Comment on Elon Musk's SpaceX contracted to destroy retired space station - BBC News
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
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…
jarfil@beehaw.org 3 months ago
There is no Lagrange point “North”.
L1 is sunwards, L2 is counter-sunwards, L3 is on the other side of the Sun, L4 is sunrisewards, and L5 is sunsetwards.
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 the atmosphere for reentry.
SimplyTadpole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
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…
Deepus@lemm.ee 3 months ago
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.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
I was just colloquially referring to away from Earth as North.
jarfil@beehaw.org 3 months ago
Ah… I didn’t catch on that. Nvm then.