Didn’t realize the end was that close… Would love to see a new station at some point that could be used as a jump-off point for solar system travel.

IIRC the concessions made with the ISS to make the orbit favorable for Russia made it practically unusable for launching trips to other places in the solar system. Someone correct me if that’s wrong.

Also sounds like it would be an exciting porno.

Here is the actual posting about it if anyone is interested.

It's an interesting problem, a lot of different factors working against each other. I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with.

Are there no parts of the ISS they could use with a new station? Or is it's orbit too far off from where they want to build a new one? Or it's more cost effective to launch all new equipment?

Just attach boosters to it to send it into deep space.

edit: Geez, I wasn't being serious, actually found the whole "deorbit tug" idea rather humorous.

I'm guessing you're unfamiliar with orbital physics

Big expensive boosters, lots of fuel: deep space

Smaller less expensive boosters: empty sector pacific ocean

Just a hypothesis, but the core technology on the ISS is over 20 years old at this point, and I'm sure we have learned a lot ways in which we can improve upon the basic design and systems. There are standards used in the ISS design that any incremental update (think replacing one module at a time) would have to be backwards compatible with as it transitions, thus limiting any major overhauls. I imagine it would be more cost effective and allow for more improvements to just start from scratch using everything we've learned and create new standards

It's too far off. The ISS orbits at about a 51.6 degree inclination to make it easier for Russia to get there. The moon orbits at about 28 degrees.

Whatever you throw into space risks coming back to you eventually.

Yeah but that'll piss off the unexplained Tic Tac UFOs that reside in the Pacific Ocean and our leading cast from Independence Day is too old or cancelled, so they can't help us.

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Yeah there is a Saturn V stage orbiting the sun right now, swings by the earth every 40 years, its supposed to actually hit us in 2000 years or so, which I am sure will be amusing for the astronomers of the day.

i want people to keep adding modules of every kind to make a rebel space achipielago

He never watched Futurama where the space trash ball returns to earth.

You see, humans tried to send our trash to the sun... problem solved.

But then again the trash ball took orbit and then eventually returned to earth.

I was thinking "Man, attempting to get the ISS complete orbit past Geostationary Orbit (the min level you'd be required to send it to) might cost nearly as much as building the damn thing did."

Yup. And the cool part about "let's take our trash and ship it to the sun!" is that hitting the sun is very difficult. Lot less fuel is needed and easier aiming if you blast out to, say, Jupiters orbit, slow down , and then let the sun pull it in.

It was a good premise, but the Valerian movie was lacking.

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Another problem already solved in Kerbal Space Program. ;)

Seriously, though, this is a fascinating subject. So many complexities to consider.

I personally think the space station needs to be preserved as a historical monument somehow, and it's really sad that they're planning to bring it down.

I'm fully aware that I'm not an expert though - so I'd delegate decision to people who are... I just wish there was another way.

i was thinking something more cyberpunk or maybe fireflyish or some rebel installations of the colonies of the league of autonomous worlds in dark matter

The station loses altitude constantly (but slowly) due to atmospheric drag, it won’t stay there if it’s abandoned.

Nah forget the boosters. Small umamed rocket. Use a claw to lower a rope down to earth. Then I'll just pull it out of the sky.

We could put it into a parking orbit though. I’ll start a go fund me.

Stuff wears out over time. Even something as simple as the shutters on the cupola windows have through hull connections that have o-rings to make them air tight.

In KSP I always just promoted my LKO stations to solar orbits. Never look back, you're not going that way. Always burn forward.

It's a good thing stock Kerbals don't need to eat.

just changing it's orbit to be on the plane of the equator would require so much fuel it'd be easier to build a new one instead.

Why can’t they just use a Cygnus to do it?

Personally, I’d prefer that they leave it up, and perhaps let private space companies operate it if NASA and partners won’t.

Sad to see it go. It will be interesting to see what survives the descent.

I mean if the two main characters didn't have the emotional expressions of a chunk of wood then it probably would have been better.

It takes a lot of delta V to do it, definitely not impossible but best bet would be to keep a schedule similar to the current one but the boosts go for much longer to get it into a slightly higher orbit each time, it’ll cost less total but for longer and it’ll give us time to get better more efficient engines, or it could be used as a testbed for things like ion engines where they have low thrust but high efficiency

Like pirate radio stations on abandoned oil platforms in the 70’s.

I was thinking of ksp also.

After a few high speed orbital collisions I build alot of de orbit tugs to keep things clean up there.

> The deorbit vehicle shall be capable of providing at least 47 m/s of delta-v for the ISS at 450,000 kg mass.

Very interesting that only 47 m/s of delta-v, at a minimum, is needed. The orbital speed of the ISS is about 7660 m/s.

Nah, I'd rather a moon base for that.

Axiom is planning to use the ISS as a starting point for their new space station. Axiom's first module is planned to launch in late 2025 and will dock to the forward port of the Harmony module of the ISS. The second, third, and fourth modules are planned to launch in 2026, 2027 and 2028 respectively. Then the Axiom segment will separate from the ISS and become its own modular space station.

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Indeed. If NASA accepts (is allowed to accept???) this as a project, this will be a big deal.

I'm not going to say propulsion in space is easy, but it is relatively straightforward. Getting into and out of orbit is something we really aren't very good at.

I really hope we don't half-ass a transition from the ISS to the next generation of space stations. One of the best things about the ISS currently is that every crew has a roughly 3 month overlap with the previous crew, which allows a tremendous amount of transfer of knowledge. That's continued for about two decades, it'd be a shame to let that operational expertise die.

I like to think that a deorbit tug is when you get a hand job as you are coming back from a long space mission.

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Couldn't we just boost it to a safe orbit? Seems a shame to just burn it up

This is because atmosphere does most of the job, you just need to drop the perigee low enough.

Consider that the Space Shuttle had around 300 m/s of delta-v available for their orbital operations. Deorbit burn of visiting spacecraft to the ISS are around 130-150 m/s.

Yeah, it 100% should be preserved if we can

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I think we should, or at least into cislunar space to act as a stepping stone to lunar gateway.

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I mean, just create a leak opposite to the side you want to go and bobs your drunk uncle

Seeing as how they'll be dropping it into Point Nemo, that would be a tricky thing to determine.

Or disassemble it and bring it back to recycle the parts/materials rather than let it all burn up in the atmosphere.

I dunno, his stale-bread playboy attitude made me enjoy the dog attack scene.

> Why can’t they just use a Cygnus to do it?

To small. You'd need something like fully loaded ESA ATV to deliver enough delta-v. Single biggest push ISS ever got was from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler_ATV and with 4.5t of fuel (total theoretical payload capacity was 7.5t, but part of that was fuel for ISS, water and dry cargo allocation) it delivered less than 30m/s delta-v, raising orbit form 350 to 400km. Here you need about 50% more. So theoretically fully loaded with fuel it could make it. But that was the biggest resupply craft flying to the ISS.

Pinocchio would like a word

This would be so expensive.

If it's kept in space it becomes a major risk to contribute to space junk.

That movie was beautiful, and the character design was fantastic. I like that movie because of that. The 2 characters were not great.

> Why can’t they just use a Cygnus to do it?

Basically, that is what the Request for Information (RFI) is asking. NASA is proposing the idea to use natural orbital decay or propulsion from the Russian Segment, then use the "space tug" to take over for the final de-orbit burn, plus any attitude and Delta-V adjustments during the final de-orbit events.

This announcement is NASA's mechanism to ask the aerospace industry what it thinks, and for the aerospace industry to give ideas.

You can still intercept off-plane, there are just fewer windows.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CoM|Center of Mass| |EDL|Entry/Descent/Landing| |KSP|Kerbal Space Program, the rocketry simulator| |LEO|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |LOX|Liquid Oxygen| |MECO|Main Engine Cut-Off| | |MainEngineCutOff podcast| |MRO|Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter| | |Maintenance, Repair and/or Overhaul| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |cislunar|Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit| |perigee|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|

^(11 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 14 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8688 for this sub, first seen 14th Mar 2023, 17:48]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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Wasn’t there a botanist stuck on Mars that used a hole in his glove to “Ironman” his way to the rescue ship?

Seems like we have this whole thrust thing figured out to me /s

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I saw a great argument that Passengers were released the same year and suffered from miscast too.

Hilariously, if you swapped Chris Pratt with DeHaan both movies would be elevated. The scripts and directing would still be a major pain, but DeHaan as a sad creepy passenger and Pratt the Superhero Chad would work way better.

Also the recut Passengers would've been way better. And Rihanna scenes weren't needed.

Well, overall, both movies could be better, but the miscast idea still stands.

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Waste of money, the station can be deorbited without an expensive "tug".

Hmmmm. Interesting.... I'll be honest I enjoyed Passengers a lot more than Valerian, but swapping the casts around would have been neat.

That would require the invention of new heat shield tech, getting it up to space (it will be very heavy and horribly expensive to lift), then install it, add parachutes, flotation devices, etc. You’re talking tens of manned flights costing $100m+ each just to recycle 20+ year old tech, no use for it at all.

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"Why is this damp creep flirting with his weird looking sister? In space?"

Movie magic.

The real botanist, as depicted in the documentary book, didn't do that.

Dang Hollywood and their “magic”

Sounds like relying on Russia is not a strategy to rely on.

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It would have to be moved really far up. Like around 1000km up to last decades without needing a reboost. And it would be out of control. It needs constant fuel to desaturate the reaction wheels and maintain orientation. Without that it would be spinning out of control until it broke apart. Then its a massive liability.

Dont bring your boosters to orbit and leave your interplanetary stage in a solar orbit

Makes me think of how wasteful I am in KSP

Boosters yes unless my calcs are off, usually more transfer stages.

There's no real way to do it. Nothing exists that can bring the segments down intact so the only option is to try and boost it into a parking orbit somewhere. At that point it's basically just more abandoned crap in space.

I get you, but it's just not practical in any way even taking money out of the equation.

That would take so much more energery

Isn't the next one going to be a moon orbiting station or something?

Medium sized boosters: smash it into the moon.

For quite a while it was assumed that using the old ISS as the building site for a new one was the best way to do it- without the shuttle, assembling was going to be harder. But the chinese station pretty much shows that time's past, especially considering that you don't necessarily want the new station in the same orbit

Def should be called the drunk uncle maneuver.

Yeah, it really doesn't take a lot. TBH it does seem a little oversimple to me, just because the drag on the station isn't a constant- bringing it down is easy, bringing it down exactly where and when you want it to is not so simple, being able to brute force that could be very useful.

How come? Shouldn’t it just be like a cargo dragon that has its Draco’s pointing retrograde and then do a burn?

There is, but not in the way people would normally think. Usually, there’s two of each module made in case something happens. Take all of the spares, make an ISS on the ground.

Edit: I need to do some research if spares were made for the main modules. Kinda want to see how much of this would be possible for a full list. At the least, there’s a list of some spares that might be used.

Why bring the whole thing down like that? I always assumed the plan would be to dismantle it and send each piece down to burn up in the atmosphere? Would that not happen?

I really hope we decide to keep it going instead of killing it off. At least until some other system takes her place. Like two starships docked together.

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It still seems to me that even though the useful life of the ISS is limited, and its value as a building site for a new station has diminished, that 420 tons of pretty much <anything> in LEO is a useful resource. Reconfiguring the thing for less cross-section then firing up something like a dragon with nothing but fuel, seems like a fairly small investment even if you have no specific plans for it in the future.

The Lunar Gateway isn't a replacement for the ISS, for one it won't be continuously inhabited.

MRO entered Mars orbit on April 6th 2006 and used primarily aerobraking until September 11th to shape it's orbit around Mars. Ain't nobody got that kind of time. In KSP, you just send up a bit more fuel.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter/in-depth/

Let's not tear down the publicly funded station until there's an existing alternative that we like.

Given that we just bailed out Silicon valley bank for around $100B, that should be their free handout for the next decade, and let's build it with public money, as a public resource.

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By the way, do not ever ask your partner for a "deorbit tug" in bed.

First off, SVB wasn't "bailed out". SVB has always had plenty of assets to cover deposits, they just fucked up their liquidity and management and caused a bank run. The FDIC stepped in and is going to make sure it's run properly, but realistically there won't end up being a single dollar of tax payer funds that goes into SVB for a "bail out".

Regardless, that is mostly besides the point. Yes, there should be a larger commitment to ongoing space station operations. Unfortunately, the way these things work is with specific projects and there hasn't yet been an "ISS 2" project that has been able to congeal political support. There is both half-assed commitment to next generation fully commercial stations and also to the Lunar Gateway, but these are not the same things. For Congress something like Lunar Gateway seems like a perfect replacement, it's a sink for federal aerospace dollars and it allows for international cooperation, but operationally it's apples and oranges.

Yes, that will for sure happen, but in order for it to happen safely we need something with a lot of propulsive capability. The original plan was to use 3 Progress vehicles, but that puts Russia in the critical path.

I’m really good at getting into orbit in KSP, getting the Kerbals back alive however…

By 2030, I think Starship is going to change the game anyways. Two starships docked together as a station is doable for sure.

If only there was a crew to fit the station with such a system and constantly docking resupply missions to draw fuel from, if only.

So you're proposing they just build a propulsion system on the station as a DIY project?

The whole purpose of this is to build a system that works reliably. And one can be developed, but not for zero dollars. Very likely this will end up being a variant of a cargo spacecraft (Cygnus or Dragon) optimized for propulsion. None of those vehicles have enough thrust to do the job in one go right now, the station weighs 400 tonnes after all.

Nah, thats just going to be used in conjuction with Lunar missions.

Besides, it would be a huge waste of money to put our "main" space station orbiting the Moon since the requirements to get people there would go from a medium sized rocket like the Falcon 9 to a super heavy lift one like the SLS.

Each crew transfer would cost 2-3 billion dollars, which is absurd.

Use a cargo mission with a modified upper stage, grab it with Canada arm, and attach to station, the crew lander can carry extra fuel going up and refill before evac. Not exactly this but something similar and simpler.

Glad to see you're onboard with basically what the plan will turn out to be, not sure why you were so resistant to the idea.

Its travelling at almost 30.000 km/h and at a height of 400km.

If you reduce its speed, it just falls to the ground, if you just reduce height, it burns up.

So unless you have some sci fi anti-gravity tech, its just impossible to bring it back.

And if its kept in space there's the risk of it crashing with something and becoming a huge swarm of junk.

Its sad to see it go, but deorbiting it is the safest thing.

No matter, the next one will be bigger and better.

They want my money for a ground based solution not a station based solution. What they purpose is wasteful

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What? We're very good at getting into and out of orbit.

Would love to see an orgy in zero gravity!!

Huh, I'm suddenly wondering if Axiom could take a module or two with them when they bud off of the ISS. Those could be their 'historical wing' where a billionaire adventurer could get an 'authentic ISS experience. More marketing copy blah blah blah.'

So looking purely at the physics and safety rather than the dollar cost, what is the current consensus among us Reddit armchair experts about the best location for a replacement international off world station, moving forward?

We need a VR tour of the entire station to be preserved for future generations.

Reliability in demolition is not the same standard of reliability as in construction. This is literally the lowest standard of reliability you could have. Do not waste MY money on a golden wrecking ball.

This is such a load of BS. We literally send satellites to other planets and moons and have no problem getting into orbit

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That's true - this is why I'm not in charge.

The main problem with ISS is that it was never designed to last this long. What started as a nice neat science module has become a rats nest of cables and pipework. At least it hasn't gone as far as Mir, where they threaded cables and air con through throttle interconnecting doors.

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What about Brent Spiner? He's not cancelled, and he's an android so he's not too old.

It'd be awesome if there were away to capture it in a way that is cost effective and safe.

But, alas. Space is hard.

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Some day AI will make this a reality…

Gerbils? Gerbils you say?!

Is there a way to sell it to a private sector and keep it in orbit?

Maybe he means cost-effectively? It is the most inefficient and expensive part of the process.

I have an idea.

Send up empty space shuttles, detach and load up the modules you want to save into the shuttle's bay, and land the shuttle safely.

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Safety isn't that much of a concern, it's a simplification but all of the places we're likely to put an orbiting station for the forseeable future are in the same ballbark of risk in terms of ease of access and return, obstacles, etc.

You can't separate physics and dollar cost since dollar cost is directly related to payload, quite simply delta v costs money.

Launches play a big part... Like, the ISS is low enough that it suffers a lot from atmospheric drag and its orbit needs frequent boosts (and that'll get worse as the atmosphere warms). But obviously higher up = harder to get to. So that's just a plain old compromise, but it's ultimately one that can be handled within a really wide range- raising it occasionally is just a question of fuel, so that's meant that the low-ish orbit has worked well and that's probably still true.

The other being the orbital path of course, since you have to have the launches intersect with the orbit. And that's simple phyics really but not simple human-stuff. Where will we be launching from in 2040, and how will we be launching? Will we have equatorial stations, or more mobile floating launchers? Will be still be using chemical rockets for everything with no other options in sight, or will we be kettling stuff up, or have a big railgun up an equatorial mountain, or be launching payloads from the moon, or getting close to any of those? It all gets insanely complicated, right down to "which US politicians want to keep launching from their state" or "which countries will be friendly and stable enough to invest this stuff in"

An ISS replacement in the short to medium term, I bet 20 scottish pence would end up at a similar orbital height, but with a different track to suit current US launch sites and less or no thought to Russian cosmodromes. In the longer term I'd expect payload delivery to get easier and therefore a higher altitude to become more desirable, especially with a warming atmosphere, but for now it's almost certainly still better to be lower and to get mass there easier

Lunar gateway is, well, a gateway, not a permanently manned station

Putting into a parking or graveyard orbit would be a ton of effort. But pruning it a bit to reduce drag once it's unmanned, and lifting it somewhat higher would be pretty easy. At this point, literally just a matter of cost.

Yeah at first I was bummed to hear it had a deorbit date, but it looks like the new thing is all the spacefaring nations are going to start building their own space stations. The US is looking at several solutions and may do more than one of them at once. It sucks that it's time has come, but the biggest achievement of the ISS was building it in the first place. We all worked together and learned a lot, now the next phase is going to be ground-up rebuilds using everything we learned. It's still progress!

Also unless someone else builds a Starship they're going to have a really hard time keeping up with the US in the future.

Maybe silly question, but would there be any advantage to doing at least a partial disassembly before deorbiting? Seems like it would be easier to control by dividing it into a handful of sections.

Does that even come close to the space of the ISS?

agree the orbit should be raised not lowered

I read a proposed alternate ending to Passengers that I thought was great. Instead of he saves the ship, she forgives him, they live out the rest of their lives happily..She never forgives him, he dies saving the ship and now she is stranded alone on the ship..Final scene you see her finish a drink at the bar, say goodnight to the robot barman. Then you see an anguished look on her face as she stands over a cryopod looking down at a young man, realising she is about to make the same terrible decision to wake someone up.

It will dismantle itself on the way down.

Every nut and bolt in there is something we spent million to lift into space. There ought to be something in there that can be recycled, we do still value that, right?

Hey if you guys don’t want it I’ll take it off your hands. Just need it boost its orbit a bunch no prob

The payload space (as designed) fire Starship is shockingly close to the pressurized volume of the ISS (35k vs 33k cu ft)

That would've been a way better ending, especially if they included some kind of "days alone" counter to show whether she holds out longer/by how much. it would've added so much weight to fishburne's comment about how pratt was drowning alone.

Bezos buys it, orbits the moon, buys a laser.

That would've been great. Just... A long, quiet shot, ship creaking, and she stands there all disheveled and crazy/sad eyes

It will be 30 years old at the time of decommissioning, it already has several permanent leaks.

We totally should fund commercial leo though so that replacements are up by 2030, but this budget request asks for no additional funding for that.

What do you think a ground based solution is?

Because an orbital tug is definitely not ground based.

I wonder if a pair or more of non-reusable Starship boosters bodies could be welded together to make a new ISS? Once removed the inside plumbing, the room inside the tanks is gigantic. Lots of work to do but a possibility.

what about the boosters? they have an even bigger tank space and without the weight of the Starship on top maybe they can reach orbit by themselves?

A "wet-workshop" idea is not new - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop

Don't you just make a bomb out of sugar and liquid oxygen? Problem solved.

Nah. Bomb made from sugar and liquid oxygen.

Same principle, but at suitable scale.

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Agreed.

You could build an ion engine to do this with a tiny amount of propellant, but that would take years which completely misses the point.

Sort of like taking foot off the gas and letting a car drift to a stop.

Instead, ISS needs something like brakes. Press the pedal and the whole thing slows down. Just like modulating the brake pedal so that you stop at the lights. In this case, you apply just the right amount of brakes at just the right time to splashdown in the Southern Pacific (Point Nemo, as it's known).

I've been saying we need these capabilities for years. Shuttle was excellent LEO utility vehicle. We have no equivalent at the moment.

A "weta workshop" is even better

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C4%93t%C4%81_Workshop

Shuttle would be rather useless for such purpose, it had very little delta-v and could not do such thing.

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1. There are safety risks because modules are old and degraded
2. Costs are pretty high, it takes a couple of billions to keep it flying each year. Why would private sector do it? Cost is high and return prospects not great.

Actually, it was used in exactly that capacity in multiple missions.

> recycle the parts/materials

That's completely pointless. It's not a solid block of aluminium or something else which can easily be recycled. Consider that ever on Earth we don't "recycle" things like cars, because it's just not practical - it would be more expensive than making a new thing from scratch.

Yes, but for very small reboosts, nowhere near what would be required here.

Do you know how the ISS was constructed?

NASA needs to build on their own previous research on electromagnetic EDL - "Magnetoshell Aero Capture":

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_Phase_I_magnetoshell/

Click through to the PDF for detailed info on their modelling, EG aerocapture of a 60t spaceship at Mars replaced a 20t heatshield with a 1t magnetic system. Also 20km/s aerocapture at Neptune.

"This means that for any given breaking drag forces on the Magnetoshell will be three orders of magnitude larger than the aerodynamic forces on the spacecraft. With the ability to rapidly and precisely modify the drag in varying atmospheric conditions, much larger braking forces can now be contemplated at low risk, enabling very aggressive aerocapture maneuvers."

The thing that makes this suitable is that when you turn the system on it basically kicks in the atmospheric reentry much higher than normal. You then adjust the magnetic field strength to accurately target the deceleration that you have pre-planned.

Some concepts that I've seen literally put the system on a tether behind the spacecraft, and it acts like the parachute behind a drag racer or a plane landing on a short runway. Nice feature of this is that it's a dynamically stable system - it just brakes in a straight line.

Just what this needs.

I'm honestly disappointed that SpaceX aren't testing this. Not because it's their patriotic duty to do everything interesting in spaceflight, but because they're launching 100 F9US this year alone, and every Starlink mission should be testing this during U/S disposal post mission (after all payloads have deployed).

Exactly like they tested reentry of the first stage long after MECO / stage separation / payload in its way to orbit. Zero risk to mission success.

First target should be to slow down FH core stages so they can survive F9-style reentry and recovery.

Also, those simulations were based on "room temperature" copper coils to reduce the technical complexity of the system during testing phase.

There are now very low mass / high performance thin film superconducting tapes which would be perfect for this job, I think. There will be LOX residuals to provide the cryocooling.

I'd love to see a world where every Starship uses this to reduce the performance requirements on the heatshield. Starship docks behind ISS, switches on the MAC, targets the reentry, then un-docks, reboosts itself, and lands safely.

(Before you say "why Starship"? ISS is about 4x the dry mass of Starship. If MAC is in regular use in Starship EDL, then it will work on a combined Starship / ISS system by just running the MAC for 5x longer than normal.

If any other provider is going to be in a position where they have 100t+ spaceships in regular use, ground control teams with years of experience with ISS rendezvous, MAC built into the system [I can dream], etc, etc, then perfect. But I'm not seeing it.)

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