Posted on 08/12/2021 3:35:52 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA is trying to figure out how to dispose of the International Space Station, in the eventual — and fiery — conclusion to decades of invaluable research in microgravity...
Nobody knows precisely when exactly the aging orbital outpost’s end will come. A NASA safety panel did approve a plan back in 2019, according NASASpaceflight, to have at least two Russian-made Progress spacecraft drag the 450-ton structure into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will turn into a giant flaming ball of molten metal and other materials.
NASA and its international partners have yet to fully commit to a specific plan.
“NASA is continuing to work with its international partners to ensure a safe deorbit plan of the station and is considering a number of options,” NASA spokeswoman Leah Cheshier told UPI, noting that such the station’s death is “negotiation-sensitive at this time.”
(Excerpt) Read more at futurism.com ...
Send it to Mars or Venus. Let it crash there. What’s so hard to figure out?
Unionize the help
Give the job to Elon Musk. He’ll deorbit the old one, put up a new one, and do it for less money than NASA would ask for to just deorbit the old one.
Send Biden, Harris, Pelousy, Schumer, & the Squat up there. THEN destroy it from space; it’s the only way to be sure.
Let Trump’s Space Force use it for target practice with space weapons.
Why don’t just stop shooting so much junk into orbit?
All good things must come to an end but we are dumb if we don’t have the replacement already in space before we drop theISS from orbit. We effed up without having a Shuttle program replacement for orbital transport, repair, and recovery and we should not let the Chinese have the only operational space station.
Have Elon tow it to the Moon with a few Space x rockets.
Why not stack it with even more sensors, cameras, and a solar sail for power, then send it off into the Solar System and beyond...
Let it work as long as it can work.
Brilliant!
5.56mm
Ok class the problem for today is to solve the rocket equation for moving a 450 tonne mass from deep in earth’s gravity well to a C3 escape velocity or 11,000 meters per second then the Delta V for the H transfer orbit to Mars it’s easier to go up out the Sun’s gravity well than down into it seems counter intuitive but it’s true.
Hint that much mass to Mars is more than the current lifting capacity of the largest rockets even the 150 tonne Elon starship would take dozens of fuel trips to orbit just to bring the fuel needed.
Or you could just slow it down by 100 mps and let it burn up.
I would have thought the world would be much more futuristic than this: letting stuff in space fly to earth as space trash as opposed to establishing broad horizons and frontiers.
The ISS is modular. You should be able to remove old modules and add new ones.
“Send it to Mars or Venus. Let it crash there. What’s so hard to figure out?”
Exactly how do you propose they get it there?
WHY?
“We effed up without having a Shuttle program.”
True. When aberrant, democratic leaders cancelled the Shuttle program, thousands of jobs were lost in So Cal. The Shuttle was and still is the best machine ever built.
Deorbit. Quite a display.
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