NASA plans to deorbit the ISS sometime around 2030. Building something the size of the ISS in orbit is a huge undertaking and NASA keeps talking about wanting to build new space stations or a moon base, so why not leave the ISS in space and reuse it rather than literally throw the whole thing away?
In: Planetary Science
It’s like how some people will insist that a used car is better because it is cheap and any problems can be fixed. The reality is that the used car, especially one that’s 20 years old, tends to breakdown at the most inconvenient times. It then requires a lot of time and effort to fix the problem. That’s time and effort not spent driving the vehicle or doing other things. If there’s no money to fix the car, it’ll sit and decay due to disuse.
Now consider a space station. It has components that are difficult to get to and not designed to swap out. The modules can be very complex and troubleshooting may require all of the crew’s time. At a certain point, failures would be popping up faster than what can be addressed. Some failures can be fire hazards, which is really bad in space.
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