Save Freedom: We Must Stop the Destruction of the International Space Station

This is silly. It's a moldy, smelly group of bolted together tin cans. Let it burn and replace it with something 10X better for the cost of "saving" it.

Interesting proposal, but can this really be done?

> The ISS be stripped of whatever of the billions of dollars of still-useful hardware and tech it has aboard. This can be auctioned to one of the several new commercial space station facilities, or even, if appropriate, transferred to NASA’s planned lunar orbiting “Gateway” facility.

Are there any such reusable systems aboard the ISS? Can they be removed?

> The station be moved to a medium-high orbit, sealed, and declared a Universal Heritage Site.

What system would be used to bring people and supplies to that orbit? How much would it cost per launch?

And the elephant in the room: How can this project guarantee the safety of the station long term? We already know about cracks appearing and Mir also decayed over time.

What is the point of having a space station?

I guess it justifies a steady stream of funding in the way that a program like Apollo did not. It seems there is little science of value happening there, and most of that is the science of keeping primates alive in space.

I think some claims are either that building it causes some useful basic research and that it is good practice for some future crude space mission. For the first claim, I don’t really see why the ISS is better than the regular aviation research done by nasa combined with the kind of space missions that don’t involve primates (telescopes and rovers and probes and suchlike), especially when you consider the number that might be attempted without so much of the budget going to the ISS. For the second claim I would observe first that there have not been many missions for all this practice and I will secondly say that I don’t really understand the point of these proposed future missions anyway.

Mostly I see the ISS as an enormous opportunity cost preventing nasa budgets from being spent on more scientifically interesting missions. But maybe there’s some advantage I don’t see, or removing the ISS wouldn’t make that much more money for the kind of missions I do think are worthwhile.

This was a particularly lame argument:

> If NASA dumps ISS on the Earth, it will be the worst public relations disaster in its history. At the very moment, new generations of eco-conscious young people are taking the reins of control, as the agency that has stood for a hopeful vision of the future will be trashing the planet. Ridiculous. Worse, one of the world’s most exciting companies will be spattered by the debris along the way. It is an awful decision, a terrible plan and a signal that America isn’t serious about staying in space. For if it were, it would protect such a treasured symbol of what went into making it happen.

Deorbiting an unused spacecraft is absolutely the responsible thing to do. If you care about our future in space, filling up our space environment with abandoned objects is a terrible policy.

Generic 'Space Tug' rather than de-orbit tug might give some other options.

E.G. Punt the decision a few more years. Maybe Starship works and other options get cheeper or we can even bring the ISS back to earth?

Other options:

Land it somewhere on the moon (maybe safely distant but conveniently near by other historic sites for a future Moon Museum?)

Boost it out of the Sol system perpendicular to the plane, just a little above escape velocity. If we ever get better space ships it'll be waiting.

Have there been any efforts to document the space station using modern technologies? I think a fully rendered VR experience augmented by real footage would be cool.

Isn't the biggest problem the breakdown of relations between Russia and the West, and the fact that Russia's modules essential steer the thing at the moment?

How do we claim that as an American Heritage site?

We have to remove ISS before it becomes a hazard to orbital operations in general. It will degenerate into quite a bit of debris, even if we attempt to make it a historical site.

I like the "idea" of saving the ISS; but as a whole that seems like wishful thinking. Perhaps a subset of modules could be salvaged/boosted into a higher orbit, or if I let my heart really dream - we could get started on our next ISS, and try to re-use a few pieces from the OG so they could live on and be the museum pieces we all know they should be.

If money were no object, I think we would have a duty to future generations to save the entire ISS - the value being able to "touch" history is immeasurable.

Preserving the ISS is a lofty goal, but the costs of doing anything in space are enormous. Anyone got some ballpark estimations for the proposed solutions?

Is it even going to deorbit as planned? In other space news we are finding that a lot of de orbiting debris we assumed would “burn away in the atmosphere” quite conveniently for us in fact didn’t, and would rip holes through people’s homes. Maybe they have more control over the iss before its laid down but once its started to break apart, you better hope the splash down zone is uninhabited.

> Next, in 1995, having accepted this loss, and as part of an effort to leverage the taxpayer’s investment in the station, I called in my Alpha Town testimony in front of Congress for all transportation to and from the station to be commercially provided

Man with an agenda. Why not build one yourself and sell staff out of it ?

My question is why use the fuel to deorbit it, instead extend the orbit out. Keep it in some high earth orbit as a memento of early human achievement.

I was wondering why on earth does it have anything to do with freedom. I never knew the US part of ISS has a separate name.

NASA needs better media.

They have so much content, and they suck at showing it off well