The ISS de-orbit

[ryan]

We all know that when we go to the moon, the ISS will kind of be forgotten. What will NASA do, they cant spend billions on going to the moon and also fund billions on sending re-supply missions to a coastly space station. Will NASA de-orbit the ISS like they did with Saylut and Mir but they were Russian and like they did with skylab. Or will they keep it up there for millions of years orbiting the Earth alone.
Think about it, give me your ideas.
Ryan.

 

[razgriz31m]

I think it won't be able to stay in Earth for "millions" of years, because a time will come that the ISS's orbit will decay.

 

[ryan]

It's just an example.

 

[tomek]

I believe ISS project is actually scheduled to end around 2014, regardless of going to Moon or not.

 

[ryan]

So any idea what they will do with it? It's a valueable peice of machinary.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

By some wildly stroke of goodluck to humanity, someone with a real use for it may buy it, but something tells me that's out of everyone's price range 'cept maybe Microsoft...hmm, ISS under MSoft's control...could be interesting LOL!
Seriously, I think the plan is to do a controlled de-orbit to keep it from ending up like Skylab did with the U.S. saddled with a $400 littering fine (that we never paid BTW )

 

[razgriz31m]

and place a target on the pacific ocean, if the ISS hits it, there will be a free Taco Bell for everyone in the world!

 

[Missioncmdr]

and place a target on the pacific ocean, if the ISS hits it, there will be a free Taco Bell for everyone in the world!

The world's most expensive free taco!

 

[ryan]

I could just imagine a huge taco floating in space with the theme to 2000: A Space Oddysy in the background.

 

[Kyle]

The ISS is designed to last intill 2020's, What will happen, ATV-7, or a Progress, will deorbit the ISS into a planned area eaither in the pacific, Atlantic, or Indian

 

[ryan]

Or an orion could do it, they should have enough thruster power to do it.

 

[Urwumpe]

Or an orion could do it, they should have enough thruster power to do it.

Thruster power is completely irrelevant. Even a 1500 W ion engine could de-orbit the ISS, with enough fuel and time. The Orion has enough maneuver budget for leaving lunar orbit alone - but with the mass of the ISS docked to it (The ISS will weight 40 times more than the dry mass of the CEV, when the CEV has its maiden flight), it would only be capable of lowering its orbit a bit. If the ISS is already lowered by drag, the Orion could control the reentry, but at that point, even the ATV could control the reentry and the ATV is much cheaper. Or the main engines of the ISS get used.

Just remember: Mir got deorbited by a Progress freighter.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Or an orion could do it, they should have enough thruster power to do it.

Orion is supposed to be a manned vehicle. Do you think it has to duck the falling ISS after deorbiting and then land in a wildest spot of an ocean amidst falling flaming debris? Yeah, something like a real hero's job. :lol:

 

[TSPenguin]

How about instead of deorbiting it, we raise the orbit so that it can stay up for several years (or decades) without beeing a hazard? Sure, it would need a lot more dV but it might become a nice museum in the (very far) future. Maybe docked to the LEO spaceport of the future.
Too bad this will not be considered...
I'll vote for deorbiting it in the front yard of the Technikmuseum Speyer

 

[unussapiens]

How about starting a fund to get a booster big to put it in orbit around the moon. If you're in orbit around the moon, there is no atmosphere to lower your orbit, so the ISS could stay there for future generations to see.

Anyone know an eccentric billionaire or two? =D

 

[Urwumpe]

How about starting a fund to get a booster big to put it in orbit around the moon. If you're in orbit around the moon, there is no atmosphere to lower your orbit, so the ISS could stay there for future generations to see.

Anyone know an eccentric billionaire or two? =D

The moon is a very bad place for probes. The moon has a very special gravity field, thanks to it's own pretty nonspherical gravity field and for the moon being itself at the border of earths gravity field.

You would need nearly as much fuel in lunar orbit for staying there, than in LEO.

 

[SiberianTiger]

How about starting a fund to get a booster big to put it in orbit around the moon. If you're in orbit around the moon, there is no atmosphere to lower your orbit, so the ISS could stay there for future generations to see.

With a gigantic haul of propellant it's theoretically possible to push a thing like the ISS to a high orbit with little to no decay. But it will be absolutely useless there, since without resupply and maintenance it turn in time into an airless rotten hulk, leaving trace of space debris as it turns around, dangerous to get in close. Not exactly what a monument is supposed to be.

 

[cjp]

Thruster power is completely irrelevant. Even a 1500 W ion engine could de-orbit the ISS, with enough fuel and time.

No, power is relevant. If you use an extremely-small-thrust ion engine for de-orbiting, then (together with atmospheric drag) it will make you spiral down slowly. At a certain point, the drag will become too much, and your spiral will change into an increasingly fast earth-bound course. But, because you spiral down very slowly, it's very hard to tell where this will happen exactly. "Weather" effects and electric "space weather" will have a large influence on this. So, the effect is that you can't predict where the thing will come down.

On the other hand, if you use a single large-thrust burn, then you can choose for a very low perigee at a well-chosen location. Then you know for sure where it will enter the dense parts of atmosphere, and you can predict where it will crash.

 

[Urwumpe]

my personal favorite solution would developing a concept to keep and extend the ISS as output in LEO.

Did we leave New York in decay, because the first buildings after settling there are old and damaged? No.

cjp: Ok, outside the idea of controlled reentry, thruster power is completely irrelevant. But otherwise, depending on the size of your crash ellipse, you can even de-orbit a payload with pretty low thruster power - you don't need many 100 kN thrust for reaching accelerations which are a few magnitudes stronger as drag.

 

[SiberianTiger]

my personal favorite solution would developing a concept to keep and extend the ISS as output in LEO.

Did we leave New York in decay, because the first buildings after settling there are old and damaged? No.

That would be ideal. To advance from maintaining the station to actually using it. However, even if we only consider this from a technical point of view, there are some problems. First one is that the FGB is the core segment the whole station is dependent upon as the cross point of intersegment communications and ducts. Some of the connections made are permanent. How do one pass this by as the thing gets old beyond possibility of repairing?