Wouldn’t it be awesome if a bunch of rastas started squatting the station while listening to AI generated dub music, like in Neuromancer?
NASA Requests Funding for $1 Billion 'Space Tug' to Deorbit the ISS
Submitted 11 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to astronomy@mander.xyz
https://spaceref.com/newspace-and-tech/nasa-requests-funding-1-billion-space-tug-deorbit-iss/
Comments
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Yamainwitch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I say give it to them, billionaires today have no class, just take it and give it to our fellow nerds. Problem solved! Elon was going gamble it away anyway.
kalkulat@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Pay a billion to burn it up?
It’d cost a lot less to put it in a higher orbit for a thousand years where it could be a museum for space travellers.
canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
You can’t do that because it will physically fall apart. That’s the main issue with boosting it up higher and just leaving it there. It was never designed to be existing for a thousand years, and eventually wear and tear will make the station naturally break apart.
kalkulat@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You can’t do that because it will physically fall apart.
Don’t know where you ever got that idea. It raises and lowers itself all of the time these days to avoid debris.
It could easily be raised to 2-5000 miles by adding energy from a similar small engine (with a decent-sized fuel tank) over a few months/years. The orbits of those ‘small fragments’ (of what?) would decay very slowly and instantly burn-up many centuries later.
ourob@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I would love to see the cost/feasibility of boosting to a stable/graveyard orbit. The ISS is massive and not built for that kind of maneuver, but it would be great to be able to preserve it for the future.
BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
Does seem like a massive waste to just get rid of it. Feel like it could be repurposed for other use
Granted, its international status probably makes any decisions about utilizing it for something else difficult
canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
It’s too old to be retrofitted and it wasn’t designed to last forever.
The computer systems on board controlling all the essential systems, I’d have to assume given the age of the station and when everything was designed, they’d have used 32 bit computing tech because that was what was prevalent when the station launched.
A lot of people say “boost it into graveyard orbit” but another problem is that physically it was not designed to last forever, and just over general wear and tear, it will begin to disintegrate and rain fragments, so it is much safer to deorbit and decomm.