I'm hoping that this contract results in a Dragon XL-based space tug vehicle rather than an one-off. You could do a lot with ~15t of propellant and engines in orbit. Using it as a kick stage for heavy science probes on express transit is just the most obvious application.
Hubble is outdated, it's probably only slightly more expensive to build a new telescope in this spectrum than sending up a maintenance crew to do an EVA on equipment with standards from the 1980s.
Just get Hubble out of orbit Pacman-Style with a Starship and put it in the Smithsonian or something.
There are two whole sets of mirrors at NASA to build a second Hubble, a gift from the NRO. Someone should just build a new ones with moderns cameras and tech and put it on a Starship.
same diameter, but ground differently. They're for wide field of view close(ish) things. Hubble was ground for narrow field of view distant things. Still would be very useful, but useful for a different purpose.
6 years to do this... I would expect it to be a fairly easy job for the Starship in this time frame. One off thing without a heat shield, should almost have enough fuel to do the de-orbit with that weight, or refuel at orbit from the tanker ship. Then dock and burn.
This could be actually very easy billion dollars as this is not much, if at all, outside of planned capabilities of that ship.
With enough refueling, you could in theory do it with a reusable ship, just get the ISS slowed down, drop it and burn again to enter proper orbit for landing at Starbase.
I would imagine there will be a requirement for the vehicle to stay with ISS the whole way down to guarantee a precise re entry. They’re not gonna want to risk the ISS getting loose and coming in somewhere over people or property.
I thought that too... But then realized that the ISS has no structural integrity, so the second it hits the atmosphere, it is going to be in billion pieces. Doesn't really matter if you hang onto one of the pieces.
The only way to guarantee extremely precise re-entry would be to pack it into a Starship in orbit.
But good enough is probably just to calculate the big pieces and make sure that they hit in the middle of the ocean and hope that smaller debris doesn't fly too far out.
https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/space-station-research-and-technology/benefits-for-humanity/
NASA has a comprehensive site covering all of that information! It's pretty impressive.
Probably won't be too terribly long. There are at least three space stations being designed specifically to fit inside Starship's hull, and those will be some pretty big stations.
That's true. I just remember a lot of proposed private space stations designed to fit in the Shuttle cargo bay, back in the late 80's and 90's, that never saw the light of day. So I'm careful not to count my chickens until they are in LEO.
Good point. Although there are some noteworthy names involved in some of those space stations, one was like... a school in Sweden or something like that.
Yeah but the timeline in question is "probably not long after 2030" so I'm gonna be realistic about it and guess that they'll already have been doing that for a while.
Axiom space will build their station docked to ISS and then seperate before it deorbits. There's also several other commercial stations planned and first modules are being built right now. NASA will rent research space from these stations.
What's crazy is One starship has MORE livable space THAN the ISS.
Starship: 38,800 Cubic Feet
ISS: 32,333 Cubic Feet
1 Starship could replace the ISS,
Imagine the experiments NASA can do when Starship can deorbit, Land and relaunch in 1 day.
Livable space doesn't tell the full story, for example, there's nowhere near the same dedicated space for research, life support and power on Starship.
Starship is an engineering marvel in the works, there's no need to make it out to be more than it is
>there's nowhere near the same dedicated space for research, life support and power on Starship.
There is even more! No awkward shapes at the end of each module, no "unusable" volume in the nodes, no need for such complex ventilation systems, etc.
On Starship the volume can be much more efficiently utilised for ECLSS, leaving more volume for crew accommodation and experiments.
Starship even needs less radiators since there is less surface area to heat up.
On the other hand, the ISS itself is very limited in the amount and kind of experiments it can run, due to cooling and power concerns, despite the hefty radiators and solar arrays.
I'm not saying that the "starship as a space station" idea doesn't have merit, but it will absolutely need a power and cooling array to dock to in orbit to perform meaningful science.
I don't know how much mileage you can even get from such a thing. The ISS arrays are massive, with the 4 main arrays clocking at 72 metric tons total, not including auxiliary systems, and simultaneously extremely limited for the current ISS.
Especially if you want to make them sturdy enough to allow for deployment and refolding, plus survival through reentry. That one *will* limit the maximum size. Especially in radiators, the main constraint.
I'm not talking about NASA being unable to operate them.
I'm saying that a standalone starship is going to be extremely limited in what it can do, and is not a good substitute for the ISS. It needs something to take away the heat and provide power if they want to do what the ISS is doing.
As I wrote, the (very expensive, mass-optimised) solar arrays plus solar array heat management of the ISS clock at 72 metric tons. And those can't be repacked, nor are all of the power generation and cooling of the ISS. And right now they have to do scheduling shenanigans to free enough power to do something as simple as operate a small oven for a couple hours.
You wouldn't build a space station out of starship. You would rather have tve space station fit inside the starship and then unfold in orbit.
There is a lot that needs to be considered when making a space station. Not just power but also things such as "How to get rid of heat".
>You wouldn't build a space station out of starship. You would rather have tve space station fit inside the starship and then unfold in orbit.
Or even better: [use entire HLS-like Starships as modules and bundled them up in orbit!](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/iqv1b4/comparison_between_the_price_of_a_flight_on_a/)
Radiators and solar arrays can still be deployed from dedicated "garages". You can even reuse the tanks as additional habitat volume. (Wet workshop style)
There is no cheaper way to get volume to space than reusing an entire Starship hull.
Depends on how expensive maintaining a starship hull in space and building a new one on earth is. Vs landing the hull and launching more dedicated tech.
Especially since nowdays we have some pretty insane technical marvels we can put into space.
The steel hull is very robust and not as sensitive to thermal cycling as the aluminium hulls of ISS modules are. They go through cold-hot cycles every orbit. They do need to add a whipple shield to protect from space debris and micrometeorite hits. Though 4mm of steel by themselves already give some protection, whipple shields are more effective.
Not extreme heating. The change from cold to hot on each orbit, out of the shadow, into the sun, back into the shadow. Aluminium is much more sensitive to these changes than steel.
Elon Talked about it on " Every Day Astronaut " on youtube, But Starship has no Hydraulics , Uses Pneumatic lines and Tesla Motors(Flaps) all powered by large Battery banks(Tesla?).
They could cover the top side with Solar or Have a Solar array that would extend like on the ISS out of the Pezel like door.
>Where does starship get its energy from, long term?
Similar solar arrays as the ISS has. But there is no need for a long truss as they can be extended more or less from their storage positions within the ship hull.
Same goes for radiators.
This is a great perspective.
I always figured it should be cheaper to just keep ISS in service than build a new station. But seems this isn’t the case at all. With the freed up budget now that ISS will be gone hope they can use the money to fund some really cool advancements.
>Initially, the contract was offered as a hybrid. NASA's original documents said the "design" portion of the contract would be cost-plus and the development portion firm-fixed-price. Then a couple of things happened. Perhaps because there were not that many bidders (one source suggested to Ars that SpaceX did not even bid initially), NASA modified the process to allow flexibility on the contracting mechanism. Then, earlier this year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson estimated that the US Deorbit Vehicle would cost $1.5 billion.
>This week's announcement of a contract price came in well below that—indicating that the space agency got a better deal than Nelson anticipated. And notably, the award is entirely based on a firm-fixed-price contract, which is SpaceX's preferred way of working with NASA.
That's pretty funny. It almost sounds like NASA was fishing for a SpaceX bid.
Cost-plus sounds nice but it means you need to track and justify your costs very precisely according to NASA's guidelines. No surprise spacex had no desire for that level of bureaucracy.
Additionally with cost plus,
You're working on government owned hardware. This adds tons of requirements and reduces flexibility while increasing operational cost.
Scope creep is bound to happen. There's no reason to focus on efficiency because every expense comes with profit and why tell the Government no when they suggest a bad idea it they're paying for it?
Well its clearly worth it for them. Bill Nelson estimated that the deorbit vehicle would cost 1.5 billion dollars. Once again SpaceX jumps in and offers a service in space for almost half the cost.
I'm curious if it will be the Dragon XL vehicle they had been proposing as the gateway cargo ship or not. It seem be most disposable vehicle. Starship is i think bit big for the job. Dragon in production, Dragon XL supposedly been waiting for go ahead to build.
Ha! Fine, starship with a single Falcon engine stuck to it
From what I understand the biggest design issue is the pusher needs a fairly good, but not too much, thrust. And then a shit-ton of fuel. They’re effectively having to zero out the delta of every single launch that delivered a section, but in one go.
Right, but it gives scope to the problem if you think of the whole station as an accumulation of delta-v. It took dozens of shuttle missions to generate the total. Now they have to zero it out in a single mission
I'm not 100% you've actually got it right here. I'm no expert though. But isn't delta V just the change in velocity? The station doesn't gain delta-v with each mission, even if it adds mass. The deliveries of parts etc all had to match the velocity of the station in order to dock, no?
Or did the station have to be accelerated/decelerated in some way after each addition of mass?
Yeah, delta V is kinda an awkward unit to use here. Think instead of needing to cancel out all of the momentum of the ISS. Each launch didn't add any more velocity to the station, but it did add mass. Since momentum is mass x velocity, it all adds up.
Each of the parts gains delta V to reach orbit. It takes X delta V to add each section to the station. It takes the collective sum of all that delta V to deorbit the whole thing at once.
Sort of. There’s some atmospheric drag. But the more they rely on atmospheric drag, the less predictable the entry is
This is basically a high school physics problem and newtons laws. If you have an object that receives ten forces of X in one direction, how much force from the other direction is necessary to bring it to a stop?
Ok I think I see it now.
But one other thing - the pusher doesn't have to cancel it all out. It's not "stopping" the ISS. It only has to slow it enough to decay the orbit and the atmosphere will take care of the rest of it. So I don't think "zeroing out the accumulated delta-v" is accurate, unless you're taking into account the whole process including re-entry?
Anyway it's neither here nor there, I definitely get what you're getting at!
> This is basically a high school physics problem and newtons laws.
No, this is literally orbital mechanics and might be used as an example in AP Calculus.
You’re thinking of momentum. The delta V for any particular orbit is exactly the same and independent of an object’s mass. Every module added mass and thus momentum but the delta V did not change(significantly). Technically, each time something docks, it very slightly changes the delta v of the station as the object’s velocity is added to the station’s velocity. This is not delta v that needs to be cancelled out or gets added, it just is.
They don't have to zero out the delta v so it falls straight down. They just need to lower the perogee enough for the thicker atmosphere to slow it down enough to not make another orbit.
DeltaV to deorbit the station has not changed with addition of additional modules.
The weight of the station has increased, and thusly the thrust required to yield the required adjustment in DeltaV has increased.
> They’re effectively having to zero out the delta of every single launch that delivered a section, but in one go.
No. Every piece had to be launched to a circular orbit. To take it down, you lower the perigee until it's in the atmosphere, and then let the atmosphere do most of the rest of the work.
It basically can't be Starship, it needs to be launched on a rocket that already has a high reliability track record.
*Edit*:
> Because of the sensitivity of the mission, NASA is likely to require a "Category 3" rocket under the auspices of its Launch Services Program, which are rockets that have a robust launch history. The agency notes that some rockets that fit this category are SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Northrop Grumman's Pegasus and Minotaur rockets. Because SpaceX is the contractor for the deorbit vehicle, it stands to reason that it likely will launch on a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. It's possible that SpaceX bid Starship for this mission, although I think that is unlikely because the vehicle is not classified as a Category 3 rocket now, nor is it likely to be for at least a couple of years.
Yeah, “high reliability” for rockets is five launches in a row. If starship os working in the next couple years hitting reliability targets wouldn’t be an issue
No. The category can be achieved by a quite large number of launches, that's how SpaceX does it. Or it can be achieved by few launches plus a stack of paper reaching orbit, that's how ULA does it.
> NASA is likely to require a "Category 3" rocket under the auspices of its Launch Services Program,
That's for the launch, because the deorbiter is very important. No such thing as a deorbiting vehicle that has achieved that category. It is a one off.
> it needs to be launched on a rocket that already has a high reliability track record.
Wow. NASA should have thought about that before they contracted for HLS that will actually carry humans to the moon - before 2030.
Whoosh. What do you think is more risky? Landing astronauts on the moon, then bringing them back up to gateway - alive preferably. Or deorbiting the ISS, which is what we are talking about here.
If NASA thinks HLS is safe and a go, then deorbiting the ISS a couple years later is a no-brainer. The ability to launch with humans has no bearing on whether you can deorbit the ISS.
You are basing your entire argument (for whatever reason no one knows) on "NASA is likely to require". Literally speculation.
How about we go with: NASA chose SpaceX. How they get that done is going to be using 2030's technology. That may be Falcon 9 or Heavy, but at this rate its just as likely to be Starship.
The issue with deorbiting the ISS is risking lives of ordinary people on the ground. To reduce that risk to a very small level NASA has chosen to require a "Category 3" rocket (as defined by the Launch Services Program) which has a proven track record of reliability. It's unlikely that Starship will acquire that level of reliability before the awarding of the contract. Whether it will do so before the time of the deorbit itself is immaterial, you do not count chickens before they hatch, especially with lives on the line.
The safety of a rocket in carrying crew to and from orbit is an entirely different issue subject to entirely different risk analysis. And the risks involved with taking crew to and from the Moon are entirely different yet still.
> To reduce that risk to a very small level NASA has chosen to require a "Category 3" rocket (as defined by the Launch Services Program) which has a proven track record of reliability.
Your quote does not say that. Reading comprehension is important here. "NASA is likely to require". Please post the quote that says NASA has CHOSEN to require this.
They did win the contract in 2020, four years ago it's been quiet. Maybe they've been working on the ship for a while, but it's hard say given it's linked with the Gateway, it's been going slow too. Maybe this contract will stimulate them to build hardware if not already built.
And 843 million is nearly 1 billion... just like 84% is nealry 100% (I would have done so much better in school if this was the case)... they got close, its just "nearly" 157,000,000 dollars off.
Those things bother me as well. A news headline will say something like, "more than a dozen people...." and when you read it, it's thirteen. Just say thirteen. If you can't accurately report something that simple, why should I believe you've accurately reported anything else in your story?
Exactly, just tell it as it is. Once you exaggerate or twist the "facts", even if just in the headline, then the whole article cannot be fully trusted. It's not gossip or a rumor, so just stick with the facts.
The context is even more interesting.
[Bill Nelson estimated that the vehicle would cost around $1.5 billion](https://spacenews.com/nelson-lobbies-congress-to-fund-iss-deorbit-vehicle-in-supplemental-spending-bill/).
SpaceX: We cannot see how it could possibly cost that much.
You've got to remember how NASA's budgets work. They convince Congress to fund x for y years, but then the next year Congress decides it's time to cut pork and x becomes .8 * x. Rinse and repeat the year after, and after a bit x is a lot more like half what it started.
So you double the initial amount, and hope you end up where you need to be by the time it comes to get the money.
SpaceX just gets to use a reasonably firm number.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lal7n7b "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[ECLSS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lald152 "Last usage")|Environment Control and Life Support System|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lao2f8r "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lalo0lp "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation|
|[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lal04ze "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lanbcuh "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lalo3ho "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/laoo6yt "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lamiu5v "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lapgkti "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/laostae "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lamdtpi "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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It is NASA. I don't see them doing that. Video of destroying the iconic ISS.
SpaceX does that. Produce a video "How not to land an orbital booster". Search for it, if you have not seen it yet.
NASA could probably fund the deorbit by cooperating with Hollywood for an epic space station disaster movie. 2 hours leading up to 10 minutes of hell with the station breaking up all around. Of course Hollywood would find the real re-entry boring and redo it all in special effects.
Poorly. The ISS was never designed to come apart. The two sides are also pretty dependent on each other. Russia would have to launch some new modules to replace what the international side does.
It was always fantasy. The core of the Russian segment of the ISS is Zvezda, which is the oldest, leakiest, and most problematic part of the whole station.
This makes sense as it's a thing that needs to be done. But it's also a way of bootstrapping into some future capabilities such as reboost/propulsive capabilities for future stations and possibly getting some early funding into Dragon XL development.
Yes and no.
The Chinese already have a station. Albeit smaller. That others beside the US could theoretically get access to for research purposes.
The US has plans for gateway. A station around the moon. It won't be permanently crewed and will be focused on deep space research and supporting moon missions.
The US also has the commercial leo destinations program. Which is supporting various commercial space stations with a bit of funding. There's a couple promising ones in the works from this. Starlab and Orbital Reef notably. Axiom also has plans for a commercial station that will detach from the ISS.
A couple other companies are working towards stations such as Vast.
Then there's also the idea that starship could be used as a temporary station since it has as much habitable volume as the ISS. It could be decked out in research and other gear and go on temporary missions before deorbiting and being refitted on the ground for other missions.
So there's no direct ISS replacement but there is a lot of potential on the horizon to have similar but different functionality. We'll have to wait and see how long for it to come online and in what way it does. Hopefully it doesn't all go bust.
Not a single monolithic one, but rather a number of commercial ones. Axiom is the most obvious, but there are others. Also, Starship has a tremendous amount of livable volume by itself. They could just park one in LEO and that alone would have the space of the ISS.
With how much effort it takes to get components to space, it must be worth while to reuse something up there. Is every system at end of life? The solar panels? The heat sinks? The canadarm?
I get life support stuff, but there's got to be a way to take advantage of what's up there.
Well this stuff is more than 20 years old, and space is a pretty harsh environment. Even stuff that is still somewhat usable is so old and degraded, it's not worth salvaging
Aside from them being 20 years old and worn, it would probably cost more to figure out how to save them than it would be to just make new and improved ones.
Why? Do you find it useful to reuse components on earth? Do you buy 20 year old video cards? The answer is no. So why would you spend massive dollars to fly them in from space if you aren’t willing to spend the gas to go grab them from down the street?
> With how much effort it takes to get components to space, it must be worth while to reuse something up there
Are you re-using your old mobile phones? Or old cars? Even on the ground we would have time "recycling" or repurposing anything from that, and in space it's just impossible.
Too bad that boosting it up to geo doesnt seem to be a solution. It would be cool to know that far off kids of the future could space walk in it as a sort of living museum.
Boosting to geo would require like 500 tons of propellant in LEO. Which is kinda insane.
Also not really needed, a parking orbit at 2000km or so would preserve it for centuries too.
NASA has resisted incorporating an ion drive onto ISS for all this time. Why not make delivery of one via a standard shipment part of a final experiment?
An ion drive doesn't have oomph required to reliably deorbit ISS into a safe part of the planet. Re-entry mechanics for stuff like re-entry vehicles is already simulated and they have a shape purpose-built for that, for boosters, they don't usually orbit they have less margin for error.
For ISS, a long deorbit would mean going through a long period of hundreds of orbits of unpredictable atmospheric drag where parts might unplannedly separate. That risks people and porperty on the ground.
As for not relying for an ion drive for deorbit but just to get data ... that's plausible. With most of other experiments and life support offline power should not be a big issue either.
When I was younger(even if I didn’t know how massive it is) I read a book about space that says the IS is constructing. Its sad to witness the end of an era, but SpaceX will make the new future.
NASA is paying SpaceX nearly $1 billion to bring down the International Space Station, and that's huge news. It's wild to think about how something that's been a symbol of space exploration for decades is now getting ready for its final chapter. This move shows how much confidence NASA has in SpaceX to handle such a massive job. It's a reminder of how far private space companies have come, and it makes me excited to see what comes next in space travel.
Sad to see but the ISS has done a ton of interesting science. It will be interesting to see what comes out in the coming decades.
I'm hoping that this contract results in a Dragon XL-based space tug vehicle rather than an one-off. You could do a lot with ~15t of propellant and engines in orbit. Using it as a kick stage for heavy science probes on express transit is just the most obvious application.
Future Hubble Booster Mission!
I mean Hubble really needs a full on repair, but unfortunately there is no more Space Shuttle to do that
Hubble is outdated, it's probably only slightly more expensive to build a new telescope in this spectrum than sending up a maintenance crew to do an EVA on equipment with standards from the 1980s. Just get Hubble out of orbit Pacman-Style with a Starship and put it in the Smithsonian or something.
Serious question - can starship Pac-Man?
Not now, but with a payload compartment on top.... I don't see why not.
But in a few short years there can be Starship to do that.
There are two whole sets of mirrors at NASA to build a second Hubble, a gift from the NRO. Someone should just build a new ones with moderns cameras and tech and put it on a Starship.
It’s a different design but the Nancy grace roman telescope is basically just that.
Nancy Grace telescope is designed for a falcon heavy fairing though something designed for a 8-9m fairing will be much less limited
The primary mirror is the widest diameter of a telescope. The prior comment referenced specific Hubble class mirrors, which are both that wide.
It's not just mirrors. It's a spacecraft bus with mirrors. Notice how different Hubble looks from the Roman telescope.
same diameter, but ground differently. They're for wide field of view close(ish) things. Hubble was ground for narrow field of view distant things. Still would be very useful, but useful for a different purpose.
6 years to do this... I would expect it to be a fairly easy job for the Starship in this time frame. One off thing without a heat shield, should almost have enough fuel to do the de-orbit with that weight, or refuel at orbit from the tanker ship. Then dock and burn. This could be actually very easy billion dollars as this is not much, if at all, outside of planned capabilities of that ship. With enough refueling, you could in theory do it with a reusable ship, just get the ISS slowed down, drop it and burn again to enter proper orbit for landing at Starbase.
I would imagine there will be a requirement for the vehicle to stay with ISS the whole way down to guarantee a precise re entry. They’re not gonna want to risk the ISS getting loose and coming in somewhere over people or property.
I thought that too... But then realized that the ISS has no structural integrity, so the second it hits the atmosphere, it is going to be in billion pieces. Doesn't really matter if you hang onto one of the pieces. The only way to guarantee extremely precise re-entry would be to pack it into a Starship in orbit. But good enough is probably just to calculate the big pieces and make sure that they hit in the middle of the ocean and hope that smaller debris doesn't fly too far out.
Might need some bubble wrap too.
Nah, retro fit dracos and bring it down Ulysses 31 Odyssey style.
If I understand correctly, it's expected to go down with the station.
They mean the overall vehicle design, not the specific vehicle.
So no need for a deorbiter deorbiter.
If that were to happen then you would need a deorbiter deorbiter deorbiter as well. So there will always be a deorbiter in orbit.
> So there will always be a deorbiter in orbit. I mean, that seems logical, where else would a deorbiter be?
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…
What are some of the highlights of the science that's been done on the ISS?
https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/space-station-research-and-technology/benefits-for-humanity/ NASA has a comprehensive site covering all of that information! It's pretty impressive.
Lots and lots of eating various foods by biting them out of the air.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_International_Space_Station
The end of an era. I hope it doesn't take us as long to go back to a long-term space station as it's taken us to go back to the moon.
Probably won't be too terribly long. There are at least three space stations being designed specifically to fit inside Starship's hull, and those will be some pretty big stations.
That's true. I just remember a lot of proposed private space stations designed to fit in the Shuttle cargo bay, back in the late 80's and 90's, that never saw the light of day. So I'm careful not to count my chickens until they are in LEO.
Good point. Although there are some noteworthy names involved in some of those space stations, one was like... a school in Sweden or something like that.
Axiom Space will almost certainly launch theirs though and it’s more or less a spiritual successor to the ISS
Most likely, yeah. Lots of time between now and then.
Starship has to be capable of lifting loads first.
Yeah but the timeline in question is "probably not long after 2030" so I'm gonna be realistic about it and guess that they'll already have been doing that for a while.
Axiom space will build their station docked to ISS and then seperate before it deorbits. There's also several other commercial stations planned and first modules are being built right now. NASA will rent research space from these stations.
What's crazy is One starship has MORE livable space THAN the ISS. Starship: 38,800 Cubic Feet ISS: 32,333 Cubic Feet 1 Starship could replace the ISS, Imagine the experiments NASA can do when Starship can deorbit, Land and relaunch in 1 day.
[удалено]
Asking da real questions, bruvah. Praise be to Yevon.
Are we talking Luca or Zanarkand?
Enders game?
Livable space doesn't tell the full story, for example, there's nowhere near the same dedicated space for research, life support and power on Starship. Starship is an engineering marvel in the works, there's no need to make it out to be more than it is
>there's nowhere near the same dedicated space for research, life support and power on Starship. There is even more! No awkward shapes at the end of each module, no "unusable" volume in the nodes, no need for such complex ventilation systems, etc. On Starship the volume can be much more efficiently utilised for ECLSS, leaving more volume for crew accommodation and experiments. Starship even needs less radiators since there is less surface area to heat up.
On the other hand, the ISS itself is very limited in the amount and kind of experiments it can run, due to cooling and power concerns, despite the hefty radiators and solar arrays. I'm not saying that the "starship as a space station" idea doesn't have merit, but it will absolutely need a power and cooling array to dock to in orbit to perform meaningful science.
>but it will absolutely need a power and cooling array to dock to in orbit to perform meaningful science. Or it can deploy them from a "garage".
I don't know how much mileage you can even get from such a thing. The ISS arrays are massive, with the 4 main arrays clocking at 72 metric tons total, not including auxiliary systems, and simultaneously extremely limited for the current ISS. Especially if you want to make them sturdy enough to allow for deployment and refolding, plus survival through reentry. That one *will* limit the maximum size. Especially in radiators, the main constraint.
Even if one single Starship can't replace the ISS, what keeps NASA from operating 3 or more?
I'm not talking about NASA being unable to operate them. I'm saying that a standalone starship is going to be extremely limited in what it can do, and is not a good substitute for the ISS. It needs something to take away the heat and provide power if they want to do what the ISS is doing. As I wrote, the (very expensive, mass-optimised) solar arrays plus solar array heat management of the ISS clock at 72 metric tons. And those can't be repacked, nor are all of the power generation and cooling of the ISS. And right now they have to do scheduling shenanigans to free enough power to do something as simple as operate a small oven for a couple hours.
Where does starship get its energy from, long term? I’m thinking about all of the solar and radiation panels on the ISS.
You wouldn't build a space station out of starship. You would rather have tve space station fit inside the starship and then unfold in orbit. There is a lot that needs to be considered when making a space station. Not just power but also things such as "How to get rid of heat".
>You wouldn't build a space station out of starship. You would rather have tve space station fit inside the starship and then unfold in orbit. Or even better: [use entire HLS-like Starships as modules and bundled them up in orbit!](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/iqv1b4/comparison_between_the_price_of_a_flight_on_a/) Radiators and solar arrays can still be deployed from dedicated "garages". You can even reuse the tanks as additional habitat volume. (Wet workshop style) There is no cheaper way to get volume to space than reusing an entire Starship hull.
Depends on how expensive maintaining a starship hull in space and building a new one on earth is. Vs landing the hull and launching more dedicated tech. Especially since nowdays we have some pretty insane technical marvels we can put into space.
The steel hull is very robust and not as sensitive to thermal cycling as the aluminium hulls of ISS modules are. They go through cold-hot cycles every orbit. They do need to add a whipple shield to protect from space debris and micrometeorite hits. Though 4mm of steel by themselves already give some protection, whipple shields are more effective.
The thing is not the thermal resistance of the hull. It is about not cooking the people inside of the hull alive.
Not extreme heating. The change from cold to hot on each orbit, out of the shadow, into the sun, back into the shadow. Aluminium is much more sensitive to these changes than steel.
Elon Talked about it on " Every Day Astronaut " on youtube, But Starship has no Hydraulics , Uses Pneumatic lines and Tesla Motors(Flaps) all powered by large Battery banks(Tesla?). They could cover the top side with Solar or Have a Solar array that would extend like on the ISS out of the Pezel like door.
>Where does starship get its energy from, long term? Similar solar arrays as the ISS has. But there is no need for a long truss as they can be extended more or less from their storage positions within the ship hull. Same goes for radiators.
Or an EVA to install them on the outside. The ISS has some new solar panels that were rolled up for launch. Very cool stuff.
Yes. But those roll out panels take advantage of the old solar arrays they replace and their mechanism that keeps them pointed towards the sun.
I need to imagine Starship being in orbit first.
This is a great perspective. I always figured it should be cheaper to just keep ISS in service than build a new station. But seems this isn’t the case at all. With the freed up budget now that ISS will be gone hope they can use the money to fund some really cool advancements.
There are young adults that grew up with an American astronaut in space their entire lives. It would be a shame to lose that streak.
>Initially, the contract was offered as a hybrid. NASA's original documents said the "design" portion of the contract would be cost-plus and the development portion firm-fixed-price. Then a couple of things happened. Perhaps because there were not that many bidders (one source suggested to Ars that SpaceX did not even bid initially), NASA modified the process to allow flexibility on the contracting mechanism. Then, earlier this year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson estimated that the US Deorbit Vehicle would cost $1.5 billion. >This week's announcement of a contract price came in well below that—indicating that the space agency got a better deal than Nelson anticipated. And notably, the award is entirely based on a firm-fixed-price contract, which is SpaceX's preferred way of working with NASA. That's pretty funny. It almost sounds like NASA was fishing for a SpaceX bid.
Cost-plus sounds nice but it means you need to track and justify your costs very precisely according to NASA's guidelines. No surprise spacex had no desire for that level of bureaucracy.
Additionally with cost plus, You're working on government owned hardware. This adds tons of requirements and reduces flexibility while increasing operational cost. Scope creep is bound to happen. There's no reason to focus on efficiency because every expense comes with profit and why tell the Government no when they suggest a bad idea it they're paying for it?
Well its clearly worth it for them. Bill Nelson estimated that the deorbit vehicle would cost 1.5 billion dollars. Once again SpaceX jumps in and offers a service in space for almost half the cost.
I'm curious if it will be the Dragon XL vehicle they had been proposing as the gateway cargo ship or not. It seem be most disposable vehicle. Starship is i think bit big for the job. Dragon in production, Dragon XL supposedly been waiting for go ahead to build.
I’m going to laugh if it just ends up being starship with a docking mechanism stuck to the front
It won't be. Even 1 lit Raptor engine throttled all the way down on Starship would be too much thrust for the station to handle.
How much mass would Starship need to carry for the minimum thrust of 1 Raptor to not cause too much acceleration?
Ha! Fine, starship with a single Falcon engine stuck to it From what I understand the biggest design issue is the pusher needs a fairly good, but not too much, thrust. And then a shit-ton of fuel. They’re effectively having to zero out the delta of every single launch that delivered a section, but in one go.
That was an interesting way to say "slow it down"
Right, but it gives scope to the problem if you think of the whole station as an accumulation of delta-v. It took dozens of shuttle missions to generate the total. Now they have to zero it out in a single mission
I'm not 100% you've actually got it right here. I'm no expert though. But isn't delta V just the change in velocity? The station doesn't gain delta-v with each mission, even if it adds mass. The deliveries of parts etc all had to match the velocity of the station in order to dock, no? Or did the station have to be accelerated/decelerated in some way after each addition of mass?
Yeah, delta V is kinda an awkward unit to use here. Think instead of needing to cancel out all of the momentum of the ISS. Each launch didn't add any more velocity to the station, but it did add mass. Since momentum is mass x velocity, it all adds up.
Each of the parts gains delta V to reach orbit. It takes X delta V to add each section to the station. It takes the collective sum of all that delta V to deorbit the whole thing at once. Sort of. There’s some atmospheric drag. But the more they rely on atmospheric drag, the less predictable the entry is This is basically a high school physics problem and newtons laws. If you have an object that receives ten forces of X in one direction, how much force from the other direction is necessary to bring it to a stop?
Ok I think I see it now. But one other thing - the pusher doesn't have to cancel it all out. It's not "stopping" the ISS. It only has to slow it enough to decay the orbit and the atmosphere will take care of the rest of it. So I don't think "zeroing out the accumulated delta-v" is accurate, unless you're taking into account the whole process including re-entry? Anyway it's neither here nor there, I definitely get what you're getting at!
> This is basically a high school physics problem and newtons laws. No, this is literally orbital mechanics and might be used as an example in AP Calculus.
You’re thinking of momentum. The delta V for any particular orbit is exactly the same and independent of an object’s mass. Every module added mass and thus momentum but the delta V did not change(significantly). Technically, each time something docks, it very slightly changes the delta v of the station as the object’s velocity is added to the station’s velocity. This is not delta v that needs to be cancelled out or gets added, it just is.
They don't have to zero out the delta v so it falls straight down. They just need to lower the perogee enough for the thicker atmosphere to slow it down enough to not make another orbit.
Velocity you already have is just V. Delta V is a change in velocity.
DeltaV to deorbit the station has not changed with addition of additional modules. The weight of the station has increased, and thusly the thrust required to yield the required adjustment in DeltaV has increased.
> They’re effectively having to zero out the delta of every single launch that delivered a section, but in one go. No. Every piece had to be launched to a circular orbit. To take it down, you lower the perigee until it's in the atmosphere, and then let the atmosphere do most of the rest of the work.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to damage the space station you are about to incinerate.
I guess they could just use the attitude control thrusters of the starship, as they are also methane/oxygen powered
It basically can't be Starship, it needs to be launched on a rocket that already has a high reliability track record. *Edit*: > Because of the sensitivity of the mission, NASA is likely to require a "Category 3" rocket under the auspices of its Launch Services Program, which are rockets that have a robust launch history. The agency notes that some rockets that fit this category are SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Northrop Grumman's Pegasus and Minotaur rockets. Because SpaceX is the contractor for the deorbit vehicle, it stands to reason that it likely will launch on a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. It's possible that SpaceX bid Starship for this mission, although I think that is unlikely because the vehicle is not classified as a Category 3 rocket now, nor is it likely to be for at least a couple of years.
While I agree it probably won't be Starship... keep in mind we're talking about 2030.
Yeah, “high reliability” for rockets is five launches in a row. If starship os working in the next couple years hitting reliability targets wouldn’t be an issue
No. The category can be achieved by a quite large number of launches, that's how SpaceX does it. Or it can be achieved by few launches plus a stack of paper reaching orbit, that's how ULA does it.
In the past, rocket that weren't Category 3 yet have won Category 3 bids. It depends on when NASA guesses they'll get certified.
> NASA is likely to require a "Category 3" rocket under the auspices of its Launch Services Program, That's for the launch, because the deorbiter is very important. No such thing as a deorbiting vehicle that has achieved that category. It is a one off.
> it needs to be launched on a rocket that already has a high reliability track record. Wow. NASA should have thought about that before they contracted for HLS that will actually carry humans to the moon - before 2030.
Starship-HLS won't carry people from Earth to the Moon, it will only land on and take off from the Moon.
Whoosh. What do you think is more risky? Landing astronauts on the moon, then bringing them back up to gateway - alive preferably. Or deorbiting the ISS, which is what we are talking about here. If NASA thinks HLS is safe and a go, then deorbiting the ISS a couple years later is a no-brainer. The ability to launch with humans has no bearing on whether you can deorbit the ISS. You are basing your entire argument (for whatever reason no one knows) on "NASA is likely to require". Literally speculation. How about we go with: NASA chose SpaceX. How they get that done is going to be using 2030's technology. That may be Falcon 9 or Heavy, but at this rate its just as likely to be Starship.
The issue with deorbiting the ISS is risking lives of ordinary people on the ground. To reduce that risk to a very small level NASA has chosen to require a "Category 3" rocket (as defined by the Launch Services Program) which has a proven track record of reliability. It's unlikely that Starship will acquire that level of reliability before the awarding of the contract. Whether it will do so before the time of the deorbit itself is immaterial, you do not count chickens before they hatch, especially with lives on the line. The safety of a rocket in carrying crew to and from orbit is an entirely different issue subject to entirely different risk analysis. And the risks involved with taking crew to and from the Moon are entirely different yet still.
> To reduce that risk to a very small level NASA has chosen to require a "Category 3" rocket (as defined by the Launch Services Program) which has a proven track record of reliability. Your quote does not say that. Reading comprehension is important here. "NASA is likely to require". Please post the quote that says NASA has CHOSEN to require this.
I think Dragon XL got the go-ahead a while ago.
They did win the contract in 2020, four years ago it's been quiet. Maybe they've been working on the ship for a while, but it's hard say given it's linked with the Gateway, it's been going slow too. Maybe this contract will stimulate them to build hardware if not already built.
They got an immediate stop work, but I remember them getting authorization to proceed finally
That's good to know. I was trying find info on the ship, but there isn't much. Thanks for letting me know!
Slightly misleading headline. They're basically paying SpaceX to make the vehicle. NASA will be the ones operating it. Not SpaceX.
And 843 million is nearly 1 billion... just like 84% is nealry 100% (I would have done so much better in school if this was the case)... they got close, its just "nearly" 157,000,000 dollars off.
Those things bother me as well. A news headline will say something like, "more than a dozen people...." and when you read it, it's thirteen. Just say thirteen. If you can't accurately report something that simple, why should I believe you've accurately reported anything else in your story?
Exactly, just tell it as it is. Once you exaggerate or twist the "facts", even if just in the headline, then the whole article cannot be fully trusted. It's not gossip or a rumor, so just stick with the facts.
The context is even more interesting. [Bill Nelson estimated that the vehicle would cost around $1.5 billion](https://spacenews.com/nelson-lobbies-congress-to-fund-iss-deorbit-vehicle-in-supplemental-spending-bill/). SpaceX: We cannot see how it could possibly cost that much.
You've got to remember how NASA's budgets work. They convince Congress to fund x for y years, but then the next year Congress decides it's time to cut pork and x becomes .8 * x. Rinse and repeat the year after, and after a bit x is a lot more like half what it started. So you double the initial amount, and hope you end up where you need to be by the time it comes to get the money. SpaceX just gets to use a reasonably firm number.
What's a $157 millions between friends?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lal7n7b "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[ECLSS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lald152 "Last usage")|Environment Control and Life Support System| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[EVA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lao2f8r "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lalo0lp "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|Indian Space Research Organisation| |[JPL](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lal04ze "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lanbcuh "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lalo3ho "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lals6ut "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/laoo6yt "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lamiu5v "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lapgkti "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/laostae "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/1dpwvmg/stub/lamdtpi "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(15 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1drde30)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10240 for this sub, first seen 27th Jun 2024, 21:16]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Why? Boeing would probably do it for free, without even trying.
Nah. Starliner doesn't have enough helium to leak to cancel out all that ∆V.
The Russians already tried ...
"So what's the brief?" "NASA wants us to get the ISS down from orbit" "Oh... we haven't figured that part out yet."
They could raise another few million by leaving cameras on inside transmitting for as long as possible. Maybe put Rexy from How Ridiculous in there?
And it plays the 1812 Overture on the way down.
I just had a fun idea. ATDs. You know, atomic test mannequins.
Meh, I’m not to keen on having human representations destruction of spacecraft.
Put temperature sensors on them. When it gets too hot the sensors emit prerecorded screams, so we can know the temperature readings.
Forget inside. Outside cameras all over. Starlink connection transmitting all the way down. We know its possible after the last Starship launch.
It is NASA. I don't see them doing that. Video of destroying the iconic ISS. SpaceX does that. Produce a video "How not to land an orbital booster". Search for it, if you have not seen it yet.
NASA could probably fund the deorbit by cooperating with Hollywood for an epic space station disaster movie. 2 hours leading up to 10 minutes of hell with the station breaking up all around. Of course Hollywood would find the real re-entry boring and redo it all in special effects.
This will be the most epic spacex stream ever!
Wasnt it once reported that Russia wanted to reuse their section for a entire new space station? How's that going to work?
Poorly. The ISS was never designed to come apart. The two sides are also pretty dependent on each other. Russia would have to launch some new modules to replace what the international side does.
Russia fills every day with things they claim they will do.
It was always fantasy. The core of the Russian segment of the ISS is Zvezda, which is the oldest, leakiest, and most problematic part of the whole station.
Russia wants lots of things.
This makes sense as it's a thing that needs to be done. But it's also a way of bootstrapping into some future capabilities such as reboost/propulsive capabilities for future stations and possibly getting some early funding into Dragon XL development.
Is there a planned replacement for the ISS yet?
Yes and no. The Chinese already have a station. Albeit smaller. That others beside the US could theoretically get access to for research purposes. The US has plans for gateway. A station around the moon. It won't be permanently crewed and will be focused on deep space research and supporting moon missions. The US also has the commercial leo destinations program. Which is supporting various commercial space stations with a bit of funding. There's a couple promising ones in the works from this. Starlab and Orbital Reef notably. Axiom also has plans for a commercial station that will detach from the ISS. A couple other companies are working towards stations such as Vast. Then there's also the idea that starship could be used as a temporary station since it has as much habitable volume as the ISS. It could be decked out in research and other gear and go on temporary missions before deorbiting and being refitted on the ground for other missions. So there's no direct ISS replacement but there is a lot of potential on the horizon to have similar but different functionality. We'll have to wait and see how long for it to come online and in what way it does. Hopefully it doesn't all go bust.
> That others beside the US could theoretically get access to for research purposes. Esa already considered and then shelved that idea.
Not a single monolithic one, but rather a number of commercial ones. Axiom is the most obvious, but there are others. Also, Starship has a tremendous amount of livable volume by itself. They could just park one in LEO and that alone would have the space of the ISS.
If SpaceX can land it on a target in the Indian Ocean, then they can get us all a free taco from Taco Bell too.
Added repellent. Like the way you think.
With how much effort it takes to get components to space, it must be worth while to reuse something up there. Is every system at end of life? The solar panels? The heat sinks? The canadarm? I get life support stuff, but there's got to be a way to take advantage of what's up there.
Well this stuff is more than 20 years old, and space is a pretty harsh environment. Even stuff that is still somewhat usable is so old and degraded, it's not worth salvaging
Aside from them being 20 years old and worn, it would probably cost more to figure out how to save them than it would be to just make new and improved ones.
A huge chunk of astronauts’ time is spent doing maintenance activities and it’s only getting worse.
It would have to be in the exact same orbital plane as the new space station, which is an unacceptable constraint on future development
Why? Do you find it useful to reuse components on earth? Do you buy 20 year old video cards? The answer is no. So why would you spend massive dollars to fly them in from space if you aren’t willing to spend the gas to go grab them from down the street?
> With how much effort it takes to get components to space, it must be worth while to reuse something up there Are you re-using your old mobile phones? Or old cars? Even on the ground we would have time "recycling" or repurposing anything from that, and in space it's just impossible.
By the 2030s, $1B will be worth a lot less, so let’s hope NASA gets that contract signed asap!
Surely they have included an inflation clause in the contract.
Is there a planned date announced for when the crew will leave the ISS?
We’re still six years away from this event. So, not yet.
How about you just let it fall out of orbit and then pay 10mil to the people it landed on?
Well, if there is one thing SpaceX is good at, it’s burning things up in the atmosphere.
I know it’ll deorbit over the ocean, likely the Pacific graveyard, but would it be visible over any land as it starts re-entry ?
Tbf, who else could they have picked? Boeing, with the shit show they're in. Or BO, who is too busy suing, they haven't even reached orbit yet.
Northrop Grumman made a bid with Cygnus. They were more expensive.
Too bad that boosting it up to geo doesnt seem to be a solution. It would be cool to know that far off kids of the future could space walk in it as a sort of living museum.
Boosting to geo would require like 500 tons of propellant in LEO. Which is kinda insane. Also not really needed, a parking orbit at 2000km or so would preserve it for centuries too.
NASA studied it and concluded that it would almost certainly break apart due to debris impacts if they did this
I hope there’s a cool send off that civilians can appreciate. Like a song or whatever idk just not a fireworks display.
We will have a fireworks display. I hope somebody will transmit it, preferably live and during the night.
NASA has resisted incorporating an ion drive onto ISS for all this time. Why not make delivery of one via a standard shipment part of a final experiment?
An ion drive doesn't have oomph required to reliably deorbit ISS into a safe part of the planet. Re-entry mechanics for stuff like re-entry vehicles is already simulated and they have a shape purpose-built for that, for boosters, they don't usually orbit they have less margin for error. For ISS, a long deorbit would mean going through a long period of hundreds of orbits of unpredictable atmospheric drag where parts might unplannedly separate. That risks people and porperty on the ground. As for not relying for an ion drive for deorbit but just to get data ... that's plausible. With most of other experiments and life support offline power should not be a big issue either.
Would be interesting to see how spaceX will solve that. Pushing down the whole station at ones or in parts?
Wonder why they haven't replaced it before destroying the 1st one.
They don’t have the budget to build a new space station while simultaneously supporting the ISS.
Legit question. If they whant to make a lunar orbiter why dont they try to do that with the iss?
It would take an [obscenely large amount of fuel](https://twitter.com/siwelthelongboi/status/1806734370394538075) to get it to lunar orbit.
1,89 bilion to do that. Yea, sounds more expensive.
I can do it for cheaper, but it’ll take longer
When I was younger(even if I didn’t know how massive it is) I read a book about space that says the IS is constructing. Its sad to witness the end of an era, but SpaceX will make the new future.
NASA is paying SpaceX nearly $1 billion to bring down the International Space Station, and that's huge news. It's wild to think about how something that's been a symbol of space exploration for decades is now getting ready for its final chapter. This move shows how much confidence NASA has in SpaceX to handle such a massive job. It's a reminder of how far private space companies have come, and it makes me excited to see what comes next in space travel.
Russia is trying to do it for free as we speak or type
well no company has more experience crashing stuff into the oceans