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Comment by theandrewbailey | Hacker News Reader

ISS has been in orbit longer than any other space station. Is it worth it to keep running, or should it be scrapped and we start over with something else? We shouldn't keep unused things in orbit, because that's space junk.

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The point is not to keep it running; rather, we want to preserve the station so future generations can return to it as a historical marker. Sure, it might be unused, but I think we can afford to keep a few things like the ISS and Hubble in graveyard orbits simply due to their historical significance.

Orbital archeology would be an amazing subject for science fiction. Indiana Jones meets Gravity

how high would you have to move it, how much fuel would it take, and is that even actually feasible?

I suspect the answers to all those questions are why the people running NASA decided to bring it down.

Except it sounds like the same shuttle, and amount of fuel, used for the deorbit burn would be sufficient to also put it into a long-term stable orbit instead.

I read elsewhere it would take something like 100x the amount of fuel to move it up to a stable orbit. Maybe people are defining things differently, but bringing it down, just logically, has to be way easier with gravity and atmospheric drag helping.

I think part of the problem is the cyclic thermal stresses on the station will eventually cause it to break apart and become dangerous. Im sure something could be done about this like maybe wrapping it all in aluminized mylar but it would take alot of time and money beyond changing the orbit. Personally i think congress should just allocate the funds for this from the defense budget (not the science budget!) and let space force administer the decommissioning.

> We shouldn't keep unused things in orbit, because that's space junk.

I could see the merit of this argument about a cookie-cutter telephony or Starlink satellite.

ISS is a unique achievement of humanity though. It's a true artifact of early space age - the cost to boost it to a stable orbit and mothball it for future generations seems tiny compared to the amount of human capital already invested in it.

I don't know the answer at all.

However, if it's scrapped, will we start over with something else? I suspect it's more likely that we won't and some corporation will instead, which would be a bit of a loss.

It was a corporation that revolutionized US access to space and first demonstrated you could re-use a rocket, while NASA was flailing around with the Senate Launch System. Perhaps when "some corporation" does something, it's not automatically "a bit of a loss."

What I mean by that is that if it's done by a private group, it's not an accomplishment that we all share in, have a stake in, or have any say about. All we can do is be spectators.

That's the loss. I think it's also why the current spacecraft efforts don't have the degree of public resonance that prior ones have had. Whether or not that's a loss that matters to many is a different question, of course.

NASA is actually thinking about buying a Starship (not a launch, one whole ship) to replace ISS.

I don't see any reason why the US would want to invest in a LEO space station in the future. They don't appear to be worth the investment.

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