Russia: 'We'll dump the ISS into the sea after 2020' The deputy director of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, says that the International Space Station will be knocked out of orbit and dumped into the sea after its mission is completed in 2020. "We will be forced to sink the ISS. We cannot leave it in orbit as it is a very complicated and a heavy object," Vitaly Davydov said a …
It's not like it can't be done. It'd be a great test for the ion thruster technology. If it were just crashed into the sea, that'd be an awful lot of mass that would have to be re-launched next time a group of countries want an orbital research base.
Where do you start?
The ISS is in an inclined orbit, geostationary requires one aligned with the equator. Changing inclination is a big job,
About half of the energy used to lift a kilo to geostationary orbit is used getting it into low orbit, the remainder is used in the transfer to the higher orbit. So take whatever energy its been to assemble the ISS and double it.
You'd then have to contend with the fact the ISS would lie outside the inner Van Allen Belt and would be exposed to more radiation and necessitate its crews being exposed to a healthy dose of whatever the Sun coughed up a few days ago.
And finally, we don't have any manned vessels that can get there.
...although there's one thing I remembered as I read your post, and that is that you'd also have to consider the acceleration stress placed on things like seals and joints between modules, and attachment points for the trusses. As I recall, when ISS is periodically reboosted, it's done with a docked Soyuz or Progress, berthed at the "end" and in line with the main axis, not off-center.
For a good idea of the push/pull and other stresses and oscillations which occur, go to NASA TV's YouTube site, and check out some of the footage shot from cameras mounted in workspaces aboard ISS, and watch how various wall-mounted items shake and shudder when the engines light for the reboost... and, mind you, that's from thrust applied properly along the "long" axis. Now imagine off-center thrust, or thrust vectoring when attempting to "steer" the station into a new orbit.
I thought that one reason the orbit was chosen was to minimise the amount of time spent in the earth's shadow. If it was geosynchronous, the batteries would run out while the station was still in darkness. Or it would need more batteries and solar panels to charge them.
There are other (more valid?) reasons here - http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=47771
Why would that be a good idea? We have no spacecraft capable of reaching it if we move it much further out, let alone GEO. The function of the onboard observational sensors would be badly compromised by the physics of the distance to intensity ratio and GEO is a prized and expensive place to put anything.
If you're going to move it about, and assuming the trusses can stand the strain of doing that (haven't done the sums), surely there are more useful destinations?
Keep it up there and reuse the parts or reuse the metals.
Not geosynchronous orbit, but a very orbit that will keep the ISS well away from other satellites for 30+ years.
Perhaps wrap it in parachute-like material to contain anything that falls off or is knocked off by micrometeorites.
Unfortunately one of the problems with the ISS is that human spaceflight technology is, right now, pretty much el sucko. Manned vehicles have just enough delta-V to reach a limited set of very low orbits. One of the reasons the ISS was built in such a low orbit was because it had to be reachable.
So while it's possible to boost its orbit --- it'd be expensive, but doable, involving a custom-built thruster module that gets launched on a heavylifter of some description, installed via spacewalks, and then very very slowly boosted over a period of years --- lift it more than a trivial amount and the ISS suddenly becomes useless as nobody can get to it any more.
My personal opinion is that the ISS is a fabulous, amazing structure and ditching it in the sea would be a travesty. I *do* think that such a thruster module should be built and installed. This would give the ISS the ability to do its own stationkeeping without having to rely on visiting tugs; and would also open up the possibility of, if the station *has* to be decommissioned, doing so by lifting it into a parking orbit rather than destroying it. After all, one day someone's going to want it as a museum.
We've never moved something as large as ISS with ion thrusters as main propulsion. As ISS isn't equipped to raise its orbit to GEO w/ anything, much less ion thrusters, it would have to have a rapid redesign and retrofit before that could happen. Then, when it got there, what would we do? No one has a way to get a man to GEO right now, much less a team of men. Equipping and maintaining it would become much more expensive. Whatever is aboard would be exposed to higher radiation levels than where it is now. All that for a station that probably hasn't gone a day in its life without equipment failures, even when it was new. What do you hope to get out of doing this?
I'm interested in Space travel and exploration, but i'm also a Sci-Fi fan so maybe this idea is too basic.
We have no MANNED space craft, why don't we send lots of Honda ASIMO's (or similar automated devices) up there programmed to keep it maintained and operating?
One of my other ideas was, why couldn't we start to use the ISS or similar, as a Space-Dock, like in StarTrek, where they research, design and build space-craft that cannot be built on Earth...
(I did say i was a Sci-Fi fan :o) )
Serious question, what would it take to put an object in space in a parallel lunar orbit and maintain it in that position?
Never mind GEO and all people coming up with reasons why it cant be done - If it has to be kicked out of orbit one day I'm all for attaching a big rocket to it with an exhaust like my icon and cruising off to Mars. The ISS has plenty of space to fill with cargo for a Mars mission. Mars orbit is currently a lot less full of junk than Earth so it wont be in anyones' way there where it can continue its mission as a manned space station and also serve as a transit hub between subsequent interplanetary ships and landing shuttles.
So we scrap the moon project, we scrap the shuttle, we now going to scrap the ISS, (with no means of replacing it) Am i detecting a pattern here?
I know this planets screwed in terms of money, largely due to selfishness and greed but really, shouldnt getting off this rock and exploiting the Solar system around us be a priority, who knows what we will find out there
I know this bloke is just going off on one but the very idea of scrapping the ISS makes no sense to me at all, especially if we can keep adding to it and perhaps use it as some kind of stepping stone to other areas around us.
The US scrapped the moon project because it was never allocated any actual funding to begin with.
At this point, the shuttle is 30- to 40-year-old technology (depending on which parts you look at). The shuttle project can well and truly be said to be well past its prime. So I would say that we finished that project, rather than scrapping it.
The US is not currently planning to scrap the ISS now or in 2020 (re-read the article -- NASA is considering using it through 2028.) Even by 2020, the ISS would be 22 years old. Again, that's an admirable lifespan. (In comparison, my car is only ten years old (and I drive it about 60% as much as the average US driver) and it right now requires maintenance equivalent to over 10% of its original purchase price.)
Technology breaks down. Pioneering technology in harsh environments often breaks down quicker. So the space shuttle and the ISS (and the Mars rovers and Hubble) have actually lasted surprisingly long.
Having said that, the disturbing fact that I think we both agree on is not that these projects are ending, but that there appears to be no cohesive plan to replace them with even equivalent, let alone better, projects.
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Especially considering it was the bloody ISS that drained the funding needed to keep the Hubble Space Telescope in operation.
I don't understand why people are so down on he shuttle for its loss of design vision and consequent cost overruns, but so up about the ISS which has been an expensive boondoggle from day one, compromised to the point it barely fulfills any of its stated design goals.
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision." - Randall Munroe
http://xkcd.com/893/
but the Space Shuttle as a tender to the ISS was a failed vision that should have been scrapped before it's inception or just after Challenger.
Then the money could have been spent on real research and space ventures rather than a glorified cross city transporter with it's destination a shabby caravan park in the sky.
The de-orbit should at least be spectacular
From what I can tell, ISS was never designed to be permanent, despite what some politicians have stated. It was designed to be assembled in orbit for use as a test-bed. It is large, complex and expensive to maintain, for very little benefit. The few experiments that run on it are of trivial significance. It was a proof-of-concept that did not pan out.
I'm hoping we get a lot of use out of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. That looks to me like the only piece of equipment that might at all justify this whole fiasco.
.....pproximately 70% of this planet remains unexplored. There could be plenty of stuff under the oceans we could try and use, so I think we should explore that as a greater priority (perhaps a twin track approach). Whilst it is an equally difficult environment, if we do find anything, the long term logistics could be a lot easier.
They wasted no time at all stripping the remaining shuttles to be sent to museums.... making damn sure we can't do anything about it in time.
I truly hate the current administration over this - we are better than this damnit!
arrrgh.
I still have the 'feel good' letter from GB1 from back in 1990 after complaining back then we were not doing enough to get the eff off this rock.... short-sighted bastards.
An accountant knows that if I have a £5 its still just £5.
Its the politicians and economists who say that if you give it to a bank its really £500 and when you ask them where the £5 went hold a gun to your head for the other £495 they've pissed up the wall 'for the good of their imaginary economy' that are the problem
Yes, that's true. Also at the time, Russia said that they might consider disconnecting some of their modules (at least the newer ones), and keeping them up there and adding to them for a new "MIR".
There was orignially a plan that the last (6th? I'm a bit out of that loop now) ATV would be used to de-boost the ISS. The Russian plan to keep their modules in orbit threw a spanner in the works, because the ATV docks to the Russian docking ports, and if there are none of them left, the ATV wouldn't fit!
Now that the station life has been extended, who knows? I wonder if this comment is to make sure that the US starts thinking about extended funding quickly; otherwise congress would still be arguing over an extension 5 years after the ISS had already crashed into the ocean :)
The ISS is only about 360km above sea level. GEO is about 36,000 km. 100x higher. That's a lot of energy. Without fuel the ISS drops over 20km per year.
The ISS is not big enough or robust enough or high enough orbit to be a "staging post". It's barely more than a toy. The money would be better spent on Space exploration Robotics.
Of course the ISS is doomed to be plunged into the sea. Actually most of it will burn up in the atmosphere. The only argument is when. It's expensive to keep refuelling (even with Ion Drive propellent) and maintain.
Most of the advances have been in robotic and automated space exploration. Apollo, Mir and now ISS are really dead ends technologically.
As was the Shuttle.
In termsof energy, getting fom low orbit to geo is nothing compared to getting to low orbit. Go look at a the old Saturn rockets they used for the moon launch. Over two thirds of that enormous rocket was used for getting into orbit low orbit, the rest was used for getting all the way to the moon. Getting to GEO equivalent from where the ISS is now would need almost nothing compared to that.
Not that simple. Yes, 2/3 was used to get to low orbit. More specifically, to get the huge launcher to get to the moon into low orbit. They didn't stop for fuel in low orbit, they had to bring it all up in one go.
Look at the Atlas that shot John Glenn into orbit. That's a dinky toy compared to a Saturn V. (120.000 kg vs 3 million kg.) The Saturn V is as big as it is *because* it needs to go so much further out.
Would allow fuel stops or changeover to say an ion shuttle or tug. Boost supplies & crew up to transfer station and then on to GEO via something more efficient. If the station isn't designed to operate at GEO altitude or can't be maintained post 2020 then it may be better to start with ISS v2, but in current economic climes, I guess that won't happen.
I've looked at pictures. I never appreciated how truly, hugely, titanically, humungous the Saturn V was until I stood looking up into one of the nozzles at Cape Canaveral one day. I think I stopped looking at it about 15 minutes later. Just the nozzle mind you, the rest of the booster took far longer.
But then again, come 2020, keeping it in orbit _might_ look like wanting to keep the fridge-sized 3MHz machine in the basement.
Just because someone blew 100 billion USD of taxpayer money on it [though mainly on bureaucratic wallowing and political porking] doesn't mean keeping it up would be a good idea.
It's kinda like wars in Central Asia in that respect.
It's pretty important to preserve the occasional 3MHz machine - only move it out of the basement and into the tech museum. And keep it operational if possible.
I'd be nice to keep it aloft, if only so that in 500 years it's still there as a critical piece of human history. And yes, a part of that history is to acknowledge it was and will always be a white elephant - an incredibly important one.
Hell, why not sell it off to Bigelow for $1 for a space hotel.
Otherwise we may just have to send up a boarding party and use it as a base for raiding passing military satellites.
human civilisation will be deep into the final dark age that is now well on its way thanks to the resurgence of religion. By then, the entire West as well as the Middle East will be under sharia law, China will be an Orwellian oligarchy frozen in its development by the need to preserve its status quo, and the remaining christians will be packed into Latin America and on their way back to hunter-gatherer. So there's really no need to preserve the ISS as a museum, since by the time you're talking about, nobody will be able to visit it or even know what it was.
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