Sometime in the next decade, the International Space Station will begin a slow descent from
orbit.
A gradual decline in its 400 kilometers altitude, bringing the massive structure down to thicker
and thicker layers of our atmosphere before it reaches a point of no return, 280 kilometers
above our heads.
From here air resistance will rapidly slow down the station and begin to tear it apart.
Disintegrating over a planned debris field centered around Point Nemo, the furthest point
from any landmass on Earth.
The South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area.
Here, in Earth's watery spacecraft graveyard, the remains of the ISS will lay after over
2 decades of valuable service to humankind.
But this all begs the question.
Why?
Why decommission such a valuable piece of space infrastructure?
The ISS has been growing gradually since the very first components of the station reached
orbit.
On November 20th 1998, the Zarya Cargo Module, the first module of the ISS, launched aboard
a Russian Proton Rocket from Kazakhstan. [1]
Zarya was the seed for what was to come.
Carrying with it the docking, electrical power, propulsion and guidance systems needed to
gradually grow what was to become an unprecedented piece of international space infrastructure.
Zarya was joined just two weeks later by the Unity Module.
A module with 2 axial connection points, one on either end of the module, and 4 radial
connection points around its circumference.
Where the first truss segments would be attached, allowing massive solar arrays to deploy and
provide power for the growing space laboratory.
These sections of the International Station remain in space to this day, providing for
the needs of over 250 individual astronauts in orbit around Earth over the past 23 years.
But this home in space was never intended to be permanent, and many components are showing
their age.
The Zarya module, that seed from which the entire space station grew, has developed several
cracks that are going to continually grow.
Cyclical thermal expansion, caused by the 16 sunsets and sunrises the ISS witnesses
each and every day, stresses the structure of the station and causes these modules to
gradually degrade over time.
While jolts from spacecraft docking with the space station can also cause stress in the
structure.
Not to mention the constant bombardment from micrometeorites and space debris that has
damaged vital components of the ISS, like the strike on the Canadarm in 2021.
[2] Mystery pressure leaks have even forced Astronauts
into wild goose chases seaking the source as their atmosphere slowly vents to space
[3] Problems like this have been cropping up more and more frequently as the station
ages.
These modules, part of the primary structure of the ISS, are what will limit the life of
the station, and at some point the modules will need to be retired, the question is when.
Each participating partner of the ISS is expected to inspect and perform life extending maintenance,
and while the
North American, Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies have performed these checks
through to 2028, however, critically, Russia, who have now become an international pariah,
have only completed these checks through to 2024.
[4] Limiting the ISS’s current lifetime to just 2 years.
The war in the Ukraine has thrown NASA’S recent transition and decommissioning report,
which planned to deorbit the ISS by 2031, into limbo.
Without Russian cooperation the transition plan is unfeasible, as the International Space
Station was never designed to have large sections of its structure removed to allow a participating
partner to cease cooperation.
Without Russia, we may only have 2 years of operation of the International Space Station
left, potentially dooming NASAs future plans laid out in the transition report.
To understand what we may have just lost let’s dive into the decommissioning and transition
report.
Short pause in edit.
Flipping through pages of the report animation
NASA has been planning this decommissioning for some time, and for good reason.
The International Space Station costs NASA roughly 3 billion dollar every year.
With the costs split fairly evenly between the cost of transporting astronauts and supplies
to orbit and system operations and maintenance of the station itself.
To put that into perspective, 3 billion is over 10% of NASA’s total 24 billion dollar
budget and over a third of their human space flight budget.
To really put that into perspective, the Perseverance rover mission cost a total of 2.7 billion
dollars.
[5]
These costs are the real reason the ISS will be decommissioned.
The transition report lays out a plan to decommission the International Space Station to create
up to 1.8 billion dollars a year in budget that could be used for NASA’s moon colony
goals.
That’s exciting in itself, but is losing the international space station in the process
worth it?
Well, luckily, the transition plan lays out how NASA will not only free up 1.8 billion
dollars of annual budget, but also maintain a presence in orbit.
Commercial space flight has rapidly changed the face of the space industry in the last
10 years.
In fact with the current state of affairs with the war in Ukraine, without SpaceX, NASA
would be unable to send astronauts to the ISS, as the Falcon 9 is the only American
rocket fully certified for transporting humans to the ISS.
It is this advancement in the private space industry that is going to allow NASA to maintain
a presence in orbit, while saving enough money to fund a perseverance rover every 18 months.
The bulk of this money saving will be achieved by offloading the development and maintenance
of the next generation of orbiting space habitats to the commercial space industry.
NASA has long desired to do this, and the benefits are clear with the success of SpaceX.
Whose innovation and pricing have forced the entire industry to adapt.
Commercial industry is competitive, but in order to allow the commercial space industry
to flourish in low earth orbit, there must be something to sell.
A viable economy must exist.
In order to stimulate this new economy, NASA has conducted studies to identify the most
promising enterprises that could find their home in the next generation space station,
and several of those enterprises were part of the transition plan for the ISS.
NASA identified a couple of key industries that could flourish in space.
The first of which is the entertainment industry.
Imagine a world where the battle room of Ender’s game is possible.
That’s a world that Space Entertainment Enterprises is seeking to create.
With their spherical inflatable movie studio, they are slated to film an unnamed movie with
Tom Cruise as the leading actor.
This however would not be a one off production.
The studio would be rentable by anyone with a high enough budget.
A brave new world where I would put money on MrBeast flying himself to space for a video.
Isn’t that right Jimmy?
This isn’t just a pie in the sky idea.
In 2020, NASA awarded Axiom space a contract worth 140 million dollars to launch a module
that would attach to the ISS in 2024, which will provide accommodation for private astronauts
and continue scientific research.
This is the first step in a planned expansion of a private section of the International
Station, which, if successful, will be followed by additional modules that would allow the
Axiom space station to operate completely independently from the ISS and expand on the
other industries that NASA identified as potentially profitable space economies.
The Space Entertainment Enterprises module is part of this plan.
Microgravity manufacturing was another industry identified.
Manufacturing without the influence of gravity has some major advantages that are just waiting
for the right product that can justify the cost of shipping raw materials to space.
Processes that are driven by gravity, like sedimentation, convection, and hydrostatic
pressure are eliminated, which affect manufacturing processes.
Sedimentation for example makes it very difficult to create an evenly mixed liquid, as denser
particles sink to the bottom.
Say when we are creating an alloyed metal with difficult density elements.
[6] These non-uniformities can affect the material properties of the final metal component,
and so there is huge potential to create new higher quality superalloys in space.
This is just one of many potential manufacturing techniques that could be employed in space,
and we will discuss the topic in detail in a future video.
With the current transition plan, this Axiom commercial space station will detach from
the ISS in 2028, becoming the new seed from which the space station can continue to grow
and provide a space for future NASA astronauts to work from, with rental payments due to
Axiom and transportation costs to SpaceX.
There is a lot to look forward to with that plan, but what are the chances this goes ahead
with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine making it impossible to work with them.
Russia’s segments rely on America’s segments for power, and the USA segments rely on Russian
propulsion to stay in orbit and avoid space debris.
This is an international space station that relies on international cooperation.
It’s clear that Russian astronauts oppose the war in Ukraine, based on their recent
uniform change, but they do not call the shots here.
The reality is, if this continues, NASA will need to make some major decisions in the next
two years.
There are a few potential outcomes here.
The Russian’s separating their modules is not one of them.
[7] As they need that power from the rest of the ISS and would struggle to complete
that work without the help of the Canadian robotic arm.
Russia could, under some miracle, get its shit together in the next 2 years and remove
Putin’s regime and continue international cooperation in space.
Or, Russia's segments may not be certified through to 2028, forcing the deorbiting of
the International Space Station to be advanced, with the transition to a commercial space
station abandoned.
Alternatively, emergency funds could be allocated to NASA to rapidly supply the ISS with additional
modules to replace Russian services, like propulsion for orbit maintenance and debris
avoidance, allowing the transition plans to continue on as normal.
Or, the funds could simply be allocated to the commercial space companies to accelerate
transition plans, but that is a massive ask for unproven vendors in a 2 year timeframe.
One thing is for sure.
The current structure of the ISS is on borrowed time.
Its aging primary structure is becoming a larger and larger issue every year, and at
some point in the next decade, it will be deorbited.
The only question now is when.
It’s hard to believe that the International Space Station has been in orbit for just over
twenty years.
It’s been a huge source of inspiration for aspiring engineers and scientists around the
world, a frontier of scientific research.
With only 253 individual astronauts from 19 different countries getting the privilege
to visit and work from the ISS, it’s seen by many as the pinnacle scientific career
achievement.
A joy only a few of us will ever get to experience.
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If you are looking for something else to watch right now you could watch our last video on
the insane engineering of the Concorde, or you could watch Real Science’s new video
on the science of surviving in space.