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Yeah, but this is the ISS we're talking about. Obsolete commsat number 723, sure, no one's going to care about deorbiting it, but the ISS has historic and cultu

Yeah, but this is the ISS we're talking about. Obsolete commsat number 723, sure, no one's going to care about deorbiting it, but the ISS has historic and cultural significance. Raise it a bit to a parking orbit, everything else can keep track of where it is, and a thousand years from space archaeologists can explore it. Or pack it inside otherwise empty Starships a few segments at a time and fly it down intact to put in a museum.

lxgr 2y ago
The ISS will burn up in the atmosphere within very few years unless periodically boosted up. Boosting it all the way up to a more long-term graveyard orbit (i.e. several hundred kilometers) would consume a lot of fuel compared to a planned deorbit.
- ortusdux 2y ago
  At one point they planned on using ion thrusters to try and keep the ISS in a stable orbit. I wonder how many it would take to push it into a graveyard orbit? Most of the energy for ion thrusters comes from solar, which the ISS has plenty of.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    - "Most of the energy for ion thrusters comes from solar, which the ISS has plenty of." The ISS rather has very low power relative to its mass. About 1/50th the power/mass ratio of the Dawn probe, for instance. This approach would take multiple decades, with the ISS as it currently is. It's worth remarking there's never been a spacecraft to date that's attempted a solar-electric spiral out starting from low Earth orbit. (The Boeing 702 satellites can spiral from GTO to GEO at least—though those have, again, far higher power/mass ratios than the ISS).
- leptons 2y ago
  A deorbit would create a huge amount of chemicals in the atmosphere that are very harmful to the ozone layer. It might be worth sending up a few more rockets to give a big enough push to send the ISS into the sun (along with said rockets). https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-deple... https://www.space.com/deorbiting-impact-on-earth-atmosphere-climate https://www.space.com/deorbiting-impact-on-earth-atmosphere-...
  - jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
    Why the sun? In terms of delta-V that's the hardest target to hit in the entire solar system, since you have to zero out all of earth's orbital velocity.
    - didgeoridoo 2y ago
      My KSP-fu tells me that you could definitely get a corona-crossing periapsis without zeroing out the velocity relative to the sun. You aren’t trying to land on the bastard.
  - mr_toad 2y ago
    That much delta v would take a few hundred rockets, not a few. You’d probably cause way more pollution from all those rockets.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Raise it a bit to a parking orbit That's not “a bit” and the fact that it’s the ISS and not a typical satellite is among the reasons it is impractical.

lxgr 2y ago

The ISS will burn up in the atmosphere within very few years unless periodically boosted up. Boosting it all the way up to a more long-term graveyard orbit (i.e. several hundred kilometers) would consume a lot of fuel compared to a planned deorbit.

ortusdux 2y ago
At one point they planned on using ion thrusters to try and keep the ISS in a stable orbit. I wonder how many it would take to push it into a graveyard orbit? Most of the energy for ion thrusters comes from solar, which the ISS has plenty of.
- perihelions 2y ago
  - "Most of the energy for ion thrusters comes from solar, which the ISS has plenty of." The ISS rather has very low power relative to its mass. About 1/50th the power/mass ratio of the Dawn probe, for instance. This approach would take multiple decades, with the ISS as it currently is. It's worth remarking there's never been a spacecraft to date that's attempted a solar-electric spiral out starting from low Earth orbit. (The Boeing 702 satellites can spiral from GTO to GEO at least—though those have, again, far higher power/mass ratios than the ISS).
leptons 2y ago
A deorbit would create a huge amount of chemicals in the atmosphere that are very harmful to the ozone layer. It might be worth sending up a few more rockets to give a big enough push to send the ISS into the sun (along with said rockets). https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-deple... https://www.space.com/deorbiting-impact-on-earth-atmosphere-climate https://www.space.com/deorbiting-impact-on-earth-atmosphere-...
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  Why the sun? In terms of delta-V that's the hardest target to hit in the entire solar system, since you have to zero out all of earth's orbital velocity.
  - didgeoridoo 2y ago
    My KSP-fu tells me that you could definitely get a corona-crossing periapsis without zeroing out the velocity relative to the sun. You aren’t trying to land on the bastard.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  That much delta v would take a few hundred rockets, not a few. You’d probably cause way more pollution from all those rockets.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> Raise it a bit to a parking orbit That's not “a bit” and the fact that it’s the ISS and not a typical satellite is among the reasons it is impractical.