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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.
'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, and those blasted Americans on-board periodically broadcast Vogon poetry,' said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov."
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It would take a large amount of energy for it to reach escape velocity.
It is in a harsh environment. It was not built to last forever. It needs periodic boosting to stay in orbit.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
exactly. uncontrolled deorbit leads to debris.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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.
Michael Bay's house perhaps? He could have his very own simulated cometary impact. I'm sure he'd approve of the pyrotechnics and flying dirt and debris when he is crushed. We wouldn't even have to move the thing, just leave the twisted metal and smoking craters as a monument to bad movies and their inevitable consequences.
The Space Station is in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and will fall to the Earth without its regular altitude boosts
Getting the Space Station in a Geo synchronous orbit, let alone deep space (that means outside of the solar system), is a totally different league in terms of needed energy to overcome the gravity well called Earth and mainly the Sun. I can't be bothered to do the calculations but the amount of energy needed for a massive object as the ISS will be staggering.
Also question is for what? Most of the ISS is build for local gravity experiments maintained by manned personel. It has communications optimized for a LEO, etcetera. It won't be able to do much which can't be done by much cheaper ways with a new space probe.
It's like saying you can reach your local California supermarket with your bike, so hey you should be able to go to Hawaii with it as well!
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
The idea is that eventaully we will want a station in Geo synchronous orbit and that its cheaper to move this station from LEO to GSO than luanching parts up from earth. Not sure if this is true though. You would still have to launch the fuel up from Earth.
You'd also have to launch up a full machine shop and foundry, as none of the parts will work at geo. Not the comm systems, not the non-existent radiation shielding, not the cooling system, not... uh... pretty much everything but the cheap light empty shell, where nothing new will fit anyway.
Oh and the solar panels are probably only radiation rated for LEO not GEO which is a bit harsher; or maybe they are hardened to GEO levels.
Its kind of like taking the wright flyer and turning it into a B-17 by replacing all the parts one at a time.. it would be a heck of a lot easier and cheaper just to build the B-17 outright. Even the times in my example are about right, a bit more than 30 years separates each design.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
*A* Dragon? More like several thousand Dragons. The ISS is big and heavy and will take an enormous amount of energy both to put into a translunar trajectory and then to brake in into lunar orbit.
Um, no. While an object in motion tends to stay in motion - it only does so until subjected to an opposing force. In this case, that opposing force is Earth's gravity, and all a "little propellant" buys you is a slightly higher orbit.
But obtaining the required energy to put it on a translunar trajectory is just the beginning of your problems. Once it gets high enough, it'll encounter the high radiation of the Van Allen belts - and since it's electronics are not shielded against that radiation (being built for the far lower levels of LEO), they'll be fried if they spend more than a few hours there.
Oh, and did I mention that the ISS isn't structurally strong enough to take the thrust needed to ensure a quick passage of the Belt?
Nor does the fun stop there! The ISS' thermal control systems are based around having a nice warm Earth filling almost half it's "sky". They won't be able to handle the load of being in a translunar trajectory or in lunar orbit.
Not to mention stopping in Lunar orbit on your way to or from other destinations is like driving from Atlanta to LA via Seattle. Sure, you can do it if you want to... But it eats a lot of fuel getting into and out of Lunar orbit for no particular gain. On top of that, ensuring the Moon is in the right position for arrival or departure places huge constraints on when you can do so. I haven't worked it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if an Earth/Moon/Mars trajectory window only opened every ten or twelve years - as opposed to the every nineteen months or so for Earth/Mars trajectories.
Speaking as someone who both is and works with people doing robotic exploration of the solar system, most of us did NOT get into this because it was our dream to keep making better robots to put into space forever and ever. And I can also assure you it isn't for the rock star salaries, either. Without something to inspire the kids of today, it's going to be harder to find people tomorrow to build and pilot rovers, orbiters, and landers. Yes, I just said it. A good chunk of the purpose of manned spaceflight is PR. That shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention, though.
I agree that we shouldn't ignore remote and robotic systems. They are extraordinarily useful. But they are very limited. My boss is a planetary geologist and a member of the Mars Exploration Rover team, and when the nominal 90 day mission ended, I asked him how long the work we did with each rover would take a competent human geologist to do. He replied, "a hard afternoon's worth of effort."
We shouldn't send people up just for the sake of sending people up; I agree with that too. There needs to be a plan, but I think even more importantly, there needs to be a vision. In the long run, though, we will need both manned and unmanned missions to really improve our understanding.
Establishing a perminnant presence in space is not a reasonable goal at this time. It would cost too much, and it would not be sustainable as a result.
Excuse me for being cynical here, but I do remember the fact that when the ISS was first started but before astronauts started to inhabit the thing, that it was officially proclaimed by various press releases by both Russia and NASA as "the first permanent space station and outpost of humanity". I suppose that "mission" was lost when the "Space Station Alpha" moniker was lost too.
Yes, I know that changed over the years, but I do wish those guys would have been more honest about the issue back then. In theory it could still be a permanent outpost as it was built in a modular fashion, and more to the point it was proclaimed as being so huge that it could never be sent back to the Earth like Skylab and Mir (as well as the several Almaz stations) all had been. The ISS was supposed to be something different. I really would like to know when that changed.