ISS is such a weird space phenomenon. Although maybe it's just for a young person like me who can't remember a time when the ISS did not exist? I feel like for many people it is just a Thing That Exists, without ever wondering or appreciating enough how or why it exists. ISS is nothing short of a marvel, that allowed people to live and work in space for almost a quarter century now. The amount of international collaboration is unique, not only in scale, but also resilience against political grievances. And it has been incredibly smooth sailing in all these years, too, so that whenever an accident does happen, it's 'back to business' almost immediately, and people forget about it just as quickly. Probably one of my most curious prospects about the future of space flight is how will we look back at the ISS era once it is over. I don't think there will ever be anything like it again, and I am unsure whether this is a good thing or not. Thanks for the video. Information-wise, there is little new here, but since this is likely part one of a series, ISS is the obvious starting point going forward. And stations will be a very important topic in the near future once ISS is gone. Next up, Tiangong? Or Gateway? Or commercial XYZ? Either is very exciting. :)
It started out as a much bigger video but this wanted to be by itself. I thought the international collaboration part was worthwhile to talk about and I keep seeing questions about the deorbit plans so I wanted to talk about that, especially why boosting to a higher orbit was such a bad idea. The other two will be Gateway and Commercial. I'd love to talk about Tiangong but there's not a lot of information there and I don't know if I could do anything useful.
I agree with you that the ISS is a marvel and a testament to what is possible with cooperation between east and west. It will be very sad when it's gone. I'm hoping that it can be replaced by a similar cooperative project, either in Earth orbit or on the Moon.
@@joakimlindblom8256 Gateway is the obvious successor to ISS when it comes to the continuation of the "ISS alliance". Sadly, Russia has decided against joining (perhaps a good thing, considering how unreliable they have become?) But Saudi Arabia is in which is cool.
Yeah, it's a generation defining thing. There are adults alive today, who weren't alive in a time when there wasn't human presence on the ISS. Since 2000, there has been a permanent human presence in space, and the ISS is the cornerstone of that.
The good old days when I would get a big brown envelope from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center every few weeks with visible passes for Skylab. In the 1980's, personal computers became all the rage and Goddard would mail you 2-line orbital elements for Saylut 7, Mir, Shuttle, or any other satellite of your choice so you could generate your own viewing passes. Then the Internet came along and tracking anything in orbit became childs play. The ISS has been around so long it belongs to another era. It's always magic to see it in the evening or morning sky. Sad there will be nothing like it when it's gone.
I had always thought that gradually replacing ISS modules with more modern modules and expanding the scope and size of the ISS over time would be the way to go, but as you point out the combination of high inclination (which is unnecessary without Russian participation) and the potential issue of vacuum cold welding of modules is probably the death knell to that idea. I still think the idea of an international space station with all space faring nations participating is a good idea in order to further geopolitical cooperation and stability, but with the current leadership in Russia (and China) it's probably not in the cards. I'm hoping this can be possible sometime in the future.
Yeah, it would have been great if the first international space station could have persisted indefinitely, slowly growing and changing throughout the decades and centuries as partners joined and left, leaving a temporary mark on an ever-changing canvas of international collaboration, Ship of Theseus-ing itself into the distant future.
Ever since ISS deorbit was announced i thought about recovering the Candarm from it and having it in a museum On the technical surface: you don’t have cold welding and it would be relativly simple to bring in a Starship with a grabbing port and have the arm move right into the payload bay. If you don’t want such a large ship near ISS, you could have a dragon with a grabbing point in the trunk and shuttle the arm over to the Starship waiting at a safe distance. Of course, I’m just an armchair engineer that probably doesn’t know about a problem that invalidates my plan but it would be cool to have a not so insignificant piece of the ISS back on Earth
@@EagerSpace I think I read somewhere that the plan was for the Canadarm to stay with the Axiom part of the station but I can't find that source again.
Another excellent video! I've previously advocated for a version of the last option (hand over to commercial operator). Axiom already has plans to attach its station to the forward port of Harmony module (Node 2), which is also where the Japanese Kibo and European Columbus modules are attached. These 3 modules are about a decade newer than the oldest ISS modules (at least in terms of their space exposure, being launched in 2007-2009). When the time comes for Axiom to become a free-flying station, instead of detaching just their own modules, they could disconnect between Harmony and Destiny (US Lab), and take those 3 modules with them. The primary benefit would be the participation of Japanese and European governments who want to continue operating their own orbiting labs instead of merely handing cash to a company like a grubby tourist. Since space stations are all about national prestige, governments would much rather say "we're sending OUR astronauts to OUR orbiting lab" instead of "we're paying cash to an American company for rides on their spaceships to go to their space stations so we can pretend to have a thriving space program." The Starlab venture has replicated the international partnership structure of ISS, making it more attractive to those governments. Axiom could one-up Starlab by offering Europe and Japan a way to continue to get productive use and prestige from their expensive investments. The downsides include: 1) complicated process to separate from the rest of ISS, involving many spacewalks to disconnect, remove, or reroute many cables. Who pays for that work? 2) cold welding might veto the whole thing 3) would Europe & Japan actually want this? to hand over their property to a commercial entity? 4) Axiom doesn't seem to want this, since they made no such proposal. Honestly, that's probably wise. Oh well.
If Axiom/ESA/JAXA want to do that, I'm sure they can come up with a framework to do it, and I don't think NASA would have a problem with it. The challenging part is figuring out how to make the economics work.
They get power from the power system but that is delivered through cables that run outside the module, and the same is true for other functions. So essentially you would need to unplug the modules from station and plug them into Axiom. It would require an EVA but it's fairly straightforward.
@@EagerSpace I agree that economics is the really hard part of this scenario (and space stations in general). ESA/JAXA would prefer to continue a barter arrangement, ESPECIALLY if they're handing their modules over to Axiom. But then how does Axiom make money from them? I would love to see multiple successful commercial space stations but I'm worried there's barely enough of a market for just one commercial station, and perhaps not even that.
It's just strange to think about a time when we were so optimistic and ready to collaborate that two former enemies just could go out and build a freakin' space station a size of football field We thought that now we can collaborate and live in peace and prosperity
If it wasn’t for the forever war politicians we would have had that already. We pushed Russia at every turn and broke every agreement. Russia asked to join NATO and we declined because then there’d be no enemies and that’s bad for defense business
WRT China, they didn't fly crew until early 2003 so it's not clear what they could have brought to the table when the plans were made in the mid 1990s.
@@jbullforg India (just as China and, suprisingly, South Korea) wanted to join ISS project in late 00s, but got nowhere (same with other countries... but at least India didn't get an outright cooperation ban passed as a law, like with China) in the late 10s India proclaimed that it'll make its own station instead we'll see how it goes
I used to feel real bad about the fact that the ISS is gonna have to be put down some day but I realized that's just what happens over time. No matter how well designed it is, a cutting edge piece of technology is gonna wear down to the point where it's better to do something new than maintain the old. May the fall of the ISS lead to a rise of even more amazing space habitats.
Great video. I keep asking myself if the ISS was a mistake since I would rather have a permanent base on the moon, and all the money spent on the ISS and the Shuttle kept us trapped in LEO. "In theory" we could have gone to getting back to the moon more quickly if that money was available for other projects. But then I ask myself if I want to live in the timeline where we didn't keep those Russian scientists from working for the wrong countries.
There was no world in which we would have had a permanent base on the moon; that would have required considerably more money than Apollo and congress was uninterested in flying Apollo 18-20. Shuttle got $5-$6 billion for the whole development program. Not a lot of money.
@@EagerSpace I am really really happy we got a lot of data on human bone weakening in space before we sent any long-term missions to other planets. Fingers crossed we can get the same with spinning stations that have lower artificial gravity, my I don't have high hopes.
Something to look forward to in ~2030: A million people who never paid attention to NASA or even know the ISS exists suddenly asking "Why doesn't NASA just boost it to a higher orbit? How could NASA be so stupid?".
That was super-interesting, thanks - especially the orbital debris model. I always imagined that the debris flux would just get worse with lower altitude, since everything above eventually has to come down. Sounds like there is some sort of threshold altitude where the remaining effects taper off rapidly? The something-osphere. I should look that up......
You are correct. Starliner, too, theoretically. You would need to fly more missions to replace the reboost with that progress does and you also need to replace the attitude thrusters in the Russian module that provide large amounts of rotation at times when the gyroscopes aren't enough, or to desaturate them.
13:00 Well come on now, there are more interesting things than a toilet, and even then, "How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?", is actually a very interesting question.
Well, you have to consider even the crazy ideas in order to say you've considered everything. If for no other reason than to tell people how crazy they are...
Space stations toilet would be a very interestenting thing, if you put it in the correct museum, in museum like for example "museum of soap and the history of dirt" in Bydgoszcz, Poland
Lovely, another eager space video. I imagine the fragmentation or "blow it up" option was included to allow them to point out to the few total numpty politicians how dumb that idea is.. there's always one that says "just blow it up".. "just", as I've previously mentioned, is a 4-letter-word, and a sure sign of a lack of thinking.
With only rare exceptions - when it's something that I would never want to cover - I don't watch TH-cam space videos. Which is a bit of a shame since I miss some good stuff, but I don't want to be derivative or have the opinions of others affect what I do. I do have opinions on a few people on TH-cam and TwiX, but I don't share them.
@@EagerSpaceoh ok, fair enough. I'm just wondering that because he used to be pretty educational, but now he's starting to go down the thunderfoot path
If deorbiting the ISS in one piece is considered too risky... They could wrap a few bands of nano-thermite around the hull at key points, so it could be sliced up by remote control and carted off in sections for deorbit.... Likewise high-density sections considered likely to survive reentry could be wrapped in a nano-thermite band and sliced in two as they begin reentry. I hope some tycoon makes a fortune from an early commercial space station, so all the imitative billionaires will start investing in their own stations, driving down the costs... :)
Hmm... I did pay for the picture for that, but if she wants to do a retro-style magazine ad, that would be great. My contact info is in the description; Reddit or TwiX works best.
Make it freedom space station or just dump it into the atmosphere. Dumping it means that the funding goes to the Moon missions ... Yeah, deorbit that thing for greater things to come!
The ultimate troll would be doing a practical test of whether Kessler syndrome is realistic by blowing up the biggest thing in LEO, in a completely illegal but very funny space demolition derby. Realistically, what's the total economic value of all things currently in use in LEO that could be destroyed (summing w.r.t. some weighting by a probability upper limit if one cares)? And how much would it delay space exploration considering that most interplanetary missions launch straight into escape trajectories (spending little time in LEO)? Yes, LEO is important for lots of things, but is that not balanced by how hilarious it would be?
You offhandedly state that the space station needs to be operational during disassembly, but... wouldn't that be dependent on the mission design? It's not like the Hubble needs to provide an environment during the maintenance missions, and if the Axiom capsule is designed to function independently from the ISS, you could seal it off and use it as a base during the work. And that's before we get into launching multiple vehicles for the work at the same time. (Imagine two Dragons and a Starship! That'd be really neat.) I am not saying that any of this is a good idea, but it does seem possible.
@@EagerSpace I may be a dumb dumb, but doesn't Dragon come inbuilt with both of those? And if Axiom wants to be a grown boy, it'd also need both the power and altitude control. Good point on the arm. ... ...now I want us to salvage the arm.
You need attitude control for the station so that it's stable enough that you can dock with it or so it isn't spinning when you get to it. AFAIK, Axiom doesn't have a robotic arm on their station.
@@EagerSpace I feel like we're talking past each other. 1: One Dragon docks with the station, turns it off, and performs the salvage work. (I already acknowledged the point about the Canadarm, so let's pretend that isn't an issue.) 2: Once the Salvage Dragon undocks, either the Axiom module performs altitude control of what is left, or you use a second Dragon for that purpose. 3: Rinse and repeat until you've collected all of the components you like, Axiom detaches, then deorbit the remains into the ocean.
@thearpox7873 Unless I'm mistaken, you need attitude control over the entire station to keep it stable. Only having attitude control for part of it either wouldn't be effective enough (The ISS is much more massive than Axiom's portion), or cause excess stress on the joints, and creating a risk of snapping at some point. Or both.
They can. But it would be very difficult and expensive to take the station apart and pack it into a bunch of Starships which also aren't cheap, and no-one is willing to pay for that.
I talked about the difficulty of taking it apart. At best, it's technically hard, harder than putting station together was. It would cost a ton, and who would want to pay for it.
@@bbgun061 make a huge crater for mineral mining and research. They plan to use five starships to fly humans to the moon, boosting the station one way should take less
Question: Was the ISS worth it? When it was first proposed, I called it a "turkey". Aside from the AMS experiment attached to the ISS, I'm not aware of any great scientific results coming out of it. It was said that we would learn the effects of long-term human exposure to micro-gravity, but we could have just asked the Russians since they already had the experience. ISS doesn't rotate - except for that time when the Nauka module went wacky - so we don't know if humans can live in simulated gravity, and if so, how much is needed. We just know that bodies deteriorate in zero-g, including developing permanent eye damage, and have to exercise two hours per day to stave off some of the worst effects. There are occasional science fair experiments to watch spiders build webs and seeds sprout. Probably the greatest thing we learned is how to construct and maintain something in space. And with all the knowledge we gained about how bad zero-g is on the human body, we are going to build: Another zero-g environment. Maybe I'm being unfair - please tell me - but looking back 30 years, I'm not sure my initial impression was wrong.
I think you're exactly right. The whole thing has been a major disappointment. I expected it would be a work camp where great things would be built. Things like a 20m telescope, assembled over months with parts brought up by shuttle and then flying in formation with the ISS where it could be serviced and upgraded any time. Maybe a Mars ship, again, assembled from parts brought by shuttle by workers who slept in ISS between shifts. Instead all they ever did was maintain the ISS and as you say, science fair level things. Meanwhile space telescopes were downgraded to tiny 6m units and delayed by 3 decades because they had to self assemble and all fit in a single launch. The only good thing to come out of the billions wasted has been a song cover.
I had a section on that question that I ended up cutting. It may come up in the next video where that question becomes more relevant. The problem is that "worth it" depends on your perspective. If you look at it purely from a science perspective, I think the answer is probably "no". If you think keeping NASA funded and keeping shuttle flying, the answer is undoubtably "yes". If you think working with the Russians was important to reduce the military risk of the US, then the answer is probably yes. There's often the assertion that the money could have been better spent elsewhere, but NASA money isn't fungible. It's not a matter of whether $4.2 billion a year could better be spent elsewhere, because that money is only available because it's spent on the space station. ISS has the advantage that it actually puts astronauts into orbit doing something. As opposed to SLS, which spent about half of the total US cost for ISS (ish...) and so far has flown for one mission.
@@gasdive That's a much grander vision than mine. I said we learned how to construct things in space, but really the astronauts just assembled modules built on earth. Ikea in space. We could potentially assemble something like the Endurance from "Interstellar", but we have no idea how to build a ship like Discovery from "2001". But then if there's one thing I learned from this channel it's how difficult these things really are.
Can you please do something about your vocal fry? Almost the entire video is in vocal fry and its hard to listen to, an otherwise very good and interesting video. Thank you!
I don't think you would, like, like my full valley girl impression even thought it's *totally* bitchin'. Though the 70's were quite a few years ago. Seriously, I'll see what I can do. I've been sick recently and that hasn't been doing my voice any favors.
A white elephant not worth a fraction of its cost to build which costs one Perseverance class Mars rover mission PER YEAR just to support. NASA's "commercial operator" pipe dream is hilarious and shows how not worth the cost the station actually is. As for any smaller MANNED "commercial stations" which are TRULY "commercial" and not just private firms paid by NASA to provided services, I strongly suspect we won't see any of them other than PERHAPS ones to make incredibly expensive commercial products that require the ONLY factor that can't be provided far more cheaply on Earth - constant microgravity - and ones acting as hotels for millionaire/billionaire joy rides. Book: The End of Astronauts: Why Robots are the Future of Exploration.
Book your tickets now for south pacific destinations circa 2030, it'll be a show like no other!
Probably happens in 2031. Maybe even 2032.
Russia said its coming down this year..... Whoever attached Russia to this thing was dumb. 😮😂
ISS is such a weird space phenomenon. Although maybe it's just for a young person like me who can't remember a time when the ISS did not exist?
I feel like for many people it is just a Thing That Exists, without ever wondering or appreciating enough how or why it exists. ISS is nothing short of a marvel, that allowed people to live and work in space for almost a quarter century now. The amount of international collaboration is unique, not only in scale, but also resilience against political grievances. And it has been incredibly smooth sailing in all these years, too, so that whenever an accident does happen, it's 'back to business' almost immediately, and people forget about it just as quickly.
Probably one of my most curious prospects about the future of space flight is how will we look back at the ISS era once it is over. I don't think there will ever be anything like it again, and I am unsure whether this is a good thing or not.
Thanks for the video. Information-wise, there is little new here, but since this is likely part one of a series, ISS is the obvious starting point going forward. And stations will be a very important topic in the near future once ISS is gone. Next up, Tiangong? Or Gateway? Or commercial XYZ? Either is very exciting. :)
It started out as a much bigger video but this wanted to be by itself. I thought the international collaboration part was worthwhile to talk about and I keep seeing questions about the deorbit plans so I wanted to talk about that, especially why boosting to a higher orbit was such a bad idea.
The other two will be Gateway and Commercial. I'd love to talk about Tiangong but there's not a lot of information there and I don't know if I could do anything useful.
@@EagerSpace Here’s to hoping “war thunder” will add Tiangong to the game. Then it’s only a matter of time until someone leaks all the details 😂
I agree with you that the ISS is a marvel and a testament to what is possible with cooperation between east and west. It will be very sad when it's gone. I'm hoping that it can be replaced by a similar cooperative project, either in Earth orbit or on the Moon.
@@joakimlindblom8256 Gateway is the obvious successor to ISS when it comes to the continuation of the "ISS alliance". Sadly, Russia has decided against joining (perhaps a good thing, considering how unreliable they have become?) But Saudi Arabia is in which is cool.
Yeah, it's a generation defining thing. There are adults alive today, who weren't alive in a time when there wasn't human presence on the ISS. Since 2000, there has been a permanent human presence in space, and the ISS is the cornerstone of that.
Literal rise. Literal fall.
I was unrealistically pleased when I thought of the title...
@@EagerSpace keep reaching for the stars!! Just watch you don’t hit your head on the ISS.
Well technically, the ISS (and every object in orbit) is in a continuous fall.
@trambinvestment3563 Yet also a continuous rise.
Congratulations on 10k subs. Here's to 100x that
Thanks.
The good old days when I would get a big brown envelope from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center every few weeks with visible passes for Skylab. In the 1980's, personal computers became all the rage and Goddard would mail you 2-line orbital elements for Saylut 7, Mir, Shuttle, or any other satellite of your choice so you could generate your own viewing passes. Then the Internet came along and tracking anything in orbit became childs play. The ISS has been around so long it belongs to another era. It's always magic to see it in the evening or morning sky. Sad there will be nothing like it when it's gone.
Very interesting. I look forward to hearing more about Commercial LEO.
I had always thought that gradually replacing ISS modules with more modern modules and expanding the scope and size of the ISS over time would be the way to go, but as you point out the combination of high inclination (which is unnecessary without Russian participation) and the potential issue of vacuum cold welding of modules is probably the death knell to that idea. I still think the idea of an international space station with all space faring nations participating is a good idea in order to further geopolitical cooperation and stability, but with the current leadership in Russia (and China) it's probably not in the cards. I'm hoping this can be possible sometime in the future.
Yeah, it would have been great if the first international space station could have persisted indefinitely, slowly growing and changing throughout the decades and centuries as partners joined and left, leaving a temporary mark on an ever-changing canvas of international collaboration, Ship of Theseus-ing itself into the distant future.
Excellent summary of the ISS history, politics, and future.
Ever since ISS deorbit was announced i thought about recovering the Candarm from it and having it in a museum
On the technical surface: you don’t have cold welding and it would be relativly simple to bring in a Starship with a grabbing port and have the arm move right into the payload bay. If you don’t want such a large ship near ISS, you could have a dragon with a grabbing point in the trunk and shuttle the arm over to the Starship waiting at a safe distance.
Of course, I’m just an armchair engineer that probably doesn’t know about a problem that invalidates my plan but it would be cool to have a not so insignificant piece of the ISS back on Earth
Cool idea
@@EagerSpace I think I read somewhere that the plan was for the Canadarm to stay with the Axiom part of the station but I can't find that source again.
Another excellent video!
I've previously advocated for a version of the last option (hand over to commercial operator). Axiom already has plans to attach its station to the forward port of Harmony module (Node 2), which is also where the Japanese Kibo and European Columbus modules are attached. These 3 modules are about a decade newer than the oldest ISS modules (at least in terms of their space exposure, being launched in 2007-2009). When the time comes for Axiom to become a free-flying station, instead of detaching just their own modules, they could disconnect between Harmony and Destiny (US Lab), and take those 3 modules with them.
The primary benefit would be the participation of Japanese and European governments who want to continue operating their own orbiting labs instead of merely handing cash to a company like a grubby tourist. Since space stations are all about national prestige, governments would much rather say "we're sending OUR astronauts to OUR orbiting lab" instead of "we're paying cash to an American company for rides on their spaceships to go to their space stations so we can pretend to have a thriving space program." The Starlab venture has replicated the international partnership structure of ISS, making it more attractive to those governments. Axiom could one-up Starlab by offering Europe and Japan a way to continue to get productive use and prestige from their expensive investments.
The downsides include:
1) complicated process to separate from the rest of ISS, involving many spacewalks to disconnect, remove, or reroute many cables. Who pays for that work?
2) cold welding might veto the whole thing
3) would Europe & Japan actually want this? to hand over their property to a commercial entity?
4) Axiom doesn't seem to want this, since they made no such proposal. Honestly, that's probably wise. Oh well.
If Axiom/ESA/JAXA want to do that, I'm sure they can come up with a framework to do it, and I don't think NASA would have a problem with it. The challenging part is figuring out how to make the economics work.
Aren't they dependent on truss elements for key functions?
They get power from the power system but that is delivered through cables that run outside the module, and the same is true for other functions. So essentially you would need to unplug the modules from station and plug them into Axiom. It would require an EVA but it's fairly straightforward.
@@EagerSpace I agree that economics is the really hard part of this scenario (and space stations in general). ESA/JAXA would prefer to continue a barter arrangement, ESPECIALLY if they're handing their modules over to Axiom. But then how does Axiom make money from them? I would love to see multiple successful commercial space stations but I'm worried there's barely enough of a market for just one commercial station, and perhaps not even that.
Your name game is on point.
I felt smugly satisfied when I thought of the title.
Sorry the Surf Beach 17 FT Dual Lane Water Slide a bit out of my discretionary budget. But keep up your Excellent work :)
Cheers !
Payne
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But I want it !!!
Thanks, you helped me understand "why don't they just" boost it to a parking orbit creates more problems than it solves.
Let's go, Eager Space!!
Interacting for the algorithm
Algorithms are nice, algorithms are life, algorithms are love.
Bow I assume that you believe we are living in a simulations. Or you have a very broad definition of algorithm.
It's just strange to think about a time when we were so optimistic and ready to collaborate that two former enemies just could go out and build a freakin' space station a size of football field
We thought that now we can collaborate and live in peace and prosperity
If it wasn’t for the forever war politicians we would have had that already. We pushed Russia at every turn and broke every agreement. Russia asked to join NATO and we declined because then there’d be no enemies and that’s bad for defense business
not optimistic enough to allow China to join the /international/ space station as well...
WRT China, they didn't fly crew until early 2003 so it's not clear what they could have brought to the table when the plans were made in the mid 1990s.
If we wait another 5-10 years, India will be wanting to be included. With their own astronauts/launch capabilities.
@@jbullforg India (just as China and, suprisingly, South Korea) wanted to join ISS project in late 00s, but got nowhere (same with other countries... but at least India didn't get an outright cooperation ban passed as a law, like with China)
in the late 10s India proclaimed that it'll make its own station instead
we'll see how it goes
I used to feel real bad about the fact that the ISS is gonna have to be put down some day but I realized that's just what happens over time. No matter how well designed it is, a cutting edge piece of technology is gonna wear down to the point where it's better to do something new than maintain the old. May the fall of the ISS lead to a rise of even more amazing space habitats.
Great video.
I keep asking myself if the ISS was a mistake since I would rather have a permanent base on the moon, and all the money spent on the ISS and the Shuttle kept us trapped in LEO. "In theory" we could have gone to getting back to the moon more quickly if that money was available for other projects.
But then I ask myself if I want to live in the timeline where we didn't keep those Russian scientists from working for the wrong countries.
There was no world in which we would have had a permanent base on the moon; that would have required considerably more money than Apollo and congress was uninterested in flying Apollo 18-20.
Shuttle got $5-$6 billion for the whole development program. Not a lot of money.
@@EagerSpace I am really really happy we got a lot of data on human bone weakening in space before we sent any long-term missions to other planets.
Fingers crossed we can get the same with spinning stations that have lower artificial gravity, my I don't have high hopes.
Something to look forward to in ~2030: A million people who never paid attention to NASA or even know the ISS exists suddenly asking "Why doesn't NASA just boost it to a higher orbit? How could NASA be so stupid?".
No need to wait so long. People keep asking this in 2024.
16:50 Please do a video on Kessler syndrome!
Surf Beach 17ft Dual Lane Water Slide 10% off at the end of summer-totally worth it!
This is a TH-cam engine optimization comment.
That was super-interesting, thanks - especially the orbital debris model. I always imagined that the debris flux would just get worse with lower altitude, since everything above eventually has to come down. Sounds like there is some sort of threshold altitude where the remaining effects taper off rapidly? The something-osphere. I should look that up......
That was a surprise to me as well. I think it's just because the lower altitudes are mostly self cleaning - stuff can only stay fit a few years.
All I'll say is Vanguard 1. Stuff high up will stay high up. (in human lifetime scale at least)
Really great video and congrats on 10k subs. I may be wrong so feel free to correct me, but I think the US can now reboost the ISS with Cygnus.
You are correct. Starliner, too, theoretically.
You would need to fly more missions to replace the reboost with that progress does and you also need to replace the attitude thrusters in the Russian module that provide large amounts of rotation at times when the gyroscopes aren't enough, or to desaturate them.
dual keel freedom is best station, change my mind. (how could leave that one out)
13:00 Well come on now, there are more interesting things than a toilet, and even then, "How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?", is actually a very interesting question.
Crazy that someone asked nasa "Hey can't we blow it up?" and nasa had to spend their time and limited budget to say: "Dear god no"
Well, you have to consider even the crazy ideas in order to say you've considered everything. If for no other reason than to tell people how crazy they are...
@@bbgun061 that's a very fair point!
Did someone say nuclear test site? For science, of course!
Space stations toilet would be a very interestenting thing, if you put it in the correct museum, in museum like for example "museum of soap and the history of dirt" in Bydgoszcz, Poland
Space Station Freedom should have gotten a mention 🚀
Did you watch the video? There's a slide that says "Space Station Freedom" at the top and I talk a bit about why it didn't work...
Lovely, another eager space video. I imagine the fragmentation or "blow it up" option was included to allow them to point out to the few total numpty politicians how dumb that idea is.. there's always one that says "just blow it up".. "just", as I've previously mentioned, is a 4-letter-word, and a sure sign of a lack of thinking.
Hey eager, what is your opinion on the pressure fed astronaut?
With only rare exceptions - when it's something that I would never want to cover - I don't watch TH-cam space videos. Which is a bit of a shame since I miss some good stuff, but I don't want to be derivative or have the opinions of others affect what I do.
I do have opinions on a few people on TH-cam and TwiX, but I don't share them.
@@EagerSpaceoh ok, fair enough. I'm just wondering that because he used to be pretty educational, but now he's starting to go down the thunderfoot path
OK Eager you get the dual water slide if I can have it next summer
How about if I give you partial custody on alternate weeks?
@@EagerSpace Sounds like a lot of organization. How about split the dual water slide in the middle and make it a normal water slide?
If deorbiting the ISS in one piece is considered too risky...
They could wrap a few bands of nano-thermite around the hull at key points, so it could be sliced up by remote control and carted off in sections for deorbit....
Likewise high-density sections considered likely to survive reentry could be wrapped in a nano-thermite band and sliced in two as they begin reentry.
I hope some tycoon makes a fortune from an early commercial space station, so all the imitative billionaires will start investing in their own stations, driving down the costs... :)
its kind of wild to think that 11.5m dollars a day is spent on the space station
My wife is a graphic designer looking for stuff to make for her resume, can she do a new theme and poster for Teller's Tachyon Tablets?
Hmm... I did pay for the picture for that, but if she wants to do a retro-style magazine ad, that would be great. My contact info is in the description; Reddit or TwiX works best.
Axiom has scrapped the power tower from their station and instead are installing solar arrays throughout their station
Thanks.
@@EagerSpace also Northrup Grumman have pulled out from doing their own station and joined forces with nanoracks.
Yes. I'll talk about that more in the commercial stations video; the part here was just a tease...
Make it freedom space station or just dump it into the atmosphere. Dumping it means that the funding goes to the Moon missions ... Yeah, deorbit that thing for greater things to come!
BTW wating for commercial LEO video!
On it but it's fighting me so far...
The ultimate troll would be doing a practical test of whether Kessler syndrome is realistic by blowing up the biggest thing in LEO, in a completely illegal but very funny space demolition derby. Realistically, what's the total economic value of all things currently in use in LEO that could be destroyed (summing w.r.t. some weighting by a probability upper limit if one cares)? And how much would it delay space exploration considering that most interplanetary missions launch straight into escape trajectories (spending little time in LEO)? Yes, LEO is important for lots of things, but is that not balanced by how hilarious it would be?
I say strap some engines on it and fly it to mars, Phoenix style
Nice reference. And then you'll have a dangerous scrap heap at Mars. :)
You offhandedly state that the space station needs to be operational during disassembly, but... wouldn't that be dependent on the mission design? It's not like the Hubble needs to provide an environment during the maintenance missions, and if the Axiom capsule is designed to function independently from the ISS, you could seal it off and use it as a base during the work. And that's before we get into launching multiple vehicles for the work at the same time. (Imagine two Dragons and a Starship! That'd be really neat.)
I am not saying that any of this is a good idea, but it does seem possible.
It needs to have attitude control and power and you need somebody to operate the Canadarm 2 to grab onto modules and pull them apart.
@@EagerSpace I may be a dumb dumb, but doesn't Dragon come inbuilt with both of those? And if Axiom wants to be a grown boy, it'd also need both the power and altitude control.
Good point on the arm. ... ...now I want us to salvage the arm.
You need attitude control for the station so that it's stable enough that you can dock with it or so it isn't spinning when you get to it.
AFAIK, Axiom doesn't have a robotic arm on their station.
@@EagerSpace I feel like we're talking past each other.
1: One Dragon docks with the station, turns it off, and performs the salvage work. (I already acknowledged the point about the Canadarm, so let's pretend that isn't an issue.)
2: Once the Salvage Dragon undocks, either the Axiom module performs altitude control of what is left, or you use a second Dragon for that purpose.
3: Rinse and repeat until you've collected all of the components you like, Axiom detaches, then deorbit the remains into the ocean.
@thearpox7873 Unless I'm mistaken, you need attitude control over the entire station to keep it stable. Only having attitude control for part of it either wouldn't be effective enough (The ISS is much more massive than Axiom's portion), or cause excess stress on the joints, and creating a risk of snapping at some point. Or both.
Your voice is different on this one but I can’t put my finger on why
Been a little sick and it's probably affecting my lungs. Or maybe it was the run I went on a few hours earlier.
@@EagerSpace hope your ok 👍
why can't they bring it down part by part on starship?
They can. But it would be very difficult and expensive to take the station apart and pack it into a bunch of Starships which also aren't cheap, and no-one is willing to pay for that.
I talked about the difficulty of taking it apart. At best, it's technically hard, harder than putting station together was.
It would cost a ton, and who would want to pay for it.
DON'T SAY FALL!!!
What about boosting it and slamming into the moon?
That's even more difficult than boosting it into a more permanent orbit, and for what purpose?
@@bbgun061 make a huge crater for mineral mining and research. They plan to use five starships to fly humans to the moon, boosting the station one way should take less
@@tedarcher9120 It would be way more expensive than de-orbiting it and you risk contamination of the moons surface.
Question: Was the ISS worth it? When it was first proposed, I called it a "turkey". Aside from the AMS experiment attached to the ISS, I'm not aware of any great scientific results coming out of it. It was said that we would learn the effects of long-term human exposure to micro-gravity, but we could have just asked the Russians since they already had the experience. ISS doesn't rotate - except for that time when the Nauka module went wacky - so we don't know if humans can live in simulated gravity, and if so, how much is needed. We just know that bodies deteriorate in zero-g, including developing permanent eye damage, and have to exercise two hours per day to stave off some of the worst effects. There are occasional science fair experiments to watch spiders build webs and seeds sprout. Probably the greatest thing we learned is how to construct and maintain something in space. And with all the knowledge we gained about how bad zero-g is on the human body, we are going to build: Another zero-g environment. Maybe I'm being unfair - please tell me - but looking back 30 years, I'm not sure my initial impression was wrong.
With sadness, I agree.
I think you're exactly right. The whole thing has been a major disappointment.
I expected it would be a work camp where great things would be built. Things like a 20m telescope, assembled over months with parts brought up by shuttle and then flying in formation with the ISS where it could be serviced and upgraded any time. Maybe a Mars ship, again, assembled from parts brought by shuttle by workers who slept in ISS between shifts.
Instead all they ever did was maintain the ISS and as you say, science fair level things.
Meanwhile space telescopes were downgraded to tiny 6m units and delayed by 3 decades because they had to self assemble and all fit in a single launch.
The only good thing to come out of the billions wasted has been a song cover.
I had a section on that question that I ended up cutting. It may come up in the next video where that question becomes more relevant.
The problem is that "worth it" depends on your perspective. If you look at it purely from a science perspective, I think the answer is probably "no". If you think keeping NASA funded and keeping shuttle flying, the answer is undoubtably "yes". If you think working with the Russians was important to reduce the military risk of the US, then the answer is probably yes.
There's often the assertion that the money could have been better spent elsewhere, but NASA money isn't fungible. It's not a matter of whether $4.2 billion a year could better be spent elsewhere, because that money is only available because it's spent on the space station.
ISS has the advantage that it actually puts astronauts into orbit doing something. As opposed to SLS, which spent about half of the total US cost for ISS (ish...) and so far has flown for one mission.
@@gasdive That's a much grander vision than mine. I said we learned how to construct things in space, but really the astronauts just assembled modules built on earth. Ikea in space. We could potentially assemble something like the Endurance from "Interstellar", but we have no idea how to build a ship like Discovery from "2001". But then if there's one thing I learned from this channel it's how difficult these things really are.
@@EagerSpace I think it's worth a video. You do a good job of fairly presenting both sides of a question.
I read it different
2:00 be careful there. Don't you know that its a federal crime to dispel any lie about Nixon?
...?
It's a joke.
Can you please do something about your vocal fry? Almost the entire video is in vocal fry and its hard to listen to, an otherwise very good and interesting video. Thank you!
He can't change his entire voice just to suit you.
@@bbgun061 nobody asked him to. its just changing vocal fry tone to not talk like a kardashian valley girl
I don't think you would, like, like my full valley girl impression even thought it's *totally* bitchin'. Though the 70's were quite a few years ago.
Seriously, I'll see what I can do. I've been sick recently and that hasn't been doing my voice any favors.
It's ok, we will just have a rapid disassembly. We are used to it with Elon now.
268 falcon landings in a row would like a word. (And that streak was only ended by a booster that had already flown 22 times.)
THE ISS IS GOING DOWN
A white elephant not worth a fraction of its cost to build which costs one Perseverance class Mars rover mission PER YEAR just to support. NASA's "commercial operator" pipe dream is hilarious and shows how not worth the cost the station actually is. As for any smaller MANNED "commercial stations" which are TRULY "commercial" and not just private firms paid by NASA to provided services, I strongly suspect we won't see any of them other than PERHAPS ones to make incredibly expensive commercial products that require the ONLY factor that can't be provided far more cheaply on Earth - constant microgravity - and ones acting as hotels for millionaire/billionaire joy rides. Book: The End of Astronauts: Why Robots are the Future of Exploration.
It is very annoying that just clicking the description shows clothes that are 'womens'
How much heavy metal, copper, mercury, lead, titanium, air pollution, I say, minus 100,000,000 carbon credits.
Going to be a lot of aluminum and maybe a some copper. I wouldn't expect much mercury or lead.
@@EagerSpace How does it compare with all the dust and meteors that enter the atmosphere every day? Probably just a drop in the bucket...
omg first !!2!3!4! first please pin me im first!!!!! 6
Good luck with a comment like that lol