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

[Buster Charlie]

You know the Apollo 11 flag got knocked over during lunar ascent,  why don't we spend a trillion dollars to go fix that? That would be so cool.

[Nibb31]

Just now, HebaruSan said:

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.

You wouldn't need to put it into solar orbit for that, and there isn't much to learn by watching it fall apart that we don't know already.

Solar orbits close to Earth are unstable. Stuff that ends up there tends to come and go into Earth orbit in hard to predict orbits.

[kerbiloid]

27 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?

Better put it onto a solar escape trajectory, rotating as Endurance,
Imagine: once aliens captured Voyager, once they calculated it came from Earth - uh-oh! - a huge derelict Endurance.
They will decide, that's a Terrestrial Intrusion Forces vanguard.

[HebaruSan]

24 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

You wouldn't need to put it into solar orbit for that, and there isn't much to learn by watching it fall apart that we don't know already.

Solar orbits close to Earth are unstable. Stuff that ends up there tends to come and go into Earth orbit in hard to predict orbits.

So, dollar amount too difficult to calculate?

[fredinno]

10 hours ago, lugge said:

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 :-)

 

Why would a project be cancelled just because it gets obsolete before being finished? Srsly? NASA does not operate like those people who shell out money every year for the newest iPhone. In manned programs, it tends to go to one thing and stuck to it, until it is cancelled for engineering or financial difficulties. Why? Because they can only afford one at a time.

9 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

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

Dude, we don't even have any vehicles that can bring the stuff back at this point!

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

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.

VASMIR hasn't already been cancelled. It's being proposed to NASA for Orion SLS usage. Where in the world did you get the idea VASMIR was cancelled?

Skylab was believed to be safe, but old, so NASA actually spent large amounts of money developing a Shuttle reboost module for Skylab. It never made it, the Shuttle flew too late.

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

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.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Shuttle_mission_plans

Quote

Skylab was abandoned after the end of the SL-4 mission in February 1974, but to welcome visitors the crew left a bag filled with supplies and left the hatch unlocked.^[16] NASA discouraged any discussion of additional visits due to the station's age,^[3]:335,361 but in 1977 and 1978, when the agency still believed the Space Shuttle would be ready by 1979, it completed two studies on reusing the station.^[13]:3-1[16] By September 1978, the agency believed Skylab was safe for crews, with all major systems intact and operational.^[13]:3-2 It still had 180 man-days of water and 420 man-days of oxygen, and astronauts could refill both;^[16] the station could hold up to about 600 to 700 man-days of drinkable water and 420 man-days of food.^[13]:2–7

The studies cited several benefits from reusing Skylab, which one called a resource worth "hundreds of millions of dollars"^[13]:1–13 with "unique habitability provisions for long duration space flight."^[13]:3–11 Because no more operational Saturn V rockets were available after the Apollo program, four to five shuttle flights and extensive space architecture would have been needed to build another station as large as Skylab's 12,400 cubic feet (350 m³) volume.^{[13]:1-12 to 1-13} Its ample size—much greater than that of the shuttle alone, or even the shuttle plus Spacelab^[13]:2–8—was enough, with some modifications, for up to seven astronauts^[13]:2–31 of both sexes,^[13]:3–14 and experiments needing a long duration in space;^[13]:1–13 even a movie projector for recreation was possible.^[13]:3–11

Quote

The reactivation would likely have occurred in four phases:^[16]

1. An early Space Shuttle flight would have boosted Skylab to a higher orbit, adding five years of operational life. The shuttle might have pushed or towed the station, but attaching a booster—the Teleoperator Retrieval System (TRS)—to the station would have been more likely, based on astronauts' training for the task. Martin Marietta won the contract for $26 million to design the apparatus.^[17] TRS would contain about three tons of propellant.^[18] The remote-controlled booster had TV cameras and was designed for duties such as space construction and servicing and retrieving satellites the shuttle could not reach. After rescuing Skylab, the TRS would have remained in orbit for future use. Alternatively, it could have been used to de-orbit Skylab for a safe, controlled re-entry and destruction.^[19]

 

Quote

Ground controllers re-established contact with Skylab in March 1978^[20] and recharged its batteries.^[23] Although NASA worked on plans to reboost Skylab with the Space Shuttle through 1978 and the TRS was almost complete, the agency gave up in December when it became clear that the shuttle would not be ready in time;^{[3]:363–367[17]} its first flight, STS-1, did not occur until April 1981. Also rejected were proposals to launch the TRS using one or two unmanned rockets^[16] or to attempt to destroy the station with missiles.^[22]

They only cancelled the plans to revive Skylab because the Shuttle never did make it to 1979. And likely modifications to launch it on unmanned rockets were either not worth it, or took too long.

17 hours ago, max_creative said:

I think it should stay. And plus, it's big. And it would leave a lot of debris.

Why would you want MORE debris? Do you want Kessler syndrome?

Edited March 23, 2016 by fredinno

[max_creative]

4 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Why would you want MORE debris? Do you want Kessler syndrome?

Uhh... No... But I'm just saying, deorbit it and someone's house is going to get hit. If you boost it to a mostly unused orbit so it probably won't get hit, then it's going to stay there for a while.

[Nibb31]

3 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

So, dollar amount too difficult to calculate?

How exactly do you think you can translate delta-V into dollars ? You need to figure out an engineering solution first. 

Let's say you need something like 6 to 8 EUS upper stages (magically modified to loiter several years in orbit instead of 5 days) to impart the dV needed. That means just as many SLS launches. You also need to build a massive frame to attach those boosters and to hold the station together. You would probably need several years of manned missions to build that framework and to remove or fold the solar arrays so that they don't get torn off. 

With one launch per year, it would take the best part of a decade and most of NASA's manned spaceflight budget. I'd say $10 to $20 billion just for the SLS hardware. Several billion more for designing the mission, the specific hardware, the manned launches, and extending mission control during that time. Oh, and you'd need to get the international partners to agree with your stupid idea.

Because yeah, it is a stupid idea.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Nibb31

[ZooNamedGames]

29 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Dude, we don't even have any vehicles that can bring the stuff back at this point!

Ofc we don't- doesn't mean we can't make it. In fact I have a few concepts to do so.

[fredinno]

56 minutes ago, max_creative said:

Uhh... No... But I'm just saying, deorbit it and someone's house is going to get hit. If you boost it to a mostly unused orbit so it probably won't get hit, then it's going to stay there for a while.

Umm, you DO realize you can deorbit it over an ocean, right?

33 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Ofc we don't- doesn't mean we can't make it. In fact I have a few concepts to do so.

Yeah, and guess what? That's going to take so much money to develop....

52 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

How exactly do you think you can translate delta-V into dollars ? You need to figure out an engineering solution first. 

Let's say you need something like 6 to 8 EUS upper stages to impart the dV needed. That means just as many SLS launches. You also need to build a massive frame to attach those boosters and to hold the station together. You would probably need several years of manned missions to build that framework and to remove or fold the solar arrays so that they don't get torn off. 

With one launch per year, it would take the best part of a decade and most of NASA's manned spaceflight budget. I'd say $10 to $20 billion just for the SLS hardware. Several billion more for designing the mission, the specific hardware, the manned launches, and extending mission control during that time. Oh, and you'd need to get the international partners to agree with your stupid idea.

Because yeah, it is a stupid idea.

It shouldn't take 6-8 EUS. I think you are exaggerating. Srsly, it should be 1-2 EUS, fully fueled. Where did you get the 6-8 numbers?

[ZooNamedGames]

9 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Yeah, and guess what? That's going to take so much money to develop....

So will Orion and its program. So was the Apollo program. It will take loads of money to develop just like the hundreds of conceived ideas made by our government which will fail before even getting to the drawing board.

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

How exactly do you think you can translate delta-V into dollars ?

Pretty much exactly the way you did in the rest of this post. Thanks, that's all I was asking.

[fredinno]

12 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

So will Orion and its program. So was the Apollo program. It will take loads of money to develop just like the hundreds of conceived ideas made by our government which will fail before even getting to the drawing board.

Indeed, so why create a Space Shuttle 2.0 just to recover museum pieces? IRL is not KSP.

[DonaldPK51]

If Elon Musk were to REALLY want to bring at least some of it back (US modules, Cupola, etc), he'd probably crank out something capable of returning large segments before NASA could even agree on the plans for de-orbiting it.

On a related note, can the main solar arrays be retracted by power as they are, or would they have to be either detached and abandoned, or somehow cranked in manually?

As for Hubble, wasn't the original plan for the Shuttle to return Hubble for display in the Smithsonian, but Hubble ended up outliving expected service life, to the point STS was retired first?

[fredinno]

1 minute ago, DonaldPK51 said:

1 minute ago, DonaldPK51 said:

If Elon Musk were to REALLY want to bring at least some of it back (US modules, Cupola, etc), he'd probably crank out something capable of returning large segments before NASA could even agree on the plans for de-orbiting it.

On a related note, can the main solar arrays be retracted by power as they are, or would they have to be either detached and abandoned, or somehow cranked in manually?

As for Hubble, wasn't the original plan for the Shuttle to return Hubble for display in the Smithsonian, but Hubble ended up outliving expected service life, to the point STS was retired first?

If Elon Musk were to REALLY want to bring at least some of it back (US modules, Cupola, etc), he'd probably crank out something capable of returning large segments before NASA could even agree on the plans for de-orbiting it.

On a related note, can the main solar arrays be retracted by power as they are, or would they have to be either detached and abandoned, or somehow cranked in manually?

As for Hubble, wasn't the original plan for the Shuttle to return Hubble for display in the Smithsonian, but Hubble ended up outliving expected service life, to the point STS was retired first?

Elon has shown no want to bring it back. The ISS is also not intended to be broken apart, and in any case, building a new space shuttle would cost a lot more $$$$ than it is worth, by FAR.

[ZooNamedGames]

11 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Indeed, so why create a Space Shuttle 2.0 just to recover museum pieces? IRL is not KSP.

Who said shuttle? I would send probes. Much cheaper.

[fredinno]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

Who said shuttle? I would send probes. Much cheaper.

You need a Shuttle to have enough downmass and cargo bay size to recover the ISS from Orbit. Even an unmanned version is a shuttle.

[Nibb31]

47 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It shouldn't take 6-8 EUS. I think you are exaggerating. Srsly, it should be 1-2 EUS, fully fueled. Where did you get the 6-8 numbers?

WAG. 

The EUS is supposed to be able to send a 50 MT payload into lunar orbit. The ISS is 400 MT (8x50), and reaching escape velocity requires more dV, and we're not even counting the mass of whatever structure you need to hold this massive contraption together. I'd say 8 upper stages is a low estimate.

[Mazon Del]

Personally, I've loved the idea (anybody got a rough idea how much that might cost, both in dV and in $?) of sticking a booster of some sort on it and just kinda kicking it into a solar orbit where we can one day enjoy it again.

[fredinno]

26 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

WAG. 

The EUS is supposed to be able to send a 50 MT payload into lunar orbit. The ISS is 400 MT (8x50), and reaching escape velocity requires more dV, and we're not even counting the mass of whatever structure you need to hold this massive contraption together. I'd say 8 upper stages is a low estimate.

Oh, I thought you meant a higher LEO that would not deorbit back into the atmosphere in at least a century.

Edited March 23, 2016 by fredinno

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

You need a Shuttle to have enough downmass and cargo bay size to recover the ISS from Orbit. Even an unmanned version is a shuttle.

You make a LOT of assumptions.

Who said I would take it down in one peice? That's far too tedious and difficult. Besides, each probe needs to be its own size depending on each module. Not to mention each one is differently shaped and has different structural points.

[fredinno]

31 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

You make a LOT of assumptions.

Who said I would take it down in one peice? That's far too tedious and difficult. Besides, each probe needs to be its own size depending on each module. Not to mention each one is differently shaped and has different structural points.

Good luck building specialized probe for each module. Also, that is going to be one big and expensive probe.

[ZooNamedGames]

45 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Good luck building specialized probe for each module. Also, that is going to be one big and expensive probe.

I'll take that bet. 

I never said it would be cheap.

[Nibb31]

That word probe. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

What you are thinking of is an unmanned recovery spacecraft. A probe is an unmanned exploration spacecraft.

Of course, the whole idea is stupid too. The cost of developing such a vehicle would be colossal and totally pointless. Of we had trillions to spend on space, we would be better of spending it on building a lunar outpost of going to Europa.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Nibb31

[fredinno]

12 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

You know the Apollo 11 flag got knocked over during lunar ascent,  why don't we spend a trillion dollars to go fix that? That would be so cool.

We can build a lunar mission from Orion/SLS, and go to the Apollo 11 landing site. That would allow for experiments on long-term space exposure, and study the near-side Marina with new instruments. And put the flag back up.

It's actually more plausible than recovering the ISS, TBH.

[kerbiloid]

In fact, all this theme about ISS and other such artefacts is similar to a classical problem known as Ship of Theseus .

- You have an old wooden historical ship, staying in your haven as a memorial.
It's periodically being repaired. I.e. as the original, "historical", wooden planks and beams rot, you replace them with fresh ones, putting the historical ones into garbage or fire.
Of course, its sails (i.e. the pride and glory of the original brigantine) are gone first - because they are absolutely expendable by definition.
A century later you have in fact a homemade wooden replica of that old historical ship with several bronze bells and whistles from the original one.
In the captain's room you have a sanctuary, meant as the heart of ship. Inside there are glass box with the original flag and steering wheel, dismembered from their historical places.

Is this ship "that exact ship which was there"?
Or it's just "an emulation of your presence on that ship", an empty envelope with several sacral items which "give the Force and a feeling of immersiveness" to you?

Are the rotten wooden planks to be burnt and garbaged? Or this ash would be collected into a funeral urn as a relic ("The ash of that exact ship's wooden planks")?

- You have an aircraft/ironclad/zeppelin/battle tank/Apollo command module as a memorial.
Is it to be totally intact and ready to use - or you need just a visual envelope of it, without motors, parachutes, ammo, guns made inoperative?
Especially with a spacecraft return module, which by definition contained many expendable parts.

As there is no rational purpose to keep these things at all, this totally depends on which part of the ship is enough to give you a feeling that it is THAT SACRED THING.
I.e. this is a question of your magical thinking : is it enough for you to touch an original steering wheel and watch a 3d reproduction, or you need the whole place being intact to feel "the presence of Power".

Using that wooden ship as a sample, in case of preserved ISS you would keep several large tin cans alike to each other, full of dull tin closets full of the most useless electromechanical junk (because almost all its equipment should be removed for safety).
Solar panels and radiators in any case are to be gone first, like all sails. Many similar trusses.
Then you would have a gorgeous Cupola, mechanical arms and several specific places inside the station, looking differ.
In any case you can't "eat with your eyes" the whole station - it's too large, uncompact and differs from anything the human perception is purposed for.

So, probably the best way with ISS would be:
1. Gather relic items (flag, steering wheel, cannons, teddy bears).
2. Select the most specific and "sacral" parts/places of the ISS, enough compact and visually rich (Cupola, captain's bridge, airlock, so on).
3. Cut that parts off and bring back to the Earth.
4. Deorbit the other.
5. Create an interactive 3d-installation with original ISS parts, parts from the basin and virtual 3d-perspective diorama visible from inside through the windows.

But as usually, they maybe do p.1. and then just deorbit the station.

P.S.
Of course, this isn't to be said about Great Pyramides and other ancient extraterrestrial constructions.
 

Edited March 24, 2016 by kerbiloid