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SpaceX to deliver vehicle to deorbit International Space Station
- bell-cot 2y ago> NASA announced SpaceX has been selected to develop and [emphasis mine] deliver the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle that will provide the capability to deorbit the space station and ensure avoidance of risk to populated areas. > The single-award contract has a total potential value of $843 million. The launch service for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle will be a future procurement. So...with $843M, what could SpaceX come up with? In Gwynne's shoes, I'd be looking to develop a vehicle with far wider application than a 1-off LEO deorbit burn. And, given the inability of most of SpaceX's competition to reliably delivery anything to orbit, I suspect that NASA has similar hopes.
- rbanffy 2y agoSuch a shame. Can’t we dismantle it and bring the pieces down in Starship flights? The American parts would look great at the Udvar Hazi. As for others, each one can be delivered to its country of origin. I’m assuming anything that did fit in a shuttle could fit inside a Starship. Not sure Russians would like that though. I’m betting they would prefer their pieces deorbited.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- HPsquared 2y agoI'm not sure how much they can carry on re-entry. More heating etc., and more weight when doing the landing.
- bilsbie 2y agoThey’re going to enter mars atmosphere with a full payload at a faster speed so I think it could handle it.
- dragonwriter 2y agoMars has less gravity and less atmosphere, so its not a comparable situation.
- senectus1 2y agothats the intention, its hardly a proven.
- wongarsu 2y agoMars has less than 1% the atmosphere of earth. That makes it easier in some ways and more difficult in others. I don't think you can really judge the performance when landing on Earth by looking at the performance when landing on Mars.
- mr_toad 2y agoAlso they’d need more fuel for the de-orbit burn.
- codeulike 2y agoIts going to be Starship again surely, with the right docking stuff to attach to the ISS. Or a modified Dragon?
- abracadaniel 2y agoModified Dragon seems like the simplest option. Dock and then burn retrogade while attached. Probably not nearly that simple in reality though.
- ShakataGaNai 2y agoYou don't need a lot, just something lined up on the correct axis with enough engines and fuel to slow the station down enough to fall out of orbit. The station has its own propulsion (on Zvezda & Zarya, I believe) even with most of its station keeping being down by Progress etc. There's no reason they couldn't loft something with an F9 (23t to LEO) or maybe FH (64t to LEO). With the fact that it's going to burn up in atmo anyways, you can strip a lot out of the existing cargo dragon. You can slowly deorbit anything with enough time/fuel. It's just a matter of how fast NASA wants to make it happen to assure it lands in a specific spot and doesn't breakup too much while still in "orbit" (see also: atmo + solar panels). According to https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=56996.0;attach=2121440 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;... (PDF) > The deorbit vehicle will need to provide at least 3236 N thrust to hit the target delta-v within a 60-minute time period. Each Draco on Dragon can deliver 400N, there are 16, that's 6400N. So unless I've missed some math somewhere, a Dragon could do the deorbit. Ignoring the fact that they probably haven't burned those engines for an hour. Also fuel required for that manuver.
- thebruce87m 2y agoCouldn’t we put it in a super long orbit that means it will revisit earth in a million years or something? Might be a nice surprise for whoever is around at that point.
- adolph 2y agoLike Snoopy! https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomers-might-have-found-apollo-10-snoopy-module/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomers-might...
- nickff 2y agoIt's considered unwise to leave uncontrolled vehicles in orbit, as they may hit other uncontrolled vehicles (or natural objects) and create debris.
- idiotsecant 2y agoAn orbit like parent post is talking about is barely an orbit and more like an escape trajectory that just barely fails to escape.
- nirav72 2y agoWould need lot of extra fuel to raise altitude for an escape trajectory. Fuel either brought up the gravity well at launch or later refueled in orbit. Of course not all satellites are designed to allow in-orbit refueling. Maybe an reusable orbital tug might be something that someone will come up with.
- NortySpock 2y ago> So...with $843M, what could SpaceX come up with? In Gwynne's shoes, I'd be looking to develop a vehicle with far wider application than a 1-off LEO deorbit burn. So that would probably point to "Starship, possibly with a lot of fuel loaded onboard, docks with ISS, and then feathers its maneuvering jets to push the ISS into a guided re-entry into the Pacific Ocean."
- skellera 2y agoMaybe the extra cost is to look into bringing it down without destroying it. Would be good to study it for data on long term spacecraft.
- randerson 2y agoIf anything I'd like SpaceX to attach some cameras that live-stream the ISS breakup through Starlink the way they've been filming their re-entries.
- java-man 2y ago[flagged]
- echelon 2y ago> This highlights the sorry state of science and space exploration. We spent billions building this amazing station, and now we want to deorbit it? What a shame. We learned a lot from it, but now it's outdated and crawling with difficult to eradicate mold and fungus. With Starship, we could launch 100 International Space Stations. We'll be fine.
- esafak 2y agoNews to me! https://www.science.org/content/article/space-station-mold-survives-200-times-radiation-dose-would-kill-human https://www.science.org/content/article/space-station-mold-s...
- mnau 2y ago> Space station mold survives 200 times the radiation dose that would kill a human > that the spores could survive radiation doses of 500 to 1000 gray (=sieverts), Humans can survive massive amount if radiation, provided it's not all at once (research sample size = 1). Albert Stevens survived 64 sieverts deliverted over 20 years (lethal dose 50 % die in 30 days is 4-5 sieverts). It's almost as if linear-no-threshold model is wrong and we do actually have some capability to repair some damage Edit: just to clarify, survive doesn't mean thrive. Just that we might survive in a deadly environment better and longer than expected.
- Retric 2y agoLinear no threshold refers to cancer not acute radiation sickness. People getting people getting a sunburn vs skin cancer from sun exposure are experiencing different biological processes, the underlying mechanisms are related but different. Threshold dosing in terms of cancer has zero evidence to support it, and cancer is already really common suggesting if there’s any threshold we are well past it. The only reason you hear about it is there is an industry who really wishes it were true. Just like people suggesting low dose exposure to lead wasn’t harmful when they want to sell Tetraethyllead in gasoline, monetary rewards cloud judgement. Same deal with tanning beds and just about any product exposing people to ionizing radiation, the risks don’t seem bad when there’s money to be made.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoWhy not re-orbit? If $2B could be used to keep it going another decade, would we do that instead?
- rbanffy 2y agoOperation costs should increase as more and more parts start breaking down. It’s an old station by now. That considered, it feels wrong to not extend its life until it actually is cheaper to replace it and, then, do so module by module.
- Buttons840 2y agoThe spacecraft equivalent of refactoring vs rewriting from scratch.
- MostlyStable 2y agoI'm wondering how hard it would be to boost it to a long-term stable orbit and then empty it of it's atmosphere and just preserve it as some kind of a museum piece basically. Of course, for the near-to-medium future, such a museum piece is completely useless to anyone. But hopefully that won't always be the case.
- robocat 2y agoThe hoarding instinct because space is big!
- SllX 2y agoLike a space landmark. A spacemark? The San Francisco Cable Car museum makes a big deal about the Cable Cars being the only moving designated landmark (dunno if that’s still true, but it was when I was a kid), but in terms of speed the ISS has those rickety little boxes beat.
- rbanffy 2y agoNot sure it’s a good idea to just boost it. It would be impacted more frequently and release more material from the impacts, furthering the problem.
- olliej 2y agowith or without the Boeing Starliner Max still attached? :D
- hindsightbias 2y agoI wonder if the truss and other components could be harvested. Move to lunar orbit.
- panick21_ 2y agoWow didn't expect this to go to SpaceX. $843 seems like way to much money for this job. Seems like about 400 million $ of that would just be mission assurance. The whole Falcon 9 program didn't even cost 400 million $ to develop initially. That includes developing a new engine. Unless there are some crazy requirements here that I don't see, this is a great deal for SpaceX.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoIf SpaceX got it for $843m, doesn't that imply it would've cost everyone else a lot more?
- jtriangle 2y ago$843M is the contract cost, basically to just do the R&D. The vehicle itself will be sold separately.
- giobox 2y ago> The whole Falcon 9 program didn't even cost 400 million $ to develop initially. The Falcon 9 first flew in 2010. US govt CPI measure over the period 2008 (picking a development start time at random) to 2024 is ~45 percent. I've not idea if this explains it all, but it certainly explains a chunk of it.
- ikiris 2y agoWho else is there at the moment? Boeing who people don't even trust in atmo, and the russians who we're in a cold war with?
- TMWNN 2y ago>$843 seems like way to much money for this job. The NASA Administrator quoted a $1.5 billion figure, so $843 million is a bargain.
- pmayrgundter 2y agoHere's hoping launch costs fall quickly and it gets absorbed and rebuilt as a much larger station, Ship of Theseus style.
- audunw 2y agoThis is exactly what happens in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.. the opening to that movie is fantastic. The rest, well I don't remember so it must have been forgettable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0FX8sd1uVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0FX8sd1uVo It would be very sad if this wasn't one of the possible fates of ISS.
- pmayrgundter 2y agoAh that's super neat. Hadn't seen this before. Thanks! Here's hoping :)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoAren't they far behind on their Starship milestones? Why would Nasa grant them more contracts? https://i.redd.it/x998dcfi8sz71.jpg https://i.redd.it/x998dcfi8sz71.jpg
- ShakataGaNai 2y agoNo one expects Elon timelines to actually happen. Also, the other option is... Boeing? And they're doing SPECTACULARLY well right now. In Space, on a plane. If it's Boeing, you're better off not going.
- caseyy 2y agoThey are made for each other. NASA's not so good with their Artemis schedule either.
- why_at 2y agoThey've been pretty reliable and cost effective for delivering people/cargo to the ISS so far. Even without Starship they can probably pull this mission off. FWIW that image also shows Artemis III launching early 2025, but NASA has delayed that to 2026 at the earliest (unlikely), so it's not like SpaceX is holding up the mission.
- wongarsu 2y agoSpaceX delivered their commercial crew contract with 3 years delay, Boeing is currently on the 7th year of delay and running. NASA's SLS was delayed by nearly 6 years despite being conceived as the "easy and safe option" of combining shuttle parts in the shape of a rocket. Rocket science is hard, everyone missing their milestones is almost expected. And SpaceX is among the more reliable partners available to NASA.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoRTX Collin's just gave up on their spacesuit contract. So there's a good chance that'll delay Artemis by a good 5 years or so.
- mkl 2y ago
- aredox 2y agoWouldn't the ISS make a nice station for Lagrange Points 4 or 5? Hell, why can't we use it as the Lunar Gateway?
- gamepsys 2y agoNo and no. * At the time its decommissioned it will be over 30 years old, well past it's original planned lifespan. * It was never designed for orbital maneuvers with that much delta-v. * Due to how adjusting orbits works, it would require about as much energy to move it into such a different orbit as it would to just ship a new one from Earth. This is even more true when you consider we would have to ship all the fuel into orbit to perform the orbit shift.
- dragonwriter 2y agoNo one ever understands how far (in energy) different places (orbits, its all orbits) in space are and what that implies about moving stuff from one to the other.
- Nifty3929 2y agoI understand this conceptually, at least that moving from one orbit to another is very costly in energy. But what mental model can I use to get a rough idea of which things require more energy vs less? Or maybe what contributes to that energy requirement?
- xikrib 2y agoStill cheaper than the Baltimore Bridge
- ShakataGaNai 2y agoIt's a shame this has to happen. I always hope that something could be salvaged and used for Lunar Gateway, or... something. It's still my hope that NASA uses the remaining return trips to bring back as many "souvenirs" as possible. The unfortunate reality is that it probably doesn't make sense to do anything with the station other than de-orbit, with the declining costs and the age of whats up there. When ISS was lofted the cost to get into space was crazy high. 1981 Space Shuttle was $65k per KG to LEO. Falcon 9 is somewhere in the range of $2500 per KG to LEO. Falcon Heavy is even less than that at around $1000 per KG to LEO. It wouldn't surprise me if Starship is even cheaper. So why spend millions of dollars trying to "save a buck" on components when you can launch newer/better/stronger/lighter (ex: Sierra Space's LIFE Hab) for orders of magnitude cheaper than you could "back in the day".
- wongarsu 2y agoPlus the entire station getting past its design lifespan. And while the ISS was able to apply a lot of lessons from Skylab and Mir on things like mold growth, I imagine the ISS has accumulated its share of problems too and provided a lot of lessons for future station designs. As an asset it's only logical to replace it. It's only contentious because of the sentimental value attached to the station.
- ralferoo 2y agoI disagree about it being logical to replace it. There's no real good reason not to keep it if we think it's still useful. I feel it's contentious because that's a lot of money to spend destroying stuff that could still provide benefit for many years to come. Of course, to actually discuss this, we need to answer the real question of whether we even want to keep the ISS... If we agree something like this is useful to have in the long run, if we destroy the old one, we have to get every party involved (or a new group of countries) to agree that this is worth spending the money on building an entirely new ISS. My gut feeling says that won't happen in the current geo-political climate. If we destroy the ISS, that's the end of the road. We could, of course, all agree that it's too expensive maintaining the ISS and we should just abandon any such future projects. While this might well be popular with some governments trying to save money, we will miss out on all that research and international collaboration. Honestly, I don't know what value that research is nowadays, but I assume there must have been some or we wouldn't have done it originally and manage to convince lots of countries to participate in spite of their ongoing tensions. Or the third option - continue to build, using the existing ISS as a base. We could send up small modules piecemeal and bolt them onto the ISS. It's not like the ISS even has to end up as the centre, it could end up entirely on one side and at the point it's really no longer useful for operations, it would still have value as a storage space, the parts could be ransacked for repairs, it would even provide some impact protection from random space junk. Other than potentially making the "new" ISS a bit less maneuverable, or random bits falling off and hitting the new structure (not sure if that really happens or only in movies), I don't really see any downsides to keeping the old ISS attached to any new structure. And keeping it safeguards us against completely abandoning future co-operative research. I guess one perceived downside might be that the US wants to go it alone with some secret projects, and doesn't want to build anything attached to the ISS to reduce the possibility of a hostile takeover.
- elif 2y agoI don't get how spaceX builds it, but NASA "owns and operates" the vehicle. Surely spaceX rockets are chock full of proprietary internal tooling and services. They are an almost totally vertical company. Does SpaceX just open their stack to NASA? Or does SpaceX just provide an 'api' layer of control, making this 'own and operate' a weird almost anachronistic distinction?
- financetechbro 2y agoI’m sure this is all spelled out under some commercial partnership agreement
- wongarsu 2y agoMaybe "operating" only means NASA makes the decisions, but mission control is outsourced to SpaceX? Alternatively it could be part of the contract that SpaceX provides everything needed to operate the mission, as well as training for NASA personnel on how to use their stuff, as well as providing people on standby for "troubleshooting and tech support".
- formercoder 2y ago“Own” is likely a very simplistic term for the complex agreement in place between SpaceX and NASA. I’m sure SpaceX retains all of the developed IP, but NASA can “do whatever they want” with the actual ship.
- skybrian 2y agoI don't know, but it seems like this sort of thing is perfectly normal for military contracts, so why not for NASA?
- yencabulator 2y agoBoth my computer and my car are chock full of proprietary internal tooling and interfaces. My evaporative cooler and its thermostat are a proprietary bundle with undisclosed internal communication. I'd like to think I still own and operate all of those.
- elif 2y agoWhy don't they deorbit it to the moon? That way it's debris field can be a monument/grave site. Hell this is spaceX, why don't they just land the thing on the moon in tact?
- ChumpGPT 2y agoIs there any benefit landing it on the moon, create a yard of space junk and extra parts for future bases...never know....
- caseyy 2y agoThe end of an era.
- chalcolithic 2y agoIt is sad that ISS exists at all. After the Mir the world should have gone rotating station route - the next logical step. Instead we have wasted so many resources on something that has already been done before
- Nifty3929 2y agoFeels like folks are not making enough money maintaining the existing space station, so they need to get rid of it to make way for the next $100B space station project.
- panick21_ 2y agoExcept that if you actually bother to look at the current plan, NASA wants to invest much less in the next generation station. Private companies will run and operate them. NASA will only rent spaces for astronauts. The next generation stations are also smaller but will be launched in much larger chunks, making the price per volume much cheaper. And much more modern operation. NASA absolutely will not invest anywhere close to $100B in those projects. NASA budget will mostly shift to moon stuff.
- neets 2y agoThe fall of the ISS will be a symbol of some kind that’s for sure
- whycome 2y agoCan’t they … ‘demodulate’ it? And bring it down (or up) in pieces? Maybe reconfigure a “mini iss” out of it. Like a giant Lego set. Ultimate off grid micro space station. Or boost key sections really really high…for reasons.
- ein0p 2y agoThe Gigachad move would be to land it, but of course that’s not even theoretically possible or worthwhile
- mr_toad 2y agoStarship might be able to land on Earth with ~50 tonnes of cargo, maybe less. A rocket with 10x the capacity of Starship would be truly impressive.
- bell-cot 2y agoFor those unfamiliar with orbital mechanics & aerospace engineering, who wonder about raising the ISS into a much-higher (long-term stable) orbit, or fixing it up and continuing to use it: Trying to raise the orbit: The ISS orbits very close to the "bottom" of the zone of vaguely-stableish LEO orbits. Really-stable, "vacant" orbits, suitable for long-term inert storage - those are far, far higher. Think of having a reproduction Viking longboat on the beach. Pushing it "down", into the sea, is work - but not too much. Vs. if you wanted to push that longboat uphill, to an elevation of a few thousand feet? Vastly more work. Trying to keep using it, long after the lifetime that the Materials Engineering & Mechanical Engineering experts designed it for, might turn out like this: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-near-crash-of-aloha-airlines-flight-243-18f28c03f27b https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-ne... - except with all the astronauts dead. As complex structures under load (like pressurized ISS modules) age, the properties of the materials they're made of change - often for the worse. And microscopic cracks form & grow, joints (intentional or not) work and wear, inelastic deformation accumulates and shifts stress to areas not designed to withstand it, and so on.
- CodeTheInternet 2y agoFilming location for Waterworld 2 at Point Nemo? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility#Oceanic_pole_of_inaccessibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility#Oceani... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery