Saving the International Space Station is Not Worth It

Yes, it needs to come down and it was a prototype system solving all sorts of problems.

Now is likely too soon, but we do need my Space bicycle wheel system built as big as possible.  A spinning wheel will be dynamically stable when hit by debris and can produce a one g faux gravity along the rim.  Also easily repaired as well.

The real pay off will be when this wheel is duplicated to open a void between the two spoke planes.  Thin fabric can be used to seal off the ends and we now have a spinning balloon wheel holding shirt sleeve atmosphere.

Perfect place to assemble starships.

Saving the International Space Station is Not Worth It

July 22, 2024 by Brian Wang

People have proposed saving the International Space Station. They think it cost about $200 billion to build it. However, most of those costs were the $1-2 billion spent for each Space shuttle launch. Those are sunk costs. It now costs an additional $1.3 billion per year to keep the Space Station operating. The parts were designed to last 30 years and some of the parts are now 32 years old.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/07/saving-the-international-space-station-is-not-worth-it.html#more-196711

Raising the space station to higher has technical risks, large costs and space impact risks. Deorbiting the space station at the end of its life is the safest and only viable method to decommission this historic symbol of science, technology, and collaboration. Saving the space station could easily cost $5-10 billion instead of the less than $1 billion to safely de-orbit. The Space Station that was saved would still need costly maintenance and it would not be designed for the new age of the SpaceX Starship. It would be far more valuable to start fresh with many new, bigger and better space stations for less cost.

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Raising the Space Station orbits would require the development of new propulsive and tanker vehicles that do not currently exist. While still currently in development, vehicles such as the SpaceX Starship are being designed to deliver significant amounts of cargo to these orbits; however, there are prohibitive engineering challenges with docking such a large vehicle to the space station and being able to use its thrusters while remaining within space station structural margins. Other vehicles would require both new certifications to fly at higher altitudes and multiple flights to deliver propellant.

The other major consideration when going to a higher altitude is the orbital debris regime at each specified locale. Going above 415km has a lot more risk. Everything is old and more likely to break. why spend billions for this?

Raising the Space Station orbits would require the development of new propulsive and tanker vehicles that do not currently exist. While still currently in development, vehicles such as the SpaceX Starship are being designed to deliver significant amounts of cargo to these orbits; however, there are prohibitive engineering challenges with docking such a large vehicle to the space station and being able to use its thrusters while remaining within space station structural margins. Other vehicles would require both new certifications to fly at higher altitudes and multiple flights to deliver propellant.

The other major consideration when going to a higher altitude is the orbital debris regime at each specified locale. The risk of a penetrating or catastrophic impact to space station (i.e., that could fragment the vehicle) increases drastically above 257miles (415km). While higher altitudes provide a longer theoretical orbital life, the mean time between an impact event decreases from ~51 years at the current operational altitude to less than four years at a 497 mile (800km), ~700-year orbit. This means that the likelihood of an impact leaving station unable to maneuver or react to future threats, or even a significant impact resulting in complete fragmentation, is unacceptably high. NASA has estimated that such an impact could permanently degrade or even eliminate access to LEO for centuries.