Oh fun. Who is Elon going to just haphazardly drop the ISS on top of?
Serious answer- SpaceX is building the deorbit vehicle then turning it over to NASA, who will have full control over it.
Whales
Wales?!?
If my brother were still there, I’d say, “yes, please”.
Conventionally Point Nemo is the target.
IIRC Russia was talking about detaching their modules and using them to help bootstrap some new station. So I dunno if those will get brought down.
That being said, that was also when that rather pugnacious guy was running Roscosmos, and I dunno if doing a new space station is the top of Russia’s priority list for their limited budget.
kagis
kagis further
It looks like they canceled the idea of reusing the Russian ISS modules back in 2021. So I guess those are destined for SpaceX’s deorbit too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Piloted_Assembly_and_Experiment_Complex
The Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (Russian: Орбитальный Пилотируемый Сборочно-Экспериментальный Комплекс, Orbital’nyj Pilotirujemyj Sborochno-Eksperimental’nyj Kompleks;[1][2] ОПСЭК, OPSEK) was a 2009–2017 proposed third-generation Russian modular space station for low Earth orbit. The concept was to use OPSEK to assemble components of crewed interplanetary spacecraft destined for the Moon, Mars, and possibly Saturn. The returning crew could also recover on the station before landing on Earth. Thus, OPSEK could form part of a future network of stations supporting crewed exploration of the Solar System.
In early plans, the station was to consist initially of several modules from the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) of the International Space Station (ISS). However, after studying the feasibility of this, the head of Roscosmos stated in September 2017 the intention to continue working together on the ISS.[3] In April 2021, Roscosmos officials announced plans to exit from the ISS programme after 2024, stating concerns about the condition of its aging modules. The OPSEK concept had by then evolved into plans for the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), which would be built without modules from the ISS, and was anticipated to be launched starting in the mid-2020s.[4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orbital_Service_Station
The Russian Orbital Service Station (Russian: Российская орбитальная служебная станция, Rossiyskaya orbital’naya sluzhebnaya stantsiya) (ROSS, Russian: РОСС)[3] is a proposed Russian orbital space station scheduled to begin construction in 2027. Initially an evolution of the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (OPSEK) concept, ROSS developed into plans for a new standalone Russian space station built from scratch without modules from the Russian Orbital Segment of the ISS.[4]
I still dunno if they’re gonna get the money for a new space station. Like, deciding to have a war in Ukraine may have kind of killed off the viability of doing a new space station.
There’s no way Russia builds a new station. The timeline for them getting Nauka to orbit basically proves that it’s impossible. They’ve been trying to buddy up with China to visit theirs, though.
Keep in mind that “having a plan”, doesn’t say when that plan is to be executed.
If you asked me, every object launched into orbit, should have a safe de-orbit plan beforehand. Chances are, as more private entities get onboard launching space stations, there might be regulations put in place to require a de-orbit plan for the launch to get approved.
Getting a de-orbit plan for the ISS now, might be just a preemptive plan for when those regulations get enacted.
Agreed, though NASA is definitely planning to Deorbit the ISS, probably sometime after 2030.
They’re not trying to get ahead of some regulation, but want to stop having to spend so many resources on maintaining it, when they could be doing other things.
Honestly this seems like a way to back-door inject another $800 million into the failing starship program.
What other company or government could do this?
The space station’s orbit has been adjusted continuously over its lifetime initially by attaching a shuttle to it and doing a burn of the shuttle’s engines and later doing the same with progress modules.
My bet is the original expectation of the designers was to deorbit by attaching centaurs (or whatever) to the existing docking ports and rotate the beast to the right attitude for a deorbit burn.
NASA has more recently said they want the reentry to be as steep as possible to minimize the size of the debris field, and is using that to justify the development of a new specialized deorbit vehicle. No doubt SpaceX will declare that Starship is the proper vehicle for this, and then will plow the $800 million into the Starship program. The money they got for Artemus is already long gone and Starship has failed to demonstrate key components of the Artemus plan. Dear Moon has been cancelled so NASA and Artemus are the only customers they have left. NASA knows that without a cash injection Artemus is at risk.
One of Starship’s engines on the lowest setting would tear the station apart. Regardless of whether they make this based on Starship instead of something more reasonably sized like a Dragon or Falcon 2nd stage, it’ll still need either a new engine design or a big cluster of Dracos. It’ll be something custom.
Regarding their Artemis work- the payments are milestone based, so they get money as they pass milestones. Engine relights and ship to ship prop transfer are some of the next ones.
Regarding their other customers- the Starship manifest includes another moon cruise, several satellite launches, and a lot of Starlinks.
I was kind of hoping for Impulse Space, but they’re probably too unproven.
Maybe the countries who put it up there should have had a plan for taking it down? Or at least pay for it?
Their failure is a huge grift opportunity like this.
It is been a plan for a while in the USA to shift launches from government run to private run for over a decade. This is just an implementation of that strategy.
Longer - fifteen, closer to twenty years. It took this long for there to be one or two companies that they could be sure wouldn’t just cut and run (especially given how cutthroat the aerospace industry is).
They have had a plan for it, from the very beginning. Big-budget space projects like ISS don’t get anywhere without a wrap-up plan. ISS is in LEO, and its mass contraindicates moving it into a graveyard orbit. Conventionally, stuff in LEO gets de-orbited; same thing happened with Skylab in '79.
Wait, how is Starship failing? They successfully returned from re-entry and made a soft landing with both the booster and starship itself. Seems to me that it’s well on track?
Srsly, no-one going with the “it’s free real estate” meme.
Jokingly, but also really, seems a waste. I get they don’t want the overhead, but just boost it north, perhaps to a Lagrange, maybe just high orbit, but someone will come along to salvage eventually…
ETA: Also, one of the beauties of SpaceX is that Musk doesn’t muck with it (yet), working too well without him, unlike everything else he’s bollocksed up.
There is no Lagrange point “North”.
L1 is sunwards, L2 is counter-sunwards, L3 is on the other side of the Sun, L4 is Eastwards, and L5 is Westwards.
Going from LEO to L1/L2, requires a ∆v of 7.5km/s, which is comparable to the 9.4km/s ∆v required to go from Earth surface to LEO.
Meanwhile, the ISS keeps getting slowed down by Earth’s atmosphere, and it only takes a ∆v of 1km/s or less, to plunge it into denser atmosphere for reentry.
It makes me really sad that the space station is going to be destroyed since I always really liked it, but the sheer amount of fuel needed to move it to a stable position makes me (begrudgingly) understand why they’re going to do it…
Anyone able to put the deltaV into tons of fuel needed for this manoeuvre? Extra points if you can do the full thing of getting the fuel to the station.
It really is a shame though, its such an iconic structure. Would be nice if we could class it an the 8th wonder of the world but dont know enough about classification to know if it even could be.
I was just colloquially referring to away from Earth as North.
Ah… I didn’t catch on that. Nvm then.
Endless handouts for leeches. Denial of basic human needs for everybody else.
How is this a handout? They bid for a contract and won it vs competitors.
I’m hoping we get a source selection statement soon where they spell out why companies like Northrop and Blue didn’t win.
SpaceX’s track record for orbital insertion definitely had something to do with that. When last I knew, N-G didn’t have its own launch facilities (that might’ve changed in the last few years but I doubt it).
I brought up Northrop because I’m guessing they bid a Cygnus derived deorbit vehicle.
spacex should just schedule it to be launched into space; that ought to do it
If Twitter is any indication, he’ll do a great job destroying the space station.
