Moving the ISS?

[DerekL1963]

Tidal pull would align first moment of density distribution radially over time, which means the station will be making one revolution per orbit rather than tumble randomly. In a high orbit, the station can stay there pretty much indefinitely. Or more specifically, until it has a chance encounter with an asteroid or other debris.

If the 'high orbit' was sufficiently high, yes. But you'd have to go pretty far out because her solar wings produce a lot of drag.

[K^2]

Which is ballistic drag. So even if it's a dominant effect, it's not going to cause tumbling. At the worst, it'd determine a different preferred orientation, which is entirely fine.

[Guest]

I would guess the cost of raising the orbit would be quite cheap compared to the cost of maintaining such a large station in moon orbit.

As for making in a tourist attraction.... Maybe? I know there was some company that wanted to turn mier into a space hotel, but the Russians said "Nope" and de-orbited it.

Quite the contrary, Russians would've been happy to give MIR to a private company and hand over the maintenance. The problem was that the company couldn't afford that. They simply couldn't collect enough money quickly enough, and the station was deorbited, because it deteriorated too much.

That's the biggest problem: money. Running a space station is expensive, because you have to launch stuff to it, and each launch costs a lot of money. If there was a low-cost space launch system available (like the planned methane-burning Falcon 9, but even cheaper), then keeping the ISS as tourist attraction would be a viable approach. Stationkeeping could be switched to VASIMR-based attitude thrusters (to avoid using rather pricey UDMH/N2O4) and reboosting could be done by a future, low-cost cargo spacecraft, because Progress and ATV are both expensive and use toxic propellants, which further drive the cost up. Ultimately, it all depends on how long the ISS stays in orbit. If it's still up there by the time spaceflight is cheap enough, it could be bought by a private investor and re-purposed.

As for launching it to the Moon, it'd be very possible, and indeed, I remember reading about early plans of doing something like that with OPSEK (it'd be boosted to L1 not to Moon, but that's not that big of a jump). All it'd take would be a proper boost module, because Zvezda doesn't have enough dV. You don't need high thrust at all for a lunar capture, just a lot of patience and a lot of reaction mass.

[Tex_NL]

It's possible this has already been mentioned (haven't read everything in the thread) but the ISS IS moved on a regular basis by the Russian Zvezda Service Module!

Due to atmospheric drag the ISS orbit is in constant decay. The station drops on average 2 km per month.

Graph showing the changing altitude of the ISS from November 1998 until January 2009

[Themohawkninja]

I'm not sure how well the superstructure would hold during the insertion burn, so you would probably have to do many small burns over a period of many orbits to get it into the lunar orbit.

Then there is the issue of resupplying the craft. It already costs a few billion in LEO. Putting it in a Lunar orbit would raise the costs by at least one or two orders of magnitude.

After that, you have to take into account emergency procedures. Right now, if something really bad happens, the crew can cram into a Soyuz capsule and return to Earth. For a lunar space station, the escape pod would have to have enough dV to get from a lunar orbit to within the Earth's atmosphere.

[Themohawkninja]

It's possible this has already been mentioned (haven't read everything in the thread) but the ISS IS moved on a regular basis by the Russian Zvezda Service Module!

As I understand it, those is just little RCS burns.

[Kulebron]

Parking the station at a higher orbit with no drag (1000 km) is possible, but there it will be bombarded by space debris much more. The 300-400 km orbit is cleaner thanks to the atmosphere drag. Any garbage has very short life there. At 1000 km any debris flies for hundreds of years. But probably a 2000 km orbit, higher than low-orbit satellites belt, would be fine, to keep it for later generations just to look at.

[G'th]

I don't believe the ISS is designed for that.

Now, if they really, really wanted to (or had to for whatever reason), then I'm sure they could do some kind of emergency reconstruction and then put it back together in lunar orbit.

Either way though, moving the ISS into a different orbit (very much less an orbit around a different object) would require taking it apart. Either to be constructed into something that could actually deal with teh forces at hand, or to be delivered piece by piece to the Moon to be reconstructed there.

The latter is the most realistic option.

[DerekL1963]

Either way though' date=' moving the ISS into a different orbit (very much less an orbit around a different object) would require taking it apart. Either to be constructed into something that could actually deal with teh forces at hand, or to be delivered piece by piece to the Moon to be reconstructed there.

The latter is the most realistic option.[/quote']

Um, no. Dismantling the ISS would be a herculean task - the bits aren't docked together like KSP units. They're wired and cabled and piped and bolted together like the engine of your car is to the rest of the vehicle. Worse yet, few of the modules are capable of surviving 'on their own' - they'll require external power and thermal control support at a minimum.

[peadar1987]

After that, you have to take into account emergency procedures. Right now, if something really bad happens, the crew can cram into a Soyuz capsule and return to Earth. For a lunar space station, the escape pod would have to have enough dV to get from a lunar orbit to within the Earth's atmosphere.

That's not actually as bad as it sounds, remember the size of the Apollo Command Module? It's not like you'd have to have a Saturn V docked to the ISS just to get back home

[Kulebron]

I'm not sure how well the superstructure would hold during the insertion burn, so you would probably have to do many small burns over a period of many orbits to get it into the lunar orbit.

Then there is the issue of resupplying the craft. It already costs a few billion in LEO. Putting it in a Lunar orbit would raise the costs by at least one or two orders of magnitude.

After that, you have to take into account emergency procedures. Right now, if something really bad happens, the crew can cram into a Soyuz capsule and return to Earth. For a lunar space station, the escape pod would have to have enough dV to get from a lunar orbit to within the Earth's atmosphere.

Soyuz was designed for Lunar missions, so it has capacity for more than a week of flight. With a bigger service module it will have enough delta-v. Question is if anyone needs that orbital station there.

[DerekL1963]

Soyuz was designed for Lunar missions, so it has capacity for more than a week of flight.

Yes, Soyuz was originally designed for lunar missions - but it went into service modified as a general purpose orbiter. Subsequently it was pressed into service as a space station taxi, and subsequent generations have further converged on that purpose - to the point where it's all but useless for anything but LEO taxi service. (In particular, the heavy heat shield needed for lunar operations was replaced decades ago.)

[Kryten]

Even if those modifications could be redone, a 'bigger service module' is not going to cut it; they needed to use Proton to send Soyuz on a flyby trajectory, and a stripped-down one at that. Orbital operations would require something in the Angara-7 class at least.

[Fastairforce]

I would dis assemble he station and get a interplanetery drive in orbit. Reassemble at the moon and satrun V the crew to it!