Before it comes down, what should be saved from the International Space Station?
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Frankly, the average orbital telescope has contributed an order of magnitude more to science than the ISS. If it isn't worth it to bring Spitzer or Chandra or even Hubble home, the ISS isn't worth it either.
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Right - no ex soviet scientists were ever employed by Iran on its ballistic missiles ...
https://www.iranwatch.org/suppliers/vadim-vorobey
And he was far from the only one. Do you really think that Iran couldn't afford to pay more than a Russian state pension? Seriously if you have $75 billion to spend and the main purpose in spending it is to secure ~100 skilled rocket scientists you could just take $1billion, give them $10m each and have a much higher chance of success.
If the ISS was truly designed to keep a tiny number of poorly paid scientists from selling their expertise to rogue nations it was idiotic, and a failure.
If it was actually designed to try to keep Russia aligned with the west it was just a failure.
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Reading the headline my first thought was the cupola. But how to get it down? Maybe a starship will be operational by then. Or maybe they could put it one of those inflatable heat shields they've been working on, or maybe they could grab an Orion heat shield and strap some payload faring on it.
Other than that, the EVA suits, the sleeping bags, maybe the exercycle, definitely the space toilet. and of course loose stuff like notes and cameras and such. It would be easy to mock up a module since it doesn't have to be air tight and that would be as important as bringing artifacts back.
Other than that, the EVA suits, the sleeping bags, maybe the exercycle, definitely the space toilet. and of course loose stuff like notes and cameras and such. It would be easy to mock up a module since it doesn't have to be air tight and that would be as important as bringing artifacts back.
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I think that's one of the reasons I just cannot get excited about SpaceX achievements. We are moving form having international collaboration between nation states, to a space era where a bunch of rich guys can launch whatever they want, no matter how dumb it is (like data centers or cars).
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Please, no.
We've seen that movie too many times /j
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The only thing we can't replicate is the spirit of international cooperation. So we will end up with 2+ smaller stations, China already has one, India might give it a try in a decade, NASA will launch a new one and ESA will join (or not, if POTUS pull some serious bullshit). Russia probably could launch another MIR, if they weren't busy destroying own and neighbor countries.
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I don't know why this is getting downvoted... the entire station is a historical artifact, likely to be of interest to future historians. I know the logistics of trying to save it are quite tricky, and maybe all but impossible, but I really do think we should at least be investigating options to preserve the largest portion of it that can be saved. Even if it's a module or three, a scaffolding here and there, something to preserve the essence of what it was [is].
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It can’t preserved it in space, so it would have to be preserved on the ground. Which means you would pretty much have to rebuild the space shuttle to do that. And you’ve got about 5 years to do it. I don’t see the point in dedicating the entire NASA organisation for half a decade to save a few knick-knacks.
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I wish the Microgravity Science Glovebox could go to a museum. But I think it's too big to be removed and moved into a Dragon.
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ISS produces about 350 science papers a year, which isn't bad considering science is only a secondary goal - it's mainly a technology testbed for human spaceflight. HST is about 1000 papers a year, so only half an order of magnitude more. Chandra and Spitzer are about the same as ISS.
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Those at least would have some animation. The galley table, the cupola, most other stuff are are just going to sit there. The arms could be in motion, showing how stuff was moved around.
They could have lightweight replications of items, to not wear out the arms but show the speed. And animotronic astronauts, to show how they did their work.
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If "number of papers" is how we measure contribution to science then Didier Raoult is a greater luminary than Isaac Newton.
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The respective national museums will fight over what belongs to them. The rest may be sold and the profits divided between the ISS participants according to their investments.
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