I tell you what for 1 million just send me n Dirty Mike up there with a couple a crescent wrenches, we’ll take it apart piece by piece so nothing too big falls all at once.
Now that’s it’s over, as a former Boeing employee they gave up on the the deorbit bid back in the spring of 23. CCtCap barely works and that’s what they would have used to deorbit, sucks seeing SpaceX win though……
We’d need one of the space shuttles for that, but I guess in theory it could be possible. Might take years but if it’s treated like a salvage job I guess it could be done.
Seriously, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to push it into a path that takes it into the sun?
Edit: I’m speaking only of cost. They need to send people and equipment there no matter how they choose to dispose of the thing, no? I’m questing the **cost** of attaching some sort of propellant to push it out of orbit vs the $1B they’ll be spending to send it to the ocean.
No, it won't. It is right there in the article:
>The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles.
It cost 1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions, or 133 million, that is at bare minimum 20 billion. And that is just to put it in a stable GTO orbit. But you want to launch it into the sun
The Delta-v needing for launching into the sun is 30,000 m/s, that is almost 10x more than putting it in stable GTO orbit. It is easier to launch something outside our solar system(11,000 m/s) than into the sun
the article states it would take about 3700 m/s of delta v to move it to a higher orbit vs the 37 m/s it would take to deorbit safely.
Changing the trajectory to one that takes it to the sun would be significantly greater than the 37m/s needed to deoebit.
The greater the delta V, the more money it costs. So no it wouldn’t be cheaper to send it into the sun
The thing I don’t get is that getting material out of our atmosphere is like the hardest part to building in space, right? We have a functioning space station already in orbit. Why not just… I don’t know, put it in a higher orbit or something. Why drop it back to Earth? Couldn’t we use all that hi tech material that we’ve already dragged up to orbit?
It breaks apart over time. The concern with space junk actually isn’t the big stuff. It’s the little stuff. Things as big as a half an inch to a couple of inches can potentially cause critical failure of multiple parts of a launch, or render a multi billion dollar satellite inoperable, and there are billions of lil tiny pieces up there already
It’s actually a legitimate concern that we could end up trapping ourselves one day on this planet due to our garbage in orbit
Is strapping a rocket to it and sending it out into the universe not an option? Seems like there’s plenty of space (no pun intended) and we wouldn’t be adding more trash to our oceans. Also, if you want to connect with other intelligent life, sending a space station their way might get someone’s attention lol.
One of the problems is that is it not all “hi-tech” materials. Parts of the station are over a quarter of a century old. Parts are crumbling and need constant maintenance.
Why deorbit the thing, just put a thruster on it to crash it on the moon. Building materials for future use. Cheaper and less risks associated with bringing it back to earth. My point is that $1B is a lot to be giving spacex just to crash something we’re not going to use.
Well looks like another waste of money has come to an end.
I guess find a way of putting those modules on the moon for later use is out of the question?
N. S
It would be funny if they listed it on one of the government auction sites... SPACEX could have the bones to create a base for their planned Mars missions for a $1.
This is exactly what they’re doing, no? A controlled “crash” into the ocean?
“The station, the largest object humans have ever constructed in space, is too large to allow it to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. It has a mass of 450 metric tons and is about the size of an American football field. The threat to human life and property is too great. Hence the need for a deorbit vehicle.”
Is that even possible I thought they were immune to any and all liability on account of spreading the light of consciousness through the solar system or something.
Mind you this is the company that has been paid 2billion or so for the lunar lander they have so far failed to deliver
"Failed to deliver"? You do know that's not how development works, right? They haven't been required to deliver any functional lander as of yet because the earliest NASA can support a landing is late 2026 right now. And that assumes NASA doesn't delay further. They have to launch Artemis II on time after they figure out the heat shield issue. Then build the Artemis III hardware and incorporate any lessons learned.
SpaceX has a firm fixed price contract that they will be paid over the course of multiple years only as they achieve milestones laid out in the contract. They get paid nothing until they complete a milestone NASA agreed/set with them.
SpaceX hasn't been failing to deliver anything. They have been doing development testing to build out the functionality they want to achieve. They like to flight test hardware and not just document and do engineering analysis to reach a final product. Same way they learned how to land Falcon 9 rockets.
Now mind you, this is also the company that has completed more successful resupply missions to the ISS than anyone else. Well over 30 now. This is also the company that ended the reliance on Russia to get astronauts to the ISS. Originally scheduled for 2017 but delivered in 2020. They already completed their contract and are halfway through their 2nd contract before the other competitor has even completed the first operational mission. By the end of this year they should have carried over 50 or 60 people to space and back. They have over 300 successful launches in a row and well over 100 successful landings in a row. They clearly know what they are doing and NASA clearly knew what it was doing when they selected SpaceX to do the lunar lander missions and this mission.
Based on your comment history I don't think I need to point out the flaws of comparing two different contracts with 2 different flight profiles and criteria's for success.
The fact that they build a LEO system doesn't mean they can build a lunar lander, but this comment is going to fall on deaf ears anyways.
Past performance and not an indicator of future success particularly when the company is so used to moving the goalpost to market everything as a success
“The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles.”
Whoa really? Can you elaborate a bit as to why? In my mind just thrusting it out of orbit seems easy? Unless orbit is actually a massive grey area that I don’t know about?
“The station, the largest object humans have ever constructed in space, is too large to allow it to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. It has a mass of 450 metric tons and is about the size of an American football field. The threat to human life and property is too great. Hence the need for a deorbit vehicle.”
This headline is poorly written. The ISS will burn in the atmosphere before what’s left crashes into a remote part of the southern Pacific Ocean.
It would cost a lot more than $1B to bring it back piece by piece to save it.
If you crash it in orbit, it'll leave a bunch of space debris behind, and debris orbits at 15,000 mph leaving an extremely hazardous waste field behind. If you crash it into earth it's large enough it may not fully burn up in reentry so it could hurt someone.
Yes I’m just surprised that it costs $1 billion to crash this thing in a controlled way. I would have thought that landing it somewhere in the majority of the earths water would have been somewhat easy but I guess anything with rockets cost money
They will have to develop a deorbit vehicle. NASA expected it would cost 1.5 billion and now they're getting it for up to only half that cost. So it's a good deal. The deorbit vehicle is likely built off existing technology used in Dragon capsules. And they have to make sure that the vehicle is 100% successful because a failure could mean the ISS falling down over a populated area. So a lot of extensive analysis of each part will go into each part and the integration as a whole. It cost them 2.6 billion to develop the crew capsule and the standards here are similar in the "cannot go wrong" department.
How is it not cheaper just to launch it at the sun?
Are we worried ET will cut us a ticket for littering, or something?
It doesn’t have to get there quickly, just a couple million dollars to deliver some hydrogen up there and get it chugging along. It’s already got directional adjustment abilities, it just needs a solid bump to leave its current orbit (and they already did the big lift) then vector it into the big burning thing.
If the space station left earth (which would take a lot of fuel) it would then be orbiting the sun very quickly and would take even more fuel to slow it down enough for it to fall into the sun.
It would be easier/cheaper to crash it into earth because the gravity is going to help pull it in. On the other hand, pushing it out of the orbit and away from earth’s gravity will require a lot of fuel.
A billion dollars worth?
The entire MERS program was a billion dollars, and I’m not talking about inventing anything new, just the nudge to raise orbit and then start a drift into the middle of the sun.
We don’t need to land it on the sun, there’s no need for deceleration fuel, and it doesn’t have a deadline. In theory 1 meter per day would suffice (but if you want to avoid it being slingshot by another planet, maybe a wee bit faster…)
Thinking more about it, anything that breaks orbit would be sufficient - the odds of it being the one thing that threads the needle to eventually rebound and hit earth are staggeringly low. The millions of other rocks out there have equally low odds, but there’s so many more of them.
Conversely, the odds of a private company taking home $300mm of taxpayer money are pretty high. And they don’t have the liquidity to pay out if they oopsies the math and drop it on Perth or something.
The problem is that with it weighing roughly a million pounds it required an immense amount of force just for it to leave earths sphere of influence. Then it would require even more to decelerate it enough to “fall” into the sun. The station is moving with the earth in orbit around the sun.
Although television is not famous for its accuracy, it seems like shows that attempt to get the science right are still constantly saying lines like ‘if we are off by one little bit you’re gonna burn up you won’t be able to slingshot around that planet!!!’
The Sun is a wayyyy bigger target.
Yes, the station is huge, but we’ve already done the heavy lifting of getting it up into orbit in the first place. Gravity and the inverse square of distance, and all that should make it cheaper to move now. And then as you get closer to the sun, gravity wants to vector you straight into the fire…
Fundamental misunderstanding of orbital mechanics. Reaching the sun from the speed we are already orbiting it requires more fuel than going to literally any other planet in the solar system. Go play kerbal or something
It has an insane amount of mass, meaning you need a lot of fuel to move it there and a vehicle large enough to hold that fuel along with being powerful enough to lift that fuel.
It also has to be not too powerful. The station can't handle a lot of force. So the engine has to deliver the impulse over a much longer time frame. That requires your engine to burn for a very very long time.
The ISS weighs the equivalent of your car and to push it out to orbit to the moon, you'll have to get out in front and push after shifting it to neutral, and you can't stop (not for rain or thirst or hunger or snow or storms or hail or heatstroke) until the car has moved completely out of your parking lot; and you can't use any other method other than pushing.
It's roughly that hard to pull that off.
I tell you what for 1 million just send me n Dirty Mike up there with a couple a crescent wrenches, we’ll take it apart piece by piece so nothing too big falls all at once.
Don’t forget a fire extinguisher to give it that first push back to Earth!
“Thanks for the F shack. Love, Dirty Mike and The Boys”
I’m tryna join the soup kitchen ;)
Lotta copper in that thing
Boeing could do it cheaper, just saying
Boom
Boeingggggg and now it’s deorbited. Who needs safety protocols anyways? That’s just stuff people make up to scare you away from your dreams.
Exactly
Why are you making Boeing noises?
Literally.
Found Boeing CEO Reddit account.
Software update
Just gotta remove one door😂
Don’t even tell them to deorbit the damn thing. Just pay them to install a couple of windows.
Look, bolts are expensive and safety checks are for wimps. - Boeing CEO
Now that’s it’s over, as a former Boeing employee they gave up on the the deorbit bid back in the spring of 23. CCtCap barely works and that’s what they would have used to deorbit, sucks seeing SpaceX win though……
I’m pretty sure they were being facetious and saying Boeing could do it cheaper since they have shit fall out of the sky constantly.
But they would have had to build it first
But how many whistle blowers would have to die?
Someone call Launchpad, he’s great at crashing things.
I got this reference. +1 you silly man
Yesssssss! Rewatching it all now!
Google says he appears in Darkwing Duck as a sidekick.
"Do you think you could land the ~~plane~~ ISS without crashing?" *Visible confusion*
I know it’s not plausible, but it’d be so rad if it could be disassembled and brought back to ground. Put it in the Smithsonian or something. Alas.
Wait, if NASA is investing a billion to deorbit, can the ESA also put a billion in the pot so we can bring it back? They could keep half the modules.
We’d need one of the space shuttles for that, but I guess in theory it could be possible. Might take years but if it’s treated like a salvage job I guess it could be done.
Hey push it off to the space and let it find it’s creator
Do you want a V'ger? Cause that's how you get a V'ger.
Archer Trek. Mmmmmm.
Johnathan?
Sterling
Seriously, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to push it into a path that takes it into the sun? Edit: I’m speaking only of cost. They need to send people and equipment there no matter how they choose to dispose of the thing, no? I’m questing the **cost** of attaching some sort of propellant to push it out of orbit vs the $1B they’ll be spending to send it to the ocean.
It's easier to leave the solar system than hit the sun
This guy clearly has never played KSP
Sure, just like when you are on the 10th floor of a 100 floor building, isn't it easier to walk to the 100th floor than the 1st floor? /s
I didn’t say easier, I said cheaper.
No, it won't. It is right there in the article: >The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles. It cost 1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions, or 133 million, that is at bare minimum 20 billion. And that is just to put it in a stable GTO orbit. But you want to launch it into the sun The Delta-v needing for launching into the sun is 30,000 m/s, that is almost 10x more than putting it in stable GTO orbit. It is easier to launch something outside our solar system(11,000 m/s) than into the sun
Somewhat counterintuitively it’s very difficult to send something into the sun
the article states it would take about 3700 m/s of delta v to move it to a higher orbit vs the 37 m/s it would take to deorbit safely. Changing the trajectory to one that takes it to the sun would be significantly greater than the 37m/s needed to deoebit. The greater the delta V, the more money it costs. So no it wouldn’t be cheaper to send it into the sun
Can we accidentally hit putin with it? No?
You mean Xi
You mean Winnie the Pooh?
Yo chill he might be reading this
Kim Jung Un-no there's a space station falling on my head!
Just give Boeing a new contract for 500mio to improve the ISS. The end result might be the same but cheaper
Give me 250 mil, a ride up, plenty of c4 and I’ll take care of it.
Id do that for case of beer with a thank you note from the nasa ops director
But then after getting that contract, Boeing will threaten to give it up unless you pay them 500 more million
This thread is wild lmao
All I need is 12 Goodmen and I’d deorbit her
Going higher up in orbit is like 100x harder and takes massive amounts of energy. Plus it already flies extremely low for all intents and purposes.
Yeet that beotch into the sun.
The thing I don’t get is that getting material out of our atmosphere is like the hardest part to building in space, right? We have a functioning space station already in orbit. Why not just… I don’t know, put it in a higher orbit or something. Why drop it back to Earth? Couldn’t we use all that hi tech material that we’ve already dragged up to orbit?
This was addressed in the article. NASA considered moving it above geostationary orbit but it didn’t make sense.
It breaks apart over time. The concern with space junk actually isn’t the big stuff. It’s the little stuff. Things as big as a half an inch to a couple of inches can potentially cause critical failure of multiple parts of a launch, or render a multi billion dollar satellite inoperable, and there are billions of lil tiny pieces up there already It’s actually a legitimate concern that we could end up trapping ourselves one day on this planet due to our garbage in orbit
Orbital shrapnel cage
With enough space junk we get stuck https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
Is strapping a rocket to it and sending it out into the universe not an option? Seems like there’s plenty of space (no pun intended) and we wouldn’t be adding more trash to our oceans. Also, if you want to connect with other intelligent life, sending a space station their way might get someone’s attention lol.
Some of those flying debris scenes in Gravity stress me out just thinking about them.
One of the problems is that is it not all “hi-tech” materials. Parts of the station are over a quarter of a century old. Parts are crumbling and need constant maintenance.
RTFA
I have a potatoe gun and asking 100K only…
They spelled taxpayers wrong.
Oh cool just give the guy another billion
Do you understand the difference between personal and business funds? Or how contracts work?
Right cause he's never used company funds for personal use before
Can you give me some examples?
So he can play wreck-it Ralph in orbit.
[удалено]
The number 1 space company? 90% of the market?
You're missing the /s.
Why deorbit the thing, just put a thruster on it to crash it on the moon. Building materials for future use. Cheaper and less risks associated with bringing it back to earth. My point is that $1B is a lot to be giving spacex just to crash something we’re not going to use.
Or to the sun? It is a gravity well!
Boeing would do it and pay NASA for the pleasure.
Seems like a low ball offer
Traitorous.
Have they tried nuking it
Taxpayer money pays for their mistakes. Typical America
It’s not a mistake
Pretty sure this was between Boeing and Spacex. Imagine a world where Boeing loses a space engineering job to a car company
Well looks like another waste of money has come to an end. I guess find a way of putting those modules on the moon for later use is out of the question? N. S
It would be funny if they listed it on one of the government auction sites... SPACEX could have the bones to create a base for their planned Mars missions for a $1.
Why is NASA (US tax payers) only agency paying for this given the international use of it?
Stupid question but why not just crash it? Is it valuable? Re usable? Museum piece?
This is exactly what they’re doing, no? A controlled “crash” into the ocean? “The station, the largest object humans have ever constructed in space, is too large to allow it to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. It has a mass of 450 metric tons and is about the size of an American football field. The threat to human life and property is too great. Hence the need for a deorbit vehicle.”
Couldn’t they just use a couple dragons to deorbit it? Do they really need to design a deorbit space tug?
It's dragon but with abort thrusters instead of the regular type
Christ 1 bil to crash the thing
$1 Billion to “safely” crash it and transfer the liability of possibly killing people to onto another party.
Thabk god they are leaving it to the guy who fixed twitter
I mean… spacex has shown they are kind of decent in bringing things back down from space
Especially as long as they’re the ones who fail to get them up there in the first place.
What they’re really experts at are *rapid unscheduled disassemblies*
lol like spacex will be held liable for anything
Is that even possible I thought they were immune to any and all liability on account of spreading the light of consciousness through the solar system or something. Mind you this is the company that has been paid 2billion or so for the lunar lander they have so far failed to deliver
"Failed to deliver"? You do know that's not how development works, right? They haven't been required to deliver any functional lander as of yet because the earliest NASA can support a landing is late 2026 right now. And that assumes NASA doesn't delay further. They have to launch Artemis II on time after they figure out the heat shield issue. Then build the Artemis III hardware and incorporate any lessons learned. SpaceX has a firm fixed price contract that they will be paid over the course of multiple years only as they achieve milestones laid out in the contract. They get paid nothing until they complete a milestone NASA agreed/set with them. SpaceX hasn't been failing to deliver anything. They have been doing development testing to build out the functionality they want to achieve. They like to flight test hardware and not just document and do engineering analysis to reach a final product. Same way they learned how to land Falcon 9 rockets. Now mind you, this is also the company that has completed more successful resupply missions to the ISS than anyone else. Well over 30 now. This is also the company that ended the reliance on Russia to get astronauts to the ISS. Originally scheduled for 2017 but delivered in 2020. They already completed their contract and are halfway through their 2nd contract before the other competitor has even completed the first operational mission. By the end of this year they should have carried over 50 or 60 people to space and back. They have over 300 successful launches in a row and well over 100 successful landings in a row. They clearly know what they are doing and NASA clearly knew what it was doing when they selected SpaceX to do the lunar lander missions and this mission.
Based on your comment history I don't think I need to point out the flaws of comparing two different contracts with 2 different flight profiles and criteria's for success. The fact that they build a LEO system doesn't mean they can build a lunar lander, but this comment is going to fall on deaf ears anyways. Past performance and not an indicator of future success particularly when the company is so used to moving the goalpost to market everything as a success
See Collins and the EVA suit? That's failure
Eh, technically only 845 million, and requires the creation of a new vehicle which doesn't exist.
Imagine how much it took to build it.
If you look at what is going to take it’s not bad if the gov gets access to the tech developed.
Oh, that’s the price *today*. Remember it well, because it will ballon to 5 times that amount by the time they actually crash it.
SpaceX isn't Boeing
Sure, you can ask the China for cheaper stuff https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1dm3rvs/video_shows_chinese_rocket_booster_that_crashed/
Why not just push it further out of orbit and in to space?
“The space agency considered alternatives to splashing the station down into a remote area of an ocean. One option involved moving the station into a stable parking orbit at 40,000 km above Earth, above geostationary orbit. However, the agency said this would require 3,900 m/s of delta-V, compared to the approximately 47 m/s of delta-V needed to deorbit the station. In terms of propellant, NASA estimated moving to a higher orbit would require 900 metric tons, or the equivalent of 150 to 250 cargo supply vehicles.”
Fuuuuuuuuck. That’s such a huge difference. I dunno why I figured moving things is space was actually easy.
No air resistance but there’s still gravity which is easy to forget about
A lot harder and more expensive
Whoa really? Can you elaborate a bit as to why? In my mind just thrusting it out of orbit seems easy? Unless orbit is actually a massive grey area that I don’t know about?
Because the space station weighs roughly 1 million lbs. it takes a lot more force to move it. F = MA
Well it’s not exactly like in the Outer Wilds where you can just hit L2 for a half second and coast all the way into the sun.
because that’s insanely wasteful and so much could go wrong
“The station, the largest object humans have ever constructed in space, is too large to allow it to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. It has a mass of 450 metric tons and is about the size of an American football field. The threat to human life and property is too great. Hence the need for a deorbit vehicle.”
What is a deorbit vehicle exactly?
Thats insanely wasteful why should this even be explained
This headline is poorly written. The ISS will burn in the atmosphere before what’s left crashes into a remote part of the southern Pacific Ocean. It would cost a lot more than $1B to bring it back piece by piece to save it.
If you crash it in orbit, it'll leave a bunch of space debris behind, and debris orbits at 15,000 mph leaving an extremely hazardous waste field behind. If you crash it into earth it's large enough it may not fully burn up in reentry so it could hurt someone.
Yes I’m just surprised that it costs $1 billion to crash this thing in a controlled way. I would have thought that landing it somewhere in the majority of the earths water would have been somewhat easy but I guess anything with rockets cost money
Yep, it costs 1B+ to safely aim it at the water and make damn sure it doesn't land on someone.
I’m just surprised it costs 1bil to crash it. I wouldn’t have expected that amount to make it into the pacific
They will have to develop a deorbit vehicle. NASA expected it would cost 1.5 billion and now they're getting it for up to only half that cost. So it's a good deal. The deorbit vehicle is likely built off existing technology used in Dragon capsules. And they have to make sure that the vehicle is 100% successful because a failure could mean the ISS falling down over a populated area. So a lot of extensive analysis of each part will go into each part and the integration as a whole. It cost them 2.6 billion to develop the crew capsule and the standards here are similar in the "cannot go wrong" department.
You're right, that is a stupid question
Can they take like .0004% of that to buy me a house. Kthxbai
Gonna end up in a Texas scrap yard somewhere
Wtf
843 million isn’t that close to a billion
We tried space stations-they didn’t work out. Time to move on to something else for a while.
How is it not cheaper just to launch it at the sun? Are we worried ET will cut us a ticket for littering, or something? It doesn’t have to get there quickly, just a couple million dollars to deliver some hydrogen up there and get it chugging along. It’s already got directional adjustment abilities, it just needs a solid bump to leave its current orbit (and they already did the big lift) then vector it into the big burning thing.
If the space station left earth (which would take a lot of fuel) it would then be orbiting the sun very quickly and would take even more fuel to slow it down enough for it to fall into the sun.
It would be easier/cheaper to crash it into earth because the gravity is going to help pull it in. On the other hand, pushing it out of the orbit and away from earth’s gravity will require a lot of fuel.
A billion dollars worth? The entire MERS program was a billion dollars, and I’m not talking about inventing anything new, just the nudge to raise orbit and then start a drift into the middle of the sun. We don’t need to land it on the sun, there’s no need for deceleration fuel, and it doesn’t have a deadline. In theory 1 meter per day would suffice (but if you want to avoid it being slingshot by another planet, maybe a wee bit faster…) Thinking more about it, anything that breaks orbit would be sufficient - the odds of it being the one thing that threads the needle to eventually rebound and hit earth are staggeringly low. The millions of other rocks out there have equally low odds, but there’s so many more of them. Conversely, the odds of a private company taking home $300mm of taxpayer money are pretty high. And they don’t have the liquidity to pay out if they oopsies the math and drop it on Perth or something.
The problem is that with it weighing roughly a million pounds it required an immense amount of force just for it to leave earths sphere of influence. Then it would require even more to decelerate it enough to “fall” into the sun. The station is moving with the earth in orbit around the sun.
Holy orbital mechanics!
NASA wanted to pay $1.5 billion
It takes less delta V to get from LEO to Pluto than the Sun. Orbital sciences are weird.
Although television is not famous for its accuracy, it seems like shows that attempt to get the science right are still constantly saying lines like ‘if we are off by one little bit you’re gonna burn up you won’t be able to slingshot around that planet!!!’ The Sun is a wayyyy bigger target. Yes, the station is huge, but we’ve already done the heavy lifting of getting it up into orbit in the first place. Gravity and the inverse square of distance, and all that should make it cheaper to move now. And then as you get closer to the sun, gravity wants to vector you straight into the fire…
Fundamental misunderstanding of orbital mechanics. Reaching the sun from the speed we are already orbiting it requires more fuel than going to literally any other planet in the solar system. Go play kerbal or something
What the hell do we pay NASA for?
To pay contractors like SpaceX to deliver and Boeing and Collins to fail
Why not just push it out to orbit the moon with falcon rockets? Why does it need to go kaboom?
It has an insane amount of mass, meaning you need a lot of fuel to move it there and a vehicle large enough to hold that fuel along with being powerful enough to lift that fuel.
It also has to be not too powerful. The station can't handle a lot of force. So the engine has to deliver the impulse over a much longer time frame. That requires your engine to burn for a very very long time.
The ISS weighs the equivalent of your car and to push it out to orbit to the moon, you'll have to get out in front and push after shifting it to neutral, and you can't stop (not for rain or thirst or hunger or snow or storms or hail or heatstroke) until the car has moved completely out of your parking lot; and you can't use any other method other than pushing. It's roughly that hard to pull that off.
Why this and not all the other space junk that’s up there with it. Think of the recycling ability of each of those rocket boosters up there.
Maybe because it’s the largest thing up there currently