Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to A View of the Obama Admin's Revamp of Manned Spaceflight Future

Is it feasible to mothball the ISS instead of deorbiting it?
pwokenyaw — (archived)

I'm curious if anyone here knows the answer, but a compromise between spending billions to maintain the ISS after 2016 on the one hand and deorbiting it on the other might be to vacate it and push it into a higher parking orbit. Just send an unmanned spacecraft every year or two to counter atmospheric drag, and the thing can sit there until we have some need for it. The annual cost of a mothballed ISS would only be $50-100 million (my guess), so it might not interfere with doing something else with the manned space budget.

IIRC, the ISS currently needs to be pushed up quite often, but that's because it needs to be low enough in orbit to be reachable by Shuttle. A higher orbit would result in less drag and less need for spacecraft to come and push it up.

I'm wondering whether there's something wrong with this idea, like whether the modules need constant maintenance and in the absence of that maintenance can never be rehabilitated after mothballing.

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