Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/27/spacex-hired-to-destroy-the-international-space-station.html
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Maybe they could save some money if they just hired Boeing to design a “definitely-stay-in-orbit” vehicle. Odds are the end result would be the same.
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So many opportunities for science, too! I really hope that NASA lets the Mythbusters guys put their mannequin “Buster” and a bunch of gopros onboard to see if it would be possible to survive reentry in a falling space station like Jaws and his ladyfriend did at the end of Moonraker.
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Contributed by Allan Rose Hill
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They should just have put up a rainbow flag, started calling all astronauts “them,” and they could have sold the ISS to Elmo for $44 billion and he would have crashed it all on his own.
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Nah, Boeing would somehow transform the ISS into a cloud of debris that would start a cascade of shredding satellites. Near Earth orbit would become a gauntlet of deadly particles.
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You’re right about the results, but one does not hire Boeing to save money.
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the question is how can we subsidize it by selling space tourism tickets to rich assholes to go up with it (and be burned up in the atmosphere with it too)
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I presume that this will be an unmanned mission? 
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“In its great wisdom, the central committee has decided to use all resources necessary to release the space station from the earth’s gravity”
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I wish they’d give this job to Boeing, who will get it done late, if they get it done at all.
I’d rather the ISS stays up there, it’s cool.
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NASA certainly picked the right guy to destroy something.
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I watched it go overhead one night. Chills. Highly recommended.
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I’m still sad that they’re getting rid of the one thing NASA is currently doing that does good science that you can actually point to. The replacement is planned for a 2028 launch, and will be a commercial facility run by a contractor still to be determined. NASA has three companies they’ve given multi-million dollar grants to, but has yet to determine who gets the overall contract to build, launch, assemble, and bill anyone who wants to put their stuff in the station.
Twenty-Twenty-Eight. Four years from now. Still without a primary contractor selected, without a launch system specified and probably not yet developed, and without anyone other than NASA currently involved in paying for it all yet. NASA states, however, that the ‘free market’ approach to a space station will let them focus on their true mission, deep space probes. It is in the NASA press releases. Deep space probes. Not the Moon, not Mars, not humans, just robots. How inspiring.
I have no doubt that SpaceX will destroy the ISS, even if it is only through incompetence with their nearly 6,000 satellites (more than the rest of the world combined) and growing causing a Kessler cascade. I do have doubts that there’s going to be a manned replacement, especially by the planned 2028 date. There’s too many Luddites in Congress, and such a program, especially on top of the now-delayed indefinitely Artemis Moon shot, is just begging to be cut to the bone, then the bones ground up for fertilizer, and then used to make political hay.
I’m a pessimist when it comes to space; some of my first memories are of Moon shots, including being sent to bed before the first landing launch because “I wouldn’t remember it.” I remember being told that Congress had canceled funding, that the American people had had enough of the Moon and couldn’t even watch the adventure unfold for Apollo 13 until their oopsie, the networks having decided it was too boring for tube-time. When the next few launches failed to achieve the desired drama, Congress canceled the program, despite there being rockets already built and ready to go.
We went to the Moon the first time because we needed to show the world our nuclear-armed missiles could kill them no matter where they were. We went to the Moon the first time to show it could be done, having been challenged and inspired by a murdered president to do so. We went to the Moon the first time because the Russians were also trying to go to the Moon.
The Russians are not trying to go to the Moon this time, they’re too busy trying to rebuild their empire for their God-King and have been cut off from the necessary technological supplies. The Chinese, who had announced they were going to the moon in 2030 and whom the US space program was competing with, are facing the collapse of their economy, infrastructure, and society while their God-King threatens to expand their empire again, are probably not going to the Moon either, being too busy building enough nukes and missiles to catch up to Russia and the US, and likely trying to invade and ‘reclaim’ Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, all states Xi has recently threatened.
I hope my cynicism is misplaced, that the ‘false dawn’ of the 60s is not repeated yet again, or fails to launch entirely. I hope that Artemis gets to the Moon, setting up a permanent Lunar base; and that the Chinese get their polar Lunar base up and running; that the Russians give up their Quixotic empire-building efforts and start lookup up again. I hope the new space station, no longer an international research outpost but a true commercial enterprise with regular flights and a vast, sprawling hamster-tube layout of habs, labs, docks, and fabs gets built and manned and becomes the springboard to the rest of space.
But I’m not holding my breath.
NASA still does plenty of great science in addition to their human spaceflight missions. The James Webb Space Telescope, the various Mars rovers (and helicopter!), the various deep space probes such as the one they’re launching for Europa in a few months, not to mention many, many different Earth-focused missions that study our weather, climate change, etc.
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Sorry, I was being literal here. I can actually point up at the ISS when its in the sky (I have an app). That’s usually not true in most locations.
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I see.
Well, I live pretty close to JPL so I can literally point to that pretty frequently as well. 
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I find the robots exploring Mars to be pretty inspiring. 140 Million miles away, doing science, sending home data, remote controlled sometimes, exceeding their planned lift spans, flying a helicopter.
That’s pretty astounding stuff, when most people have trouble walking and looking at their phone, NASA engineers are exploring Mars without the loss of human life!
What galls me is incorporating capitalism into space research - a guaranteed failure.
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Yeah this idea that only crewed space missions are inspiring case studies in technological prowess is just silly. The Apollo 11 crew stayed on the surface of the moon for just over 21 hours, and only a portion of that time was spent doing anything that could be described as science. The Voyager spacecraft have been sending back valuable scientific data for almost five decades.
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