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 …

[mike panero]

One swift kick and the whole lot will crumble

Once more the free market can cock a snoot at Johnny Marxist as glorious NASA is replaced by my X

What is it my grandfather used to say "Those who believe in a free market must become its slaves"

[TheTick]

Re: One swift kick and the whole lot will crumble

"What is it my grandfather used to say "Those who believe in a free market must become its slaves""

Perhaps your grandfather should have read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" then.

I use the free market to get the things I want at affordable prices, and to sell myself to the highest bidder, or withhold my labour should I feel the need or want.

The only things in my life that I am a slave to are the missus and the state.

[Anonymous Coward]

May I be the first...

Perhaps our new ????? overlords are orchestrating an enforced stay at home policy?

[Stevie]

Bah!

I'll be interested to see whether the modules are still habitable in ten years time myself. For all the tears cried over MIR, and admitting it was a great achievement, it was clapped out and a danger to all on board by the time it was decommissioned.

In the real universe there are problems involved with only-just-tech societies keeping space habitats viable. Actors and politicians don't have a say when it comes to this, only technologists and astronauts/cosmonauts and, if they are good and keep very quiet, scientists.

Of course, it might be possible to convert much of the operation of the thing to telepresence.

But then: why bother. The point of space is to go there in person. Otherwise, why have it in the first place?

[Anton Ivanov]

Is it me being thick...

The bloody thing is modular. Even if some modules cannot pass 2020 that does not mean that you should dump the whole thing. You can deorbit bits and pieces and leave the viable ones in orbit as a basis of something to build upon

[John Sturdy]

Probably most efficient

It makes far more sense to keep replacing modules than to start a new collection of them -- it never again has to go through the stage of getting the first n new modules up there to get it habitable.

[Alan Firminger]

2020

Until another nation gets people into space and back, the Russians have their foot on everyone else's windpipe. Just like keeping Europe warm in winter.

[John Smith 19]

@Alan Firminger

"Until another nation gets people into space and back, the Russians have their foot on everyone else's windpipe. Just like keeping Europe warm in winter."

Well that will depend if Spacex can achieve 12 successful cargo deliveries to ISS *and* complete the crew rescue system on the budget NASA has given them

If so they estimate they will be ready to carry people by Oct 2013 or April 2014 at the latest.

That's a big *if* of course. Other options will be the crew rating of the Atlas V for Dragon, CST-100 or the NASA MPCV

The NASA SLS is looking at a first crewed flight for MPCV in 2021, given present NASA budget levels. Presumably by then a crew rates MPCV will exist for it to carry.

Of course Europe *could* upgrade its ATV design to human rating and add a heat shield to support down mass. Something like the ARD.

[LaeMing]

And the US will do exactly what...

...about anything happening above the atmosphere these days?

El-reg has a more ambitious space-launch plan than those has-beens these days!

[M7S]

Actually, that's a thought

X-prize it in some way, or we should see if Lester and Lewis can devise some means of taking it over.

For the common good of course.

[amanfromMars 1]

Drop Red and Blue Pills ..... for Purple Patches

"And the US will do exactly what......about anything happening above the atmosphere these days?

El-reg has a more ambitious space-launch plan than those has-beens these days!" .... LaeMing Posted Wednesday 27th July 2011 22:22 GMT in "Russia: 'We'll dump the ISS into the sea after 2020'"

Certainly there are those HyperRadioProActive readers who have more than just ambitious plans for Intelligent Space Systems and Stations, LaeMing, for Sublime Assets Programming is a Current Active Present Power Application in ITs Future Projects in HyperRadioProActive virtual Reality Ported Fields with Global Operating Device Zones ..... Surreal Areas with Real Anatomical Control of Massively Autonomous Anonymous AIgent Power Systems.

Oh, and before anyone jumps in with some bland flash nonsensical comment, please consider this scrap of information which is Crown Copyright apparently ..... "Although people will remain the focus of the information domain, whether perception or reality, the degree of control will fluctuate. Central to the effective manipulation and management of the cyber domain will be control of the technological development and the mental capacity to understand how best to use the derived data. The complex interactions between cyberspace and ICT will be tightly coupled and vulnerable to attack.This may lead to cascading failure and emergent behaviours requiring mitigation through resilient design or the graceful degradation of systems when under stress or attack.

There will be novel threats. Some actors will identify the cyber vulnerability of potential adversaries and recognise that exploiting such vulnerabilities in times of conflict is less expensive than conventional warfare, and more difficult to detect, attribute and prove. Conversely, the technological leap made by developing states, for example moving to

wireless networks, also renders them more vulnerable to cyber-attack than legacy fixed infrastructure. Examples of the use of cyber-technologies to influence strategic and tactical outcomes have been seen in Estonia and Georgia. Extensive ‘denial of service’ attacks contributed to both the military and economic pressures on the target government. While no state acknowledged itself as the perpetrator, such attacks as part of a unitary approach to conflict will become routine." ...... Hot Topic - Cyberspace ... http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/38651ACB-D9A9-4494-98AA-1C86433BB673/0/gst4_update9_Feb10.pdf

And the alien posit here on El Reg is that you/we are much further down the rabbit holes/consumed and controlled by the matrices highlighted in that pdf document, than has ever been thought possible and probable, and is now realised and virtualised .... or if you would prefer, in order to offer an element of perceived future control participation for oneself in such novel expert subject matters ...... being realised/being virtualised. The quite significant semantic difference in the two scenarios, though, matters not a jot in the bigger picture play, for what is, is, and such changes to deliver an artificial comfort to players, are merely derivatives that hedge and/or zeroday trade the future reality to server base legacy systems, and personal vanities, which have lost leading control of Present Future Reality Product and Program Placements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Geosync considered harmful

1) The ISS's current orbit is highly inclined, to allow it to be reached by the Russian launch facility. Moving that to a more equatorial orbit would take more delta-V.

2) Geosync is high enough that the earth's magnetosphere wouldn't provide enough shielding (as it does at the current ISS orbit). Thus, long-term (as in "more than a few days") habitation would be very hazardous to the health of the astronauts.

3) We currently don't have any launch vehicles that are both man rated and able to reach geosync.

[Keith T]

very high earth orbit or orbit around the sun.

We should be boosting things like the ISS and Hubble Space telescope into very high earth orbit or orbit around the sun.

That way in 20+ years they can either be used for parts, or brought back to earth museums, or used in orbital museums.

It is a shame that this stuff is being trashed.

[Stevie]

Bah!

Who didn't see this coming? Put all your eggs in one basket that someone else owns and it's only a matter of time before you wake up to no breakfast.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

surely it could avoid this fate

if a mega rich dynasty bought it before then? Or maybe it would take the combined wealth of the Tessier and Ashpool dynasties, perhaps?

[Rattus Rattus]

@Frumious Bandersnatch

I can't see the ISS being more than a broom cupboard in the Villa Straylight.

[oddie]

(L) neuromancer (L)

it's all in the title

[Pooua]

I'm Surprised You Are Surprised

Davydov's comments are nothing new. I first learned of this plan maybe 5 years ago, but I recall that we were going to get even less time. It left me aghast, because it meant that we would spend a decade putting ISS in orbit, then crash it into the ocean only 5 years later. So, now we get 10 years. I'm not real happy with it, but ISS isn't meant to be permanent.

[Rodrigo Valenzuela]

as Larry Niven said..

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

Larry Niven

There was another quote, which I can't remember nor found, it went something like: " the universe is filled with the remains of civilizations that made the logical, economical decision of not going into space... discovered by those who made the insane one."

But as I said, can't remember who said it.

R

[Bounty]

VASIMIR in 2014

According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

The station boosting costs should be down to ten million a year or something? That's damn cheap. I'd bet the Chinese or private corps would foot that just to have a destination for their work. Or a lot of other groups for that matter.

I'd like to see the ISS stay (and upgraded) since it provides so much life support systems research for us. Basically they should revise it's recycling systems until eventually you don't need as many re-supply missions, other than fuel for VASIMIR. Once you get that down, you can throw some (magnetic) shielding on, and go colonize.

[Eddy Ito]

See icon

""knowledgeable government sources and NASA spokesmen were aghast" at Davydov's suggestion that the ISS would meet the same fate as Russia's Mir space station, which was de-orbited and sent into the sea near Christmas Island in 2000."

Aghast at what; the thought of dumping it into the sea or that someone actually said it out loud? In reality it's never been a question about dumping it into the sea, it's only about when. Hopefully we can actually finish building the damn thing before they scrap it. Unless all this money was spent to find out _if_ we could build an ISS. Actually that does sound more like the typical gubbermint project that way: allocate vast sums of money, build something grand, pat self on back for building it, walk away, look for new very expensive project while letting the last one crumble to ash, wash hands, repeat.

Now then, cocktails are in order. Yes if only to suppress my building anger and frustration at these fu^Hickle political boobs.

[JohnG]

cargo shipments

There are also the ATVs - they can haul supplies and give the ISS a shove back to the correct height.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars?

It would be great if they could afford to put it in orbit around Mars. It would be much more useful there as a base for remote exploration of the surface, without the crippling communication time delay. Getting astronauts to and from an orbiting space station would be much cheaper and safer than returning them from the surface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars?

Launch it to Mars? With what, dilithium crystals?

Even if you could get the ISS out of LEO (which you can't), how do you propose to put it into orbit around Mars?

[Stuart Duel]

Cost of stupidity

Whatever the cost of periodically stabilising the orbit, surely it has to be an order of magnitude cheaper than building a new space station of that size from scratch and putting that in orbit? Far from having money to burn, the various space exploration outfits currently need to pinch pennies until they bleed.

Aside from that, the ISS is massive. How could you possibly have any guarantee of control over how it breaks up and where all those big chunks will splash down - or crash land.

I can just see it now:

"Authorities have ordered the immediate evacuation of the Australian city of Perth and the South African city of Cape Town after the controlled re-entry of the ISS went awry.

"We're not exactly sure how many cities are at risk, at least two for sure, but we're currently tracking a half dozen pieces of the ISS which unfortunately have not followed their intended course and pose a major threat if they crash into population centres", stated NASA.

"We've scrambled fighter jets to intercept the debris, but we can't be sure we'll be able to destroy it before it hits the city. It's simply outrageous that they could have allowed this to happen at all - what were they thinking?", the Australian Defence Minister said. The minister refused to comment on whether the Australian Government would demand compensation from the United States and other ISS partners for any deaths and damage.

Won't happen, can't happen? It almost did once before - remember what happened to Skylab.

[Annihilator]

@Stuart Duel

"the ISS is massive"

Compared to you perhaps, but compared to the planet it's a blip.

"remember what happened to Skylab"

Skylab was an uncontrolled re-entry (a "natural orbital decay with random reentry") - a more comparable event is the Mir de-orbit which was planned and used an RCS burn to do it, much like they're eventually planning with the ISS. They can aim at a patch of ocean roughly 1500km x 100 km with an RCS burn. Pretty much the same as any Soyuz landing. The break-up doesn't really change the physics much.

[Adrian Esdaile]

@ "the shuttle is 30- to 40-year-old technology "

Yeah, so?

I think the Soyuz is older by about 5 years or so, and it seems pretty reliable!

Also, 747s in fact 95% of airliners are 30-40 year old tech, heck so is your car for that matter. I still see my first car - a 1980 Datsun Sunny - kicking around, and it is still going strong. Uses less petrol than a modern SUV too, and hasn't required significant production of metals or plastics over that time as well!

'Its old' is NOT a valid reason for throwing something away!

[Dave Bell]

The design is not the object

OK, some of those airliners flying are very old. And they get detailed inspections and thorough maintenance. Soyuz (and its launcher) are built new for each flight.

The ISS is rather more difficult to check and maintain. As it gets older, the crew will be spending more and more time on just keeping it running.

"It's old and can't be fixed" is inevitable, and then you de-orbit the ISS.

Whether it's the politicians refusing the money, or just the pointlessness of flying astronaut-plumbers, the ISS project will end.

[Anonymous Coward]

re:

Odd comparison that Datsun - modern SUV comment. My 4th century mud hut uses less electricity than my modern barn conversion, AND still has functional walls and a roof... but that's hardly relevant....

Is there not any scientific / engineering study into the viability of running past 2016? Safety first :)

[James Hughes 1]

Ahh, but...

The shuttle is 30 year old, very complicated technology, which can be easily replaced by much cheaper modern technology for the task of supplying the space station.

e.g. SpaceX's Dragon.

Cost of one year of shuttle flights, $4B (maintenance, ground infrastuctuure, flights), cost of 12 Dragon flight's $1.6B

Now the shuttle can carry a lot more cargo than the dragon, but if full capacity is used on the dragon, its about $10k/lb vs Shuttle $21k/lb.

So NASA save $4 billion A YEAR. but spend $1.6B over multiple years as a replacement.

Bargain.

[Stevie]

Bah!

Are we adding in the cost of recovering the crew re-entry vessel in that?

I seem to recall that in previous versions of this idea large portions of the Navy were required to get the crew back home.

The Shuttle had one massive advantage - it could bring the crew back to the place they were expected without the need for an aircraft carrier, escorts, Sea King helicopters, divers, pilots, reconnaissance aircraft etc, and wasn't as scuppered by typhoons, hurricanes etc as the other option was.

Easier to land the Shuttle somewhere other than planned and transfer it later than move a fleet of ships to a different ocean.

No doubt this has been factored in, and not conveniently left off as a "detail" best sorted out after public funding has been gotten for the so-called "private industries".

[Pete 2]

Cheap, not old

> I think the Soyuz is older by about 5 years or so, and it seems pretty reliable!

And because all the design costs have been swallowed, it's quite cheap too.

Compare that with the scuttle. Not only is it expensive to build, but it costs a packet to service between each flight. That's what killed the concept: its high maintenance costs and long turnaround times.

In fact the shuttle has cast a long shadow over american space development. Even 40 years ago there were plans for much more fuel-efficient aerospike engines and better solutions than ceramic tiles as reusable heat shields. Sadly, projects like VentureStar were canned in order to keep the pork flying (remember: one mans efficiency saving is another mans unemployment).

If the right people had made the right technical decisions some time around 1970, there could now be a much cheaper space programme, regularly flying SSTOs to multiple in-orbit destinations - possibly even further. However, being a government run programme, there was never a need for efficiency or to incentivise good designs or innovation. The whole space programme was only ever about appeasement: either the population, the media, the aerospace industry or local politicians.

Now it's over.

[John Smith 19]

@pete 2

"Compare that with the scuttle. Not only is it expensive to build,"

"The funding profile allowed by the OMB was *completely* unlike any real large scale project."

"but it costs a packet to service between each flight. That's what killed the concept: its high maintenance costs and long turnaround times."

The maintenance cost is an *outcome* of the development budget. It is *no* accident.

"In fact the shuttle has cast a long shadow over american space development. Even 40 years ago there were plans for much more fuel-efficient aerospike engines"

Not just plans. A 250 000lb thrust H2/O2 (not flightweight) was built and ground tested. A later 25Klb flight weight engine was tested by the UASF but severely damaged in ground tests. It's probably sitting on a shelf in a back office somewhere.

But MSFC *wanted* to go with staged combustion as *all* Russian engines of the time used it and they had *no* experience of it. The USAF had using storable propellants. Turns out using LH2 is *much* harder than a Hydrazine.

"and better solutions than ceramic tiles as reusable heat shields. "

NASA's *absolute* insistence on the *lightest* weight TPS (partly because neither engine mfg delivered what it was *expected to deliver in performance) made tiles the winner. Everything was sacrificed to this.

"Sadly, projects like VentureStar were canned in order to keep the pork flying"

Wrong. X33 allowed LockMart to hoover up c$1.1Bn which should have gone to companies with *no* existing launch vehicle to protect and who would have been *very* motivated to deliver a working design. Instead LockMart played the procurement process like a violin and strangled *effective* competition at birth. NASA did that to themselves.

"If the right people had made the right technical decisions some time around 1970,"

Nixon wanted to kill the space programme. He took his VP's report and threw away *everything* but the Shuttle.

" there could now be a much cheaper space programme, regularly flying SSTOs to multiple in-orbit destinations - possibly even further. "

We'll never know. So deal with what the situation is now.

"The whole space programme was only ever about appeasement: either the population, the media, the aerospace industry or local politicians."

Otherwise known as the stakeholders. US citizens were *never* one of those groups, they were just meant to fund it.

A little history helps to understand where you're going and why you got here.

[Adrian Esdaile]

I'm sure NASA are aghast!

Because NASA plans to dump it in the ocean in 2016!

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=8679.0

Mind you, from the same site... "The US government is liable for any damage caused by the US segment during ISS reentry and they are required by law to at least have a plan for a controlled reentry."

Poppycock. NASA never admitted any fault or liability for spreading Skylab over most of Western Australia.

If we don't keep throwing away perfectly usable space tech, how else are US presidents going to maintain their pork-barrel projects? They cant keep building useless manned stealth fighters forever! Oh, wait....

[Trygve Henriksen]

Fault?

Who said NASA were at fault?

They may say otherwise, but that was a well-executed test of the VHAC bomb system(Very High Altitude Clustermunitions. Pronounced 'whack.'.. ), and frankly, no one though the Australians would mind that much.

As you see, no fault there...

[Peter Murphy]

BTW: good on El Reg for not underestimating their readership's intelligence!

They notice a bit of apposite Russian to quote like "мы стали монополистами". So what do they do? No bad attempts at transliteration? No Berlitz-for-Morons "MI STA-LYEE MO-NO-PO-LYEE-STA-MYEE" that you sometimes get in budget traveller's guidebooks? Nope: they write it as it was written, and trust us to figure it out.

Good on ya, El Reg. Oh, and good on the Unicode standard (and later editions of the HTML standard) for making it possible to mix languages with ease in your browser.

[Anonymous Coward]

protection

"That's a nice ISS you've got there. Such a pity it must fall into the sea as early as 2020. We'd really like to help with that. Sadly the price for our help just doubled."

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea

Scientists keep on telling us that we know less about the bottom of the sea than the rest of the universe. Make sure you load it up with sea scientists before you take it down.

[Peter Mc Aulay]

Preservation

It would be nice to be able to keep ISS around as a museum, but unfortunately space doesn't actually preserve things that well - materials decay due to micrometeorite impacts, thermal stress and hard radiation. Boosting it into a high, stable orbit would only make matters worse, since it would probably have to be put outside the Van Allen belt and that will turn it into a slowly dispersing torus-shaped cloud of navigational hazards that much quicker. At the very least you'll want to wrap it in something.

Digitally mapping it in high resolution and 3D before it deorbits would be much easier though, and actually feasible right now.

[SirWumpus]

How about Mars Mission "gas station"

Launch the station towards Mars stocked in preparation as a refuel / resupply way-point for a future manned Mars mission. Sort of like a highway rest stop.

[John Smith 19]

There *are* alternatives.

Firstly the US *owns* the ISS (AFAIK but IANAL). But in space it would appear *access* is 9/10s of the law.

There have been *proposals* to operate it as a "National Laboratory" (although AFAIK all the US ones in this category are involved in nuclear research) or for the more internationalist view to convert it into an international facility. The nearest equivalent of which seems to be CERN (are there others?)

Note that despite *all* that money spent the US came to closed cycle life support *very* late in the game and AFAIK most of their work has drawn *heavily* on Russian work in this field, making ISS water *the* most expensive bottled water in the solar system at c $15000/litre.

Relocating it to Geo is a lousy idea unless you're really going to configure to act as a construction base for a power satellite, but you now have a re-supply and a radiation problem to deal with.

An interesting notion would be to put it in a cyclic or "elevator" orbit between the Moon and Earth, picking people and stuff up for dropping off at the Moon. I think Buzz Aldrin suggested this (and something like it has come up in a Stephen Baxter novel?)

Making it happen *without* a huge bill for new hardware development would be the tricky bit.

AFAIK ELV fairings *are* big enough (now) to accomodate new modules for the design. Weather it would be cost effective to use them is another matter ("Cost effective" in the terms of govt programme is a bit different to what normal people are used to).

[Anonymous Coward]

science!

CERN loves the attention, but there are more international science facilities than it, that we (well, you) the British taxpayers fund :) ILL, ESRF, ITER, ...

[John Smith 19]

AC@08:58

"CERN loves the attention, but there are more international science facilities than it, that we (well, you) the British taxpayers fund :) ILL, ESRF, ITER, ..."

Thank you. I suspected there were more but I was not sure. ITER is the only one I recognise though.

[John Smith 19]

Hmm. 1 upvote but *two* downvotes.

Care to explain your complaints?

[an_engineer]

Zvezda Module

I would like to point out that the Zvezda module was the third module launched to the ISS, and has been in orbit for eleven years. It's one of the core modules of the station. The press notification from NASA is clearly dated 2000.

And frankly, NASA was originally talking about ditching the ISS in the sea in 2015.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox?

We're repeating things on Fox as if they were true now? When did that happen? Wtf would Fox know or care about what's actually happening?

[John Smith 19]

Possibley the *bigger* news

NASA look closers to letting Spacex combine their 2 test missions.

This has been ongoing (IIRC) since late when the NASA administrator announced in a press briefing he was going to have meeting about that decision the following day.

I guess at NASA you have to have a meeting about having a meeting to decide something. Not quite the "We always ended a meeting with a decision" approach of Apollo/Saturn.

Incredibly combining 2 short missions seems to need a 6 week mission instead.

But it's still a (small) step forward.

[Parax]

Looks like A Lot of Lost in Translation Here!

Two questions:

Q1: what will you do with the ISS at the end of its life? A: sink it.

Q2: when is end of life? A: it's current mission concludes in 2020 (but future missions could be added.)

Cue the "wtf the're going to sink it in 2020?"

Really, Nothing to see here move along.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Simples

Strap on some thrusters and send it on its way to a Mars orbit.

I grant it may take a few years to get there and as a result of its travel may need some repairs by the first crew to arrive.

However, by the time we have the technology to get there, at least we'd have a basic space station to dock at prior to descent to the surface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't get to it if it was in geostationary orbit?

How so? We went to the f*cking Moon!