1 mo. ago • 99%

We really should have all seen this coming.

25 comments

Any vacant space and they'll find a way. Also gave me an idea for tenforward for tomorrow. Thanks.

28
- 24
  
  They're about to find a way into my small town again, bleah!
  
  2
- I can't give you 10F ideas. I need them for my own weird posts!
  
  4
Man, I really hope someone rich steps up before the ISS gets deorbited and pays to have the modules separated and sent back one-by-one, instead of just tossing it into the atmosphere and letting it burn up. It feels like a crime against humanity to just abandon it like that. At the very least, surely we could come up with a strap-on heat shield and parachute system so the parts could splash-down and get recovered, repaired, and stored in a museum.

Edit: why is this being downvoted? Is it because I said "someone rich"? I said that because I think rich people are the only ones with the money and willpower to get it done. I don't like relying on them, but I don't think most of the US population cares enough to get the government or NASA to do it.

16
- Well, that’s not for another 6 years. That is, if the replacements are on schedule. We need to figure this starliner thing first.
  
  A lot of the ISS wasn’t really engineered with reentry in mind. You’d need to basically reverse what was done. Building it was like 30 missions, 40 flights, and an over decade of work.
  
  15
  
  ISS is done in (maybe max) 6 years?! We getting a new one for Christmas anytime soon? Gotta be much more… science to do up there that’s inconvenient in a space tent or even a teardrop or something.
  
  Totally took it for granted.
  
  8
  
  Yeah. I'm not sure how well it'd survive reentry either, but personally, I kinda think broken but repairable is better that fully vaporized.
  
  Another possibility I considered is welding some steel beams to the outside, vacating the internal atmosphere and then pushing it into a stable orbit; or even pushing it into the moon's orbit (if it was in the moon's orbit then you wouldn't have to worry as much about debris generated by collisions). Then it could sit there until we have the technology to either repair and recommission it, tow it back to earth, or renovate it and turn it into a tourist attraction (yanno, hoping we survive long enough for space tourism to be an actual thing).
  
  That said, I have no idea if it'd be able to survive deceleration if you tried to put it in the moon's orbit though. While acceleration could probably be slow and gentle, the deceleration required to keep it in the moon's orbit might be too much for it.
  
  1
Would Sprit Halloween really take a chance on something that shabby?

I think not.

2
I am here for it, bring on the Starstayer snark!!!

2

You've viewed 25 comments.