when they decommission the ISS why not push it out into space rather than getting to crash into the ocean

Question

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

Answer 1

Leaving orbit is a loooooot harder than you think. Gravity is strong, man. You can’t just fling the ISS out into space with a few nudges from boosters, no, you would need to strap on enormous engines like the kind used to go to the moon.