "Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, the space agency said on Wednesday. 'After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish,' said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov."
It was my understanding that the ISS *can't* maintain its orbit without periodic boosts (I could be mistaken there). So since when it leaving it as "space junk" even an option? If you stop maintaining it, it's going to deorbit one way or another. It's really only a question of whether or not it's a *controlled* deorbit.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Get yourself a toy boat and some fireworks. Float the boat in some body of water. Now use the firecrackers to get it to move.
Its not that easy to use a bomb as a propulsion device.
ISS doesn't deserve a romantic end. Bring it back down so that we can piss on it. It was a money sink that did very little of anything valuable, and robbed funds from other far more deserving projects. I'm not even one of those "We shouldn't have manned exploration!" people, but seeing this thing still receive funding while the James Webb Telescope is about to have funding dropped just makes me want to puke.
If we really had wanted to move forward, we should have set-out to create a permanent presence on the moon, not in LEO.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
With all the effort that has gone into building it up, it would be a shame not to get a much longer lifetime out of it. We've given many power plants life extensions, why not this? Is there some bigger threat from extending the life of the space station or is it just about money? I bet many around the world would be willing to make donations to keep it going. Learning how to produce things that last for extended periods and that approach or become self-sustaining, seems like an important mission in itself. Sure they've managed to recycle some pee, but what about things like producing food in space? Can the biomass be recycled efficiently enough to be self-sustaining. How well can plants and people do longer term with the elevated radiation? Much attention has been paid to locating frozen water on the moon (some was found in an always cold area), Mars maybe even an asteroid. A colony on the moon or elsewhere would have to cope with occasional things that might poke holes. Maybe we should be experts on coping with that.
They've got quite a bit of electrical power from the solar panels at the station. Couldn't there be enough energy for recycling and manufacturing of other (non-organic) goods? As time goes on, people of Earth will increasingly need to recycle more and more do it from sustainable energy sources. Maybe practice in space where supplies are little or limited is good practice? I doubt anyone will suggest that they grow corn for fuel...
The world needs things that excite young people to learn and become highly skilled scientists. If they rarely hear of activity in the space program, what will they get interested in?
I'm not sure if an interest in games and robots is a good combination... what usually happens in those games?
elitist != elite