Bringing Down the International Space Station I was thinking about the deorbiting of the International Space Station in I believe 2030. To me, sending the station to a fiery grave in the ocean is such an incredible waste of a historic artifact. I believe we should be thinking about its return to earth in a different way. The space station is composed of modules, each of which was brought there on a rocket. Disassembly of the station and the return of the modules to earth for reassembly in a museum somewhere for future people to see would be a much better fate. I know one of the problems is the modules come from different countries and we would have to convince those countries to donate them to the museum, and I imagine the museum would only be agreed on if it was scheduled to be in a neutral country, perhaps Switzerland. We do have some tools we did not have when the International Space Station was built, such as the Starship from SpaceX. It is almost perfected and probably will be, far in advance of the destruction date. Its capacity is measured in metric tons. A metric ton is 2,200 pounds. The Starship can haul 150 metric tons fully reusable and 250 metric tons expendable. Of course this is for blasting off from earth, but I think you get the idea. The mass of the station is 925,335 pounds. That is a total of about 421 metric tons. As far as weight goes, that is less than 3 full cargoes on the Starship. Of course we have to figure dimensions, so it might take more flights than just 3. I hate to see such an important historical object as the International Space Station destroyed. Even if it has to remain empty for a while until it can be brought back that would be okay. It could be watched remotely and moved if danger threatens it. Another idea I had seems more outrageous. That would be to leave it together and attach engines to it like the type used on the Starship rocket. This presents a much bigger problem than taking it apart. First of all, how do you protect this odd structure from the heat on reentry? We don’t have the technology to do this right now. Another problem is the fragility of the station which was never built for such a strain. Even if we removed the most fragile bits like the solar panels, the rest of the structure probably could not stand reentry. If the station was somehow equipped with giant helium balloons and used the rockets attached to get to the part of the atmosphere where the balloons would be effective would this work? Heat shielding would still be need of some was to descend so slowly that heat would not be a problem. This brings me to another way-out idea. Could there be some way we station rockets in space with the capability of lowering the space station at slow speeds to earth. The cables would have to be strong enough and be over 254 miles in length which is the altitude of the ISS. The rockets lowering it would have to be powerful enough to stay at station in space while doing this. As crazy as this sounds maybe several Starships working together might be able to do this, but let’s not kid ourselves, this idea might be very expensive and could be declared impractical. Another thing which could be helpful would be to fill the inside of the station with helium which is another lighter than air gas and not as explosive as hydrogen. This might assist in reducing the weight when the station enters the earth’s atmosphere and along with the balloons might take some of the weight pressure off the balloons. There is always the problem of some countries wanting their modules for their own museums. I think if this would happen, we could fill in with replicas. If we could save a Concord airplane from the scrap heap for a museum how much more valuable is the International Space Station? I suspect someone or some country somewhere, probably which was involved with the ISS, might built a replica in the future. The ISS was the first time adversaries cooperated in a space venture. This proves it is possible in the future humans could possibly ban together in space exploration. It wasn’t as if Russia didn’t have the ability to build its own space station, they had built the Mir in 1986 when the first module was put into place and entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2001. The ISS was built in 1998 when the first piece was launched. It is getting long in the tooth and seems to be getting many leaks lately. It is said for the last five years the station has been leaking, so you can see its future is limited. Some of the same leaks have been going on for years and new ones keep coming. If we do build a new space station there has to be a better way to take care of the humans inside. Lack of gravity is bad for us. Some of the astronauts after a long term on the ISS have a hard time walking when they get off. Lack of gravity can cause muscle and bone loss and no amount of exercise seems to correct this. There is a problem with the fluids in our body, they go to places they shouldn’t and this can hurt one’s heart, impair vision, and cause disorientation to mention a few different things. We desperately need artificial gravity and should be putting more resources into this development. There can also be social problems which develop when just a few people are cooped up in a small space and that is why you hear about all the tests on Earth where year long simulations are being done. Better radiation shielding is also needed. On earth we each get 2 millisieverts of radiation per year. Astronauts on the ISS receive 160 to 320 millisieverts per year. A chest Xray is about 0.1 millisieverts. A CT scan is about 7 millisieverts. If you do a search on the internet, you will find 100 millisieverts a year is said to increase the chance of getting cancer. This kind of thing and all the other problems of being in space show we have a long way to go to make it a lot safer to be in.
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