So I’ve just heard they’ve set a year of 2032 to decommission the International Space Station. Since if they just left it, its orbit would eventually decay and it would crash. Rather than have a million tons of metal crash somewhere random, they’ll control the reentry and crash it into the spacecraft graveyard in the pacific.
But why not push it out of orbit into space? Given that they’ll not be able to retrieve the station in the pacific for research, why not send it out into space where you don’t need to do calculations to get it to the right place.
In: Planetary Science
Imagine a piano sitting halfway up a flight of stairs, right on the edge of a step, and you don’t want it on the stairs anymore.
Pushing it out down the stairs is like a controlled reentry in the ocean. You still need to expend energy to do this, but it’s not that hard.
Moving it to the top of the staircase is like pushing it to a higher orbit. Technically possible, but much more difficult and you’d need to use some tools/pulleys/etc (e.g. propulsion) you don’t currently have.
Edit: helpful addition from Borgnasse below: the piano is only on the first step of a very tall staircase
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