Originally published at: Russia solidifies plans to leave the international space station after 2024 | Boing Boing
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This is just sabre rattling. Russia threatens to quit the ISS all the time (even before the war). Now they say 2028. The station is being deorbited in 2030 anyway, so there’s no real story here.
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Do you know what the reason for the station being de-orbited? I’d have though that the structure would have value, even if the systems need to be replaced?
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The TL;DR is that the choices are a controlled deorbit, or an uncontrolled terrifying fireball of death deorbit. NASA is choosing the former.
It takes constant fuel and a lot of maintenance to keep it in orbit, and the scientific community has really gotten what they needed from the ISS. There’s only so much science one needs to do in LEO and we’re reaching that point. The station is costing increasing amounts of money for rapidly diminishing returns now.
As for the structure having value, that’s only true if there is someone else who wants to immediately take it over and resume maintaining its orbit long enough to do something else with it. There doesn’t appear to be anyone interested in doing so.
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Thank you 
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She speculated that perhaps Russia was planning for a future space station after the ISS, along similar lines to NASA’s early-stage commercial space station efforts. “I think the Russians, just like us, are thinking ahead to what’s next for them,” Gatens said.
In a just world, Russia would GTFO of Ukraine, and not spend a dime on a space station, more weapons, or even extra cheese on a Whopper until it paid to rebuild the country it destroyed on a whim, and established a generous fund to support the families it tore apart.
Alas.
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Also worth mentioning is that the structure itself is aging in ways that are not easily mitigated by ongoing maintenance. The station is reaching the end of its useful life from a safety perspective as well.
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Definitely. It would need to be Space Station of Theseus to keep it going. Entire modules need to be replaced and the old ones deorbited to keep the structure viable. That’s probably something we would do if the scientific or logistical value of the station merited it, but it really doesn’t. It’s sad from a romantic perspective to let the station go since it feels like a step backwards, but it really isn’t. It was never going to be a permanent sci-fi space station the way people imagine. Not in low earth orbit and built as fragile as it is.
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I was reading that Russia basically doesn’t even have the means for a cosmonaut program without being a part of this. So it’s very much a “LOL, right” situation that everyone involved recognizes as an empty threat.
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Yah, they get paid an insane amount per launch to bring stuff up and it’s a surprisingly important source of revenue for the whole country right now. They aren’t going to walk away from that.
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Wasn’t a key part of the ISS, and the entire reason for its somewhat awkward orbit, was to allow Russian involvement so they could keep the Russian space program afloat so Russian rocket scientists would continue to have jobs there and wouldn’t go off and start working on ICBMs for North Korea or Iran or whatever?
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Indeed it was. The real purpose of the ISS has always been political, not science and technology or space exploration. Those rationales are waaaaaay down the list of priorities.
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Anyone got a citation on this? I don’t necessarily disbelieve it, but I also don’t think the ISS is nearly as cynical as everyone is making it sound.
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I wrote an essay on it a few years ago, but I don’t have my list of sources handy - lemme see what I can dig up. Watch this space!
ETA: Okay, found it. My source was Bryan Burrough’s Dragonfly. Here’s my own summary of his point:
In the early 1990s the status of the US space station was uncertain. NASA’s budget had been slashed by twenty percent, and Administrator Dan Goldin was reevaluating the design of the station, in the hopes that a pared-down version would survive the difficult fiscal climate. Although the White House had granted the opportunity to redesign the station, thus giving it a reprieve, the stage was set for a Faustian bargain that would determine the nature of cooperation for years to come. As NASA floundered, a lifeline came from an unlikely source: Yuri Koptev, head of the Russian Space Agency. Koptev was keen to collaborate with the U.S. on its station, which he saw as a source of funds for the Russians’ own troubled space program. However, their proposal to build the station for a fee was rejected. That is where the story might have ended, were it not for foreign policy concerns unrelated to the station that became a part of the negotiations. In the previous years Russia had agreed to sell cryogenic rocket engine technology to India, potentially de-stabilizing the situation in Asia by prompting a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. The United States, seeing an opportunity to use the Russians’ desire for cooperation against them, threatened sanctions against numerous Russian agencies but gave the Russians a way out: If the Russians became full partners in the station, the sanctions could be avoided.
You can also see the attitude of “politics first” in the policy decisions and design compromises around the shuttle program. See e.g. The space shuttle program: a policy failure? by John Logsdon (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.232.4754.1099 - behind a paywall, but can probably be found through… ahem… other means)
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That’s really interesting- thanks for sharing!
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You’re welcome!
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It’s certainly not new behavior; but it’s of some interest in that, were they looking for a domestically face-saving reason to take their ball and go home, the current situation would certainly provide one; so announcing an exit date that’s effectively the end of the program’s lifespan suggests more commitment than might have been expected.
Not an unreasonable move if they have some desire to preserve civilian space activity; but I can’t say that their recent policy choices have left me with the impression that they place high value on international legitimacy through scientific/engineering prestige projects; so just ditching non-military space stuff, blaming NATO fascists; and focusing on international influence by other means would not have been a huge surprise.
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