Letting the ISS burn up......Why?

[Nibb31]

It can't folks. Did you even read the thread ?

[kerbiloid]

So, imagine that ISS has been moved to a higher orbit and abandoned, say, 50 years ago.

It spent 50 years without management, technical service, refuel, recharge.
No temperature control, no lubricant refill, no Sun orientation, no temperature conditioning, under cosmic radiation.
It rotates in 3 planes with its own period, intricately interacting with tidal force.

Solar and radiator panels degraded, withered and full of cracks. Their joints are wedged.
Every orbit turn they are heated to +100 and cooled to -100.
Every orbit turn they are scratching because of temperature, drag and tidal force change.
Even if you get onboard and try to switch this on, they give no electricity power.

Water, fuel, oil and so on tanks are anbsolutely dry. No heat capacity provided by stored liquids, no repair, no refill.
Every orbit turn they are heated to +100 and cooled to -100.
Their joints lost all lubricants, became diverged, full of cracks and can keep nothing even if pour.

Accumulators are empty and rotten. Even if give them power, in the best case they just won't explode.

Heavy (10-20 tonnes, btw) modules are kept together with laced trusses, which are bending for decades.
Trusses joints are diverged, full of cracks and bend in unpredictable directions while two dozens of 20 t dummies wiggle there and back every station rotation turn.

Windows obturation is rotten, air has been dissipated, there is vacuum inside modules. So, all inner equipment is either rotten or wedged together.

Now, run the "Planetes" series and feel like a space junkman who is ordered to get into this orbital Silent Hill.
Not to repair it (already nothing to repair), but just to safely deorbit.
Probably, the only thought you would have: "Why they didn't deorbit this junkyard when it was at least in one piece?"

[ZooNamedGames]

We *could* try to bring it home. It may cost several trillion, but with the right design, I believe we could save this monument and bring it home. I could easily see it being housed in the smithsonian... However people will argue which peice to own.   

[lugge]

For me, ISS is a remainder of a glorious era of spaceflight, gone a long time ago. If ISS is gone (and it will have to go, read the thread) we will likely see no such things in this century anymore.

It's like the cabability to go to the moon, the capability to do manned spaceflights (only one country has this capability anymore). Hell, we even cannot build new spacecrafts because they are getting obsolete before they are even finished (Constellation, SLS...) All gone.

Sorry for the negative vibes, but I see no glorious century of spaceflight, and when ISS is gone mankind will stay on good-old-earth for quite some time. We have other problems to solve there and no goverment will have the money to fund a manned project just for fun.

But, I do like the scheduled unmanned missions. At least a small gleam of hope :-)

 

Edited March 23, 2016 by lugge

[p1t1o]

26 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

We *could* try to bring it home. It may cost several trillion, but with the right design, I believe we could save this monument and bring it home. I could easily see it being housed in the smithsonian... However people will argue which peice to own.   

I'd enjoy the thought of a permanent space relic as much as the next guy, but I can think of many better ways to spend trillions of dollars/pounds.

[StrandedonEarth]

31 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

We *could* try to bring it home. It may cost several trillion, but with the right design, I believe we could save this monument and bring it home. I could easily see it being housed in the smithsonian... However people will argue which peice to own.   

Want a museum piece? No need to bring it home, just use the training mockup in the 'zero-g' pools

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

I'd enjoy the thought of a permanent space relic as much as the next guy, but I can think of many better ways to spend trillions of dollars/pounds.

Yet we spend it on far worse endeavors. It's a moot point.

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Want a museum piece? No need to bring it home, just use the training mockup in the 'zero-g' pools

Yeah, but it's not real. That's what makes a real artifact. Something that WAS, not a back up or copy.

[p1t1o]

8 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Yet we spend it on far worse endeavors. It's a moot point.

o_O That is terrible logic.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, imagine that ISS has been moved to a higher orbit and abandoned, say, 50 years ago.

It spent 50 years without management, technical service, refuel, recharge.
No temperature control, no lubricant refill, no Sun orientation, no temperature conditioning, under cosmic radiation.
It rotates in 3 planes with its own period, intricately interacting with tidal force.

Solar and radiator panels degraded, withered and full of cracks. Their joints are wedged.
Every orbit turn they are heated to +100 and cooled to -100.
Every orbit turn they are scratching because of temperature, drag and tidal force change.
Even if you get onboard and try to switch this on, they give no electricity power.

Water, fuel, oil and so on tanks are anbsolutely dry. No heat capacity provided by stored liquids, no repair, no refill.
Every orbit turn they are heated to +100 and cooled to -100.
Their joints lost all lubricants, became diverged, full of cracks and can keep nothing even if pour.

Accumulators are empty and rotten. Even if give them power, in the best case they just won't explode.

Heavy (10-20 tonnes, btw) modules are kept together with laced trusses, which are bending for decades.
Trusses joints are diverged, full of cracks and bend in unpredictable directions while two dozens of 20 t dummies wiggle there and back every station rotation turn.

Windows obturation is rotten, air has been dissipated, there is vacuum inside modules. So, all inner equipment is either rotten or wedged together.

Now, run the "Planetes" series and feel like a space junkman who is ordered to get into this orbital Silent Hill.
Not to repair it (already nothing to repair), but just to safely deorbit.
Probably, the only thought you would have: "Why they didn't deorbit this junkyard when it was at least in one piece?"

Wow, ISS the movie set, what a great Idea, we could have aliens hopping all about, inseminating segornia weaver.

You exaggerate.

[ZooNamedGames]

16 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

o_O That is terrible logic.

Really? I've seen our dollars spent on far worse than what could be the greatest "musuem recovery" in history.

[YNM]

I think it's better to destroy it altogether and build another one. That's a technological one-up. An analogy would be old things in your house - they're maybe lovely, but if it's beyond repair, what would you do ? Keep it until its natural demise ? (the hard part of ISS is, the natural demise will be disastrously dangerous.)

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Really?

Yup.

5 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I've seen our dollars spent on far worse than what could be the greatest "musuem recovery" in history.

I bet you have, but "Something foolish has been done before" is a terrible justification for doing something foolish.

 

[kerbiloid]

13 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Wow, ISS the movie set, what a great Idea, we could have aliens hopping all about, inseminating segornia weaver.

You exaggerate.

... and then one of those modules, a score of tonnes in mass, screaming with thunderous rasp, breaks off the truss, spreading around thousands of metal pieces.
The station center of mass shifts and it begins to somersault as a 500-tonnes elastic boumerang, causing two more modules to sever their trusses and multiply the disaster...

And instead "Armageddon" movie you get "Gravity". Even Bruce Kerman can't help then, only Sandra Kerman.

 

[ZooNamedGames]

46 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Yup.

I bet you have, but "Something foolish has been done before" is a terrible justification for doing something foolish.

 

It's a far better use than what our national government will use it for-

we're going to draw some moderation action if we don't drop this.

[p1t1o]

2 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

It's a far better use than what our national government will use it for-

we're going to draw some moderation action if we don't drop this.

Since we are going around in circles, yes, lets.

Edited March 23, 2016 by p1t1o

[Motokid600]

On 1/15/2016 at 5:57 PM, Mitchz95 said:

I'd rather preserve the Hubble, personally. Boost it into a higher orbit so that we can retrieve it in a few decades and display it at the Smithsonian.

Thiiiis. No clue how'd you get it back without a shuttle though.

[KAL 9000]

1 hour ago, Motokid600 said:

Thiiiis. No clue how'd you get it back without a shuttle though.

Well, we could just send a robot tug up to push it into a higher orbit. In 50 years, I'd be disappointed if we didn't have a Shuttle-class vehicle in service.

[Nibb31]

15 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Well, we could just send a robot tug up to push it into a higher orbit. In 50 years, I'd be disappointed if we didn't have a Shuttle-class vehicle in service.

Pushing it up to a higher orbit requires more dV than deorbiting it.

Are the laws of physics expected to change in 50 years?

Edited March 23, 2016 by Nibb31

[KAL 9000]

19 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Pushing it up to a higher orbit requires more dV than deorbiting it.

Are the laws of physics expected to change in 50 years?

Not the ISS, the Hubble. I meant a Shuttle-class vehicle could pick the Hubble up in 50 years.

Edited March 23, 2016 by KAL 9000

[wumpus]

The best examples of space stations at end-of-life I know of are Skylab (more or less unplanned deorbit) and MIR.  MIR lasted quite a bit longer than expected, but was up during the fall of the USSR and doubtless lead to much uncertainty for the cosmonauts and insufficient maintenance.  The reoccuring theme on any description of late MIR flights was always the threat (and often occurrence) of fire.  If you've heard the old chestnut about NASA spending millions on a space pen (they didn't, it was spent privately) while the Soviets/Russians used pencils, MIR taught us why not to use pencils: graphite conducts.  The graphite (or pretty much anything else in an aging space station) would float into where it shouldn't and cause a short circuit, with a fire starting later.  Not sure what the total time cosmonauts took putting out fires (even if it was short, it was way too much), but it was a strong indication that the MIR should no longer be used.

My claim about Skylab's "unplanned deorbit" was something of an exaggeration, there was some plans for a shuttle rescue, but obviously the shuttle was far too late to save Skylab.  I don't think there was any serious plans about using the shuttle to send astronauts to Skylab (they probably could have saved it if they really needed further excuse to build the shuttle).  According to wiki the last astronauts left supplies near the hatch and left the hatch unlocked, but officially wouldn't consider sending anyone else up "due to its age".  One curious thing about the Skylab breakup is that it occurred 10 miles above ground (far lower than they expected).  I'd expect the "spiraling in" pattern of an unplanned reentry (they had angled it up for maximum reentry length) would produce the smallest pieces (if least control over where it goes, I'd rather dump bigger pieces into the Indian Ocean, somewhere like where MH370 was expected to wind up).

I'm guessing that without the "eternally at the powerpoint stage" VASIMR plans going forward (they have already been canceled), the only possibilities for the ISS are planned deorbit and breaking up and getting much closer to Kessler syndrome.  It can't remain unmanned.  It can't remain manned without either keeping the Russian section or replacing the Russian section.  I'm curious if the ESA is picky about who owns the USA parts (assuming the agreements can handle a Russian exit in the first place), if the thing politically breaks up, you pretty much need to de-orbit it anyway.  It certainly hasn't reached MIR-levels of aging, but such will happen eventually, and I doubt that any module as designed for much more than 2020.  One thing that always struck me are the fans.  Since hot air just sits there on the ISS, fans are needed to cool *every* piece of electronics (a fanless heatsink does nothing).  The sound of the ISS is the constant drone of all those fans.  Fans also are a common source of electronics failure.  I suspect that as ISS ages, finding and replacing dying fans will be a common job for any astronaut on the ISS.

[Lukaszenko]

I'm ok with letting it burn up. That's how space works. I mean, it would definitely be cool to keep it around as a showpiece, but if every space mission designer had to contend with "maybe we can bring it back to put in a museum?", or some variation thereof, that would be a hell of a hurdle to jump over. I mean where do we draw the line? Should we bring back the Apollo hardware? The Mars rovers? The Voyagers?

If you can do it cheaply and easily, fine, but don't spend other space missions' budgets just so we can sit back and fan our vanity.

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, KAL 9000 said:

Not the ISS, the Hubble. I meant a Shuttle-class vehicle could pick the Hubble up in 50 years.

I understood that and my comments still stand. It would take more dV to boost it up than to deorbit, and the laws of physics aren't going to change any time soon, so a Shuttle-type vehicle will still be impractical.

28 minutes ago, wumpus said:

My claim about Skylab's "unplanned deorbit" was something of an exaggeration, there was some plans for a shuttle rescue, but obviously the shuttle was far too late to save Skylab.  I don't think there was any serious plans about using the shuttle to send astronauts to Skylab (they probably could have saved it if they really needed further excuse to build the shuttle).  According to wiki the last astronauts left supplies near the hatch and left the hatch unlocked, but officially wouldn't consider sending anyone else up "due to its age".  One curious thing about the Skylab breakup is that it occurred 10 miles above ground (far lower than they expected).  I'd expect the "spiraling in" pattern of an unplanned reentry (they had angled it up for maximum reentry length) would produce the smallest pieces (if least control over where it goes, I'd rather dump bigger pieces into the Indian Ocean, somewhere like where MH370 was expected to wind up).

There were vague plans to reboost Skylab on an early Shuttle mission, but those were scrapped early. It would have been an engineering nightmare, requiring them to develop a special docking module using the obsolete drogue/cone system and containing an airlock (Apollo/Skylab used a different pressure and atmosphere from the Shuttle). There were also concerns that the atmosphere inside Skylab would have become unhealthy, with the development of fungus and bacteria.

That was all abandoned when it became clear that Skylab was decaying faster than expected and the Shuttle program was being delayed.

[HebaruSan]

ISS is about 420 tons, and it needs around 3526 m/s more to get to Earth escape velocity. Can someone help me translate that to a dollar amount to put it into a solar orbit?

[Nibb31]

20 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

ISS is about 420 tons, and it needs around 3526 m/s more to get to Earth escape velocity. Can someone help me translate that to a dollar amount to put it into a solar orbit?

Translate into engineering terms first. What purpose would it serve to do that ?

Edited March 23, 2016 by Nibb31

[HebaruSan]

Just now, Nibb31 said:

Translate into engineering terms first. What purpose would it serve to do that ?

Gets it out of the way, and we can send probes if we decide we want to observe its decay over longer periods. Could help with building more durable stations.