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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."
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
*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.