When the International Space Station is Finished in 2020, We're Crashing It Into the Ocean

Wow, that is taking wastefulness to a whole new extreme.

One assumes that they will send up someone on a mission to cannibalize the station before it is crashed. Just imagine what we could learn from the old electronics and what have you. Decades in zero grav would make just about everything valuable for study before essentially the shell is crashed into the ocean, which we can also learn from. Wouldn't it be intriguing if we could somehow move or tow the ISS to say the moon and use it for the foundation of a small moon colony? This is just a few ideas that are better than simply dropping billions in cold hard cash and equipment into an ocean.

Why not load it up with sensors and just send it out of the solar system? What a waste indeed!

Make it crash on the moon, that way, we'll have some ressources to reuse (using japanese robots or something like that).
We'd have some modules or wires or whatever we can find in the debris that might decrease the cost of building on the moon...

Did they not here of recycling?

land it on the moon or crash it...at-least it can be scavenged in the future!

What a waste!, as TheBaldFish suggested, it could put to some use in the moon or even Mars.

I agree create a landing module for it and land it on the moon or mars as a step to colonization.

It'll make one helluva HD Video!

Perhaps they could engineer some type of attaché propulsion system to the moon and leave it in orbit there. Not too many satellites around the moon currently to interfere with and it give a nice little temporary apartment complex for future would be moon adventures. There is no way anyone can see it as a temporary safe haven in an emergency of space travel? Since when did Russia have the dominating vote in this decision too?

We could blast it to the Orion Galaxy and show our alien ancestors what we made. It would be like show and tell to Mom and Pop. Oh, sorry, I digress..... lol.

Seems like you should be able to shut it down and move it to a higher/different orbit. Sure, it'd cost some dough, but surely we'll want/have another space station at some point in the future. Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to just mothball it?

Prior to Russia dumping into the ocean, can't a private company go up there and scavenge. Seems like there is a lot of exotic metals up there and exotic technologies. A third party space company may make good use of the solar panels and assorted gadgets. Does it really have to be dumped down the toilet, really?!

In 9 years, all interested parties can simply go to each country and purchase the modules. If you are very ambitious, you can start your lobbying now. When you and your conglomeration own it, you can put it in orbit around any moon, planet or star you wish. All it takes is money.

Plans to move it will never fly, literally. The Bureaucratic vipers nest that pays NASA's bills has already cut major funding to a number of multi-billion dollar projects, what's $2 bil in the ocean? And the Russians are making the call because they are the only primary partner who has the capacity to de-orbit the ISS, and at the rate the US debt is climbing, they may remain the only ones capable of bringing it down.
And to move the ISS to the moon, NASA would have to do a study on the feasibility of doing the study to send the station into lunar orbit, and by the time the study for sending the ISS to the moon is complete, 2020 would be right around the corner. The best we can hope for, maybe Branson will buy it up for his orbital hotel chain...

The International Space Station needs to be the cornerstone for a larger system of modules owned by both government and private industry.

Sending it to the moon or out of earths orbit isn't really an option. Thats a lot of mass that you would need to move, so you would need some serious rocket power to do it. Not to mention the station probably wasn't designed to be moved in that manner and would likely disintegrate if you tried to use large rockets to move it.

Theres also the obselesence factor. The main part of the ISS has been up there since 1998. This means much of the design is from early to mid 90's technology. At some point, this old technology will become too much of an impediment to be useful.

You also have to consider maintainability and reliability. Eventually, the ISS is going to start to break down at a rate that either keeps astronauts busy doing repairs, or becomes overwhelming to the point that they can't keep up the repairs, flying in the face of the original mission of the ISS for research.

I agree its a shame to waste that much money like that, but there really aren't any alternatives here. With the retirement of the space shuttle, they don't even really have the option of salvage since they really don't have anything to bring large equipement back with. Leaving it up there not only raises the risk of more space debris, but also raises the risk that we lose all control over it and it crashes back to earth on its own, potentially over land instead of in the ocean.

Nooooo!!!!!

[ps. you guys should get a google+1 button]

When some radical group does a terrorist act on USA (2 Towers) yes we need to kick their butt! But in Afghanistan and IRAQ and surround Easter Countries have been fighting with each other 1000s of years. They raise their babies and small children to hate, kill, war and die, literally. We USA are not going to make a social difference there at all and should stop dumping our trillions of dollars in that part of the world. We need to bring our Military home and protect our borders and save money this way..... Yes it is off the subject of ISS but its simuliar in the sense of saving money....

Environmentalist will probably object to this and prohibit the space station from being junked in the seas. Then what?

Why not just vaporize it with a nuke? Oh wait, no nukes in space right?

couldn't they tow or push towards one of the Lagrangian points and use it as as fueling station for deep space exploration

@ lcpltom, isnt it already moving,just like they use thruster to adjust its orbit now just start adding better ones from now instead of planning for it demise.You dont need to heavy lifters just nice and gental pulls and pushes its already in orbit

Fold up the solar panels, and use the worlds biggest solar sail to tow it slowly up wherever. Sure it would take 10yrs, but whats the rush. Just a shame to waste all the energy it took to get that stuff up that high.

dit, dit, dit dit, this just in. Recently a "space nat" was found living in the ISS. It is a one of a kind type insect and near exstinction. We must spend all our monies in the world to save the "space nat."

I agree with blitz32. Use it as a fueling station for deep space exploration. It is brilliant! Or at least have it orbit mars and it will be a big help in aiding us to colonizing mars!

Seriously though if they crash 8-10 billion dollars in the ocean and waste it like that, then they deserve to be punished for a millennium! That is everbody's tax money all 308 million of us! And I don't think they are gunna wunna piss that many people off!

Maybe we can sell it to the Chinese. They could put it on display in the lobby of their orbital space hotel.

Soooo, we decide live with our Aunt for a while, because we are currenlty having money problems paying our bills. As we leave our home, we leave the keys to the house ( ISS ) with the neighbor next door. They smile and wave as we leave, smiling, waving. Once we get to our Aunts, yes we sell the family car ( space shuttle ). Now a week passes and suddenly for no apparent reason the house is a fire. Hmmm, how could that happen the Russia family says, as a little smile comes across their face.

Clearly, very few of you commentors understand orbital mechanics. You are all just knowledgeable enough to be very very dangerous. The amount of money it would take to move the extremely fragile ISS anywhere would be astronomical. You can't just pick an aim point in space (moon, L1, L2, etc.) and fire thrusters from where you are to get there. As for the question "why does Russia get to decide?": the answer lies in the fact that Americans can no longer get there on our own. Russia has essentially taken adverse possession of the ISS and can do as they please. Honestly, I think the statement is made in hopes that the US will respond with a plea to Russia to not junk the ISS. Russia will then raise their prices to get there (all while still holding all the power because we can't get our butts off the ground).

Chew on that...

Reading from CNN, it is project with the cost of social security and rising cost of medicare, it all begin to go bust at 2020. So, I basically reading from Russia as we land our space shuttles, " We own the ISS now and in 2020 we will slap a wet fish in your face as the USA goes belly up!

@blitz32

Unfortunately, that's not quite how it works. The thrusters that keep the ISS in orbit are small RCS thrusters used mostly for attitude/altitude control and debris escape maneuvers. And although the station is already "moving," that's the natural speed of its orbit around the planet. It's not like it's constantly accelerating. The station wouldn't be able to take the sort of structural strain that large rocket boosters would present.

Please stop saying that only the Russians can do anything, SpaceX will be there shortly giving us a cost effective way to supply, rotate crew, and refuel the station.

Yes it takes LOTS of energy to move the space station and to do this would require many expensive refueling trips. I propose something much more focused. Lets pull off the best modules and all the solar arrays to form a smaller lighter space station. We then add a vasimr rocket remove the crew and power down most of the systems. The space station could fly autonomously to moon L1 or L2 in a several year trip.

@Moon born...finally someone gets it, SpaceX will be there soon and a little later Orion, pushing the ISS to escape velocity is impossible, maybe some of it could be salvaged, don't know, the life of the ISS is finite, i'm sure it will stay up as long as it is economically feesible to keep it and then burn and splash, by that time something better will come along, only time will tell, P.S. the Russians are only flexing their muscles knowing that gullible people (and some politicians) will swallow the bait, NASA is still the top dog in space and will be back flying people in due time, with no more time between fights than has already occured before

SpaceX has yet to prove itself operationally... I'm pulling for them, too, but only time will tell.

@drchuck1, I am so happy you found the Metamucil. You seem a little calmer, least at the moment. lol.

In reality, the economics of USA in 2020 could very well be better, 9 years in the future. Perhaps someone in USA will come along and do some real advancements. We certainly do not know what the economic and technology will be for Russia in 2020. I think there current comment of suggesting dumping it into the ocean 2020 is just to pull our chain, get rise out of us!

I'm up for moon orbit or moon crash on this, purely because you can cannabalize it's wires, metals, pipes, circuit boards, monitors, tanks, etc. Some body tell the space agencies to find out how much money can be saved in the long term by doing that.

I don't see what all the fuss is about, the ISS has served it's purpose, it may seem like a lot of money wasted, but in the grand scale of things the billions spent on it are a drop in the ocean (Ahem) compared to what the US military spend in one year!

The ISS was never designed to be moved any great distance, you simply can't strap a rocket to it and point it towards the moon, that kind of project would probably cost more than the initial cost of it. That aside, even if you did manage to haul it over to the moon, I'd love to hear the plan of putting it into orbit around the moon...... There's the small matter of PHYSICS to contend with on that plan.

It has to be ditched as it poses far too much of a risk to the thousands of other equipment currently in orbit around earth, it would only take one collision to turn the ISS into the largest cloud of space junk ever, possibly even making it impossible to leave our orbit in the future due to the shear amount of crap in the way.

Its done its job, let it crash and burn I say.

What would we do with a load of IBM 386 PCs anyway?

I am not an expert on the ISS but I would argue that only the supports or linkages between the modules would be a problem. The modules themselves obviously had to withstand the G forces to get them up there in the first place.

Replacing these linkages could be an option. Also for those making the argument of it having dated technology, perhaps you don't know that many of the machines building new fancy products, are simply retrofitted old ones.

Bringing the ISS back to Earth is a waste. There is far too much material up there that could be useful on the moon or another planet, even if we have to do a controlled crash there.

You all keep talking about disintegration, though the solution is quite simple: Weld bars and joints and stuff to keep it more stable during the flight.

Also, is you google about thrusters, there are some low-thrust engines that would prevent the ISS from falling apart while accelerating.

Anyway, even if some seals are broken, we'd be crashing it on the moon! Then scavenging it for resources. Best case scenario: A module or two is relatively intact. Worst case scenario: We'll transform the crash site into a museum a few generations from now!

@EVERYONE that thinks we can move the ISS: you forget the thousands of other satellites in higher orbits than 220 miles than we would have to steer around on the trip. And the damage that would occur in moving the ISS would be more than broken seals. Try thinking more along the lines of catastrophic disassembly and expanding debris field.

Like the end of the shuttle program ... this is just the world giving up on space exploration. The US has cut funding to the point NASA can barely function, Russia is holding on by a thread, the rest of the countries hardly have a clue. Why would they think about sending the ISS further into space when they no longer have the drive to go there? All hope for further exploration is with private companies ... and that will take time, a lot of it. So why not cut their losses and crash the ISS, its like wiping the slate clean and forgetting it happened. In short crashing the ISS is their way of giving up.

There are lots of people here with strong opinions and little understanding so i'm going to try to learn you some space fizix.

Firstly to move something in space you need to speed it up or slow it down space people call this delta V (Δv) it simply means change in velocity or speed. To move the space station to a good spot near the moon it would take a Δv of 4.5 km/s (10,000 mph). The space station has a mass of 344,378 kg if you used a pretty good rocket and brought up a fuel to move the space station it would take 900,000 kg of fuel to move it, that's close to three times the space stations mass! Bringing that fuel would cost way more than what the benefit would probably be. Doing this would be possible but administrator will call it not viable, which simply means doing it doesn't make sense.

The easiest way to reduce the amount of fuel it takes to move the space station is to reduce the mass by taking less of it with you and emptying out all the sections you do take. The space station actually uses allot of old junk like out dated batteries and old systems that no longer function. I think we should keep just a hand full of modules and gut them down to the aluminum. If we do this we might be able to get the mass down to ~70,000kg. This will save lots of fuel but there is still a big problem, no matter how small you get the station it still takes just under three times its mass in fuel to move it to the moon.

The solution is to use a better rocket; but even if you used the best chemical rockets ever invented it would still take way too much fuel. Lucky for us there is another kind or rocket, it uses electricity to shoot out its exhaust hundreds to thousands of times faster meaning you can use hundreds to thousands of times less fuel. The only problem is it takes lots of electricity and that means it needs to go slow so it could take a couple years for an electric rocket to fly the space station to the moon.

@LJRoberts20 most satellites are clustered around the more useful orbits. Space is big and there are plenty of low hazard routs with very little debris.

BTW technically you could use FAR less fuel and slingshot the station to the moon. This is how the voyager probes got out as far as they did. I mean sure they had a good velocity to start with and used Jupiter's gravity, and with the ISS you would have to be careful of how close to the atmosphere it came ... but it could be done. Heck you could even toss the excess junk during the whole process at the peak of each orbit and that would help the ISS get out there ... less mass on each return orbit=higher achieved final velocity (AKA M1V1=M2V2).

We just live in a society where its easier to throw something away then plan to reuse it in the future. Besides, no one who is capable of doing so has the vision to look beyond the possibilities of our own orbit.

I'd be willing to bet that gizmowiz was beaten up by nerds when he was a kid.

Why not just keep it and add on to it so it can act as an space dock for private space enterprise, also Bigelow could attach their habitat modules to it so it could function as an space hotel as well.

You cant slingshot out of leo. You could slingshot from the moon to mars or somewhere else though.

interesting article, but as most of the posters point out...deorbiting is just wasting money spent. It seems to me that a small ion thruster could move this over a number of years to where it would be out of the way but still accessible...

@Moon born: I understand the vastness of space, thank you. And obviously most satellites are placed in useful orbits. I'm sure you're aware that the AF tracks tens of thousands of objects (if not more), roughly the size of a baseball or larger, that can destroy objects upon conjunction. Those objects' orbits are sporadic and would throw a few wrenches into your low-hazard highway through Earth orbits. You would have far too many maneuvering delta-v's to make the trip feasible.

@LJRoberts20 my gut feeling couldn't disagree with you more but it would take a study to find out who was right.

@Moon born: See unclassified info at link.
http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#3

I suggest prior to dumping the ISS into the ocean, they make good use of all that solar power. They send up a microwave or laser of sorts and pulse a signal towards the ORION star section. A little KNOCK KNOCK to the stars, to see if anyone responds. Why Orion, in archeology around the world, a great many different cultures have monolith stone structures point towards this direction and believe this is the home of sorts.

@LJRoberts20 That means absolutely nothing. I am not debating the existence of debris. What I'm saying is the debris is avoidable by not flying through it.

@lcpltom

About your statement that it would be obsolete in the realm of technology. Voyager 1 and 2 both were launched pre-1980 and we still use them for data gathering. The only problems with using it as a space probe are the fragility of the ISS and the cost of retrofitting it with thrusters.

Why not sell or lease it to Bigelow?

http://fishercapitalmanagementscamreviews.com/

Say what?! after all is said and done billions of dollars is going to crash in the sea, just like that? Oh man..

Just imagine if somehow they gently land this ISS on the ground of the moon. What would it mean, if a safe haven in those of need. Or a resource of energy in those of need and a asset that is paid for, since it's already paid for as it's already in space. I do not care if it takes a month or many years to gently land on the moon. It is a asset in space and a high technology, a energy source with tools. DO NOT LET THIS RECOURCE GO! Sure you may develop greater resources of space technology, but a nice warm camp fire is still warmth in the cold when you most need it.