Elon Musk's SpaceX contracted to destroy retired space station - BBC News
Elon Musk's SpaceX contracted to destroy retired space station - BBC News
The California-based company will build a "tugboat" to execute the end-of-life disposal of the ISS.
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Srsly, no-one going with the "it's free real estate" meme.
Jokingly, but also really, seems a waste. I get they don't want the overhead, but just boost it north, perhaps to a Lagrange, maybe just high orbit, but someone will come along to salvage eventually...
ETA: Also, one of the beauties of SpaceX is that Musk doesn't muck with it (yet), working too well without him, unlike everything else he's bollocksed up.
There is no Lagrange point "North".
L1 is sunwards, L2 is counter-sunwards, L3 is on the other side of the Sun, L4 is Eastwards, and L5 is Westwards.
Going from LEO to L1/L2, requires a ∆v of 7.5km/s, which is comparable to the 9.4km/s ∆v required to go from Earth surface to LEO.
Meanwhile, the ISS keeps getting slowed down by Earth's atmosphere, and it only takes a ∆v of 1km/s or less, to plunge it into denser atmosphere for reentry.
It makes me really sad that the space station is going to be destroyed since I always really liked it, but the sheer amount of fuel needed to move it to a stable position makes me (begrudgingly) understand why they're going to do it...
Anyone able to put the deltaV into tons of fuel needed for this manoeuvre? Extra points if you can do the full thing of getting the fuel to the station.
It really is a shame though, its such an iconic structure. Would be nice if we could class it an the 8th wonder of the world but dont know enough about classification to know if it even could be.
I was just colloquially referring to away from Earth as North.
Ah... I didn't catch on that. Nvm then.