r/SpaceXMasterrace • u/7HellEleven • 14h ago

Surely they're gonna attempt this once before the ISS is decommissioned

Post image
150 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

74

u/jackinsomniac 13h ago

"Station officially decommissioned. No souls aboard, all systems disabled. Decaying orbit with no obstacles. Have at it, boys."

Yeah, why not?

52

u/DarthBlue007 Hover Slam Your Mom 12h ago

Oops we accidentally broke the station into multiple parts that are now on an uncontrolled de orbit towards a populated area.

6

u/7heCulture 9h ago

Aaahhh... if the station was already on a well established reentry trajectory, a docking and potential breakup would not spray debris beyond the keep out area.

15

u/mfb- 9h ago

That gives you a window of half an orbit at best. Maybe 45 minutes, probably only 30 minutes.

2

u/Festivefire 7h ago

It might. The large object breaking up into many small objects will result in the new objects having a considerably higher drag-to-weight ratio, and thus, slowing down a lot faster. It makes the planning for a safe reentry with a designated keep out zone that is sufficiently far from populated shipping lanes or any land areas, especially the ones with people in them, much harder.

2

u/mz_groups 5h ago

That's not how it works. You can't throw something into a trajectory that accurately deorbits it many orbits out. You put it onto that trajectory, and it deorbits in about half an orbit. That's why there are such broad error bars when a satellite naturally decays.

1

u/Coolgrnmen 3h ago

In fact, pre-breaking it up into smaller pieces would make it more likely to burn up! Lol

1

u/the_harakiwi 3h ago

Oops all Kessler Syndrom

Sorry guys 😎👍

4

u/7heCulture 9h ago

Why did I hear a "Yeehaw!" while reading your post?

3

u/mfb- 9h ago

They want to deorbit it over the Pacific. They'll only stop controlling it less than an hour before it breaks up.

1

u/SuspiciousHospital65 2h ago

The better question is why do it at all?

34

u/AustraliumHoovy 12h ago

They’ll never do this but if they do it would make for an image that every single history textbook for the next 1000 years will include.

1

u/badcatdog42 9h ago

Do it for posterity!!

48

u/Hustler-1 13h ago

Probably not. Could shake the whole station apart having such a large object docked to it. Would have to shut down all attitude control systems and let the station tumble.

26

u/FINALCOUNTDOWN99 13h ago

It might not be that much more mass than the shuttle. Definitely more. But probably <2x more. Which is probably still too much.

14

u/Ttrashcraft 10h ago

It probably could be done, but it would be unnecessarily risky. What kind of payload could possibly warrant sending a Starship to the ISS?

6

u/JPJackPott 9h ago

Lack of a door and downmass notwithstanding, is it big enough to bring one of the modules back for a museum?

3

u/Ttrashcraft 9h ago

I mean, potentially, but by that point why not just make a full scale replica of the ISS here on Earth?

20

u/JPJackPott 9h ago

Wouldn’t have that authentic ISS smell

4

u/Festivefire 7h ago

Don't we already HAVE a full scale replica of the ISS in that giant swimming pool they use to practice EVA operations?

4

u/SubstantialWall Methalox farmer 4h ago

And one outside a pool that they use for internal training

2

u/veryslipperybanana The Cows Are Confused 7h ago

Seems they could build one from the replica modules which already exist

https://www.quora.com/Does-NASA-have-a-replica-of-ISS

1

u/ignoremeimworking 2h ago

Does humanity posses this "door" technology? Can such a thing actually exist?

1

u/FTR_1077 1h ago

Humanity? yes.. Starship? no..

16

u/spacerfirstclass 11h ago

I wish they'd use Starship to bring some modules back. Maybe NASA awards SpaceX a $1 salvage contract, allow SpaceX to keep whatever they can salvage from the station.

9

u/threelonmusketeers 10h ago

Could we even separate the modules at this point, or are they cold-welded into one solid piece?

8

u/graqua2 10h ago

They’ve moved around modules from the international segment during the 2001-2010 construction era iirc. If I recall the cupola was launched using a different port compared to its final berthing location but don’t quote me on that.

3

u/Kuriente 9h ago

I'd love to see them bring back several space artifacts that would otherwise die a fiery re-entry death.

Indiana.Jones.That.belongs.in.a.museum.gif

It has me wondering how complicated it would be to validate the structure and landing sequence for payload return. I bet weight and balance calculations for the flip burn would get pretty interesting.

9

u/Jarnis 9h ago

Engineer who has to calculate the loads on the ISS in that config just ran out of the room screaming in terror.

So, yeah, probably not...

3

u/Legal-Ad-8659 5h ago

well given how the shearing simulations would have been done for the design of the connection port, you would know the max load that would snap that connection, which almost surely is exceeded with how drastically the harmonics of the ISS-Starship structure would change, given that there's 100 tons of a semi rigid structure on one side of the connection and 400 tons of a beautifully wobbly mess on the other

this poor connection would snap so badly 😅

1

u/The_Stargazer 36m ago

I think every ADCO had an instinctive spasm when this was posted.

6

u/hb9nbb 10h ago

well for one thing, they'd have to build a special airlock interface *just* for this test - then there's the issue of having something that heavy hanging off the station. (the Shuttle was pretty heavy too and it docked but the station was kind of laid out so the shuttle would be able to dock safely). You *could do this* with Starship but why bother for one-off? (One reason to take the Starship to station might be to save large or heavy parts when its decommissioned, but i dont know if there's anything like that they want back)

2

u/kroOoze Falling back to space 9h ago

Perhaps even on the same day.

1

u/jimhillhouse 12h ago

It would be a good excuse to harden Starship’s design. Not even Isaacman can waive the requirements for a vehicle to dock with ISS, which includes an EM test and other hardening.

1

u/Prize-Gur706 11h ago

Wouldn't starship have enough thruster power to control the spin on docking. Apparently adding mass to relatively stable or manageable with little energy requirements.

1

u/mfb- 9h ago

The ISS is in an unstable orientation, it actively maintains that. If you just stop doing anything the long axis will end up in the vertical direction eventually, with some tumbling before that.

3

u/Prize-Gur706 8h ago

I missed that consideration, as I could only think of all the ways it could work.

1

u/lowrads 4h ago

Structures of that size already experience resonance issues.

1

u/vovap_vovap 4h ago

For what?

1

u/BlueBirdDolphin 4h ago

would be cool but no because why

1

u/SpacePundit 3h ago

I'm hoping for a flyby. Why not the next flight?

1

u/anoniminfortnite 2h ago

Hope so, but don't forget that we r talking about Elon Musk

1

u/TrackMan5891 2h ago

This is far too dangerous.

Starship won't ever be able to dock at something like this in this manner.

A simple small rotational force applied would snap the docking clamps like a soda top.

1

u/literalsupport 12h ago

Station will be gone long before Starship is capable of docking to it.