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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

I read somewhere that they're considering abandoning the ISS in the future and "deorbiting it". Is this for real?

If yes, wouldn't it be possible to move it to a higher, safe orbit instead? Maybe even taking it to Moon's orbit?

The ISS is boosted to a higher orbit every few months using on board thrusters, otherwise atmospheric drag would have deorbited it a long time ago.

But the hardware will not last forever, it has taken a beating from micrometeorids, radiation, extreme temperature changes etc. At some point it becomes too risky and expensive to operate.

I didn't mean to keep operating it, but to use it for spare parts or as a container, to shield new gear from those perky micrometeoroids.

The ISS must be ~ 2/3 (?) of escape velocity and out of the densests layers of the atmosphere, so it seems reasonable (to me, at last :) that the power needed to boost it is much less than what it took to put it where it's at.

GEO is very densely populated, maybe a repair shop in the neighborhood would attract some customers.

Not even remotely possible in a practical sense, for so many reasons. Summed up by it wasn't designed for it. Radiation, fuel consumption required for the delta V, supply vehicle capabilities, generation of space debris, regulatory compliance, design lifetime, etc.

If it was practical, they'd be doing it instead of Artemis.

Depends if you want to use nuclear or not. It's very possible if you have a nuclear rocket lifting it, but that's at least a decade away.

> at least a decade away

Just like it was in 1950!

It's in active development.

https://www.space.com/nasa-darpa-nuclear-thermal-rocket-drac...

The fuel needed to get two small capsules to the moon is expensive, since you start on earth. The fuel required for all of the ISS is way too much.

Also, if you pick a random place on earth, there are no humans there. You might find roads, mostly, it is water, and if not, the only sign of humand life is most likely roads, or nothing at all. I do not recall who used google earth to test this, and of course, a large scatter area for debris would alter this probability equation.

A higher orbit may be possible, but maintaining any orbit comes at a fuel cost. A moon orbit would be hugely costly, and again would require ongoing fueling to maintain a 'permanent' orbit.

Maybe I'm stupid, but if the moon can orbit Earth without fuel, why can't we put something human-made in a similar but different orbit?

There are geo stationary orbits that don’t degrade. If you’re orbiting earth or moon they will always be tugging at it Edit: as mentioned above getting it to geo stationary would be costly. It’d also be in a place hard for missions to reach. Also meant Lagrange point not geostationary

You're not stupid. Atmospheric drag drops off rapidly as you go higher. The ISS would deorbit within a few years due to atmospheric drag at it's current altitude, but if you got up to ~1000km it would take thousands of years to decay.

That could work & would be substantially less crazy like the suggestions to put it to GEO and Lagrange points.

Still, unless actually maintained in some form, there will be a risk of the ex-ISS complex shedding stuff over time - either due to collisions or possibly material degradation, which could still be an issue for anything below or crossing the new higher orbit.

Not only was it not designed for those environments, what's the point? The parts are aging, machines that old struggle even without the increased stresses of space, and as the station ages, more and more effort has to be spent on maintenance and safety.

The thermal regulation system was designed for 45 minutes in day followed by 45 in night, the communications were designed around being within realtime communications range (eg astronauts remoting into PCs on the ground for personal browsing, so as to reduce risk to the station's own computers) and there are no reasonable crewed or uncrewed vehicles available to maintain the station at that distance. The station is also likely to struggle to deal with docking to either lunar lander, given their size.

We can't turn it into an orbital museum piece without maintaining it, lest it fall apart and cause a massive amount of debris.

We're still early in our spacefaring days, there are still many more historically relevant space stations ahead of us, some of which we may actually have the ability to properly preserve. For the ISS we'll have to settle for the astronaut training models used by NASA.

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