Why is the ISS being decommissioned in the 2020s?

>wouldnt replacing the failing components be far more efficient than letting the whole thing deorbit?
It's not that some parts are failing, it's that all parts are close to failing.
Will need replacing soon.

And assembly is inherently less effort than repair, since you have to piut just as much together but don't need to take as much apart.

why not accelerate it to a higher orbit
you can't just throw away one of mankind's greatest accomplishments

The ISS modules have a shelf life of only so many hours.

Russia is going to reuse their modules to make OPSEK.

International cooperation is dead. The new space players India and China are sceptical of such mega-projects, and ESA is too conservative in their goals to do something like this again without Russian and American backing. America isn't going to support such an expensive space station again either with the focus being on SLS and deep-space exploration.

A manned Lunar Base that will serve as a base for deep-space exploration with cooperation from ESA, India, China, Russia, and US would be god-tier. But I doubt it will ever happen.

Yeah why not turn it into a giant spaceship? We could use it as an Enterprise, exploring all the planets in the Solar System with it.

Are you aware of the fact that technological objects don't last forever, and malfunction and break down over time?

>ever

Okay.

Not anytime in the next few decades as the emerging space-powers solely focus on their own missions. Russia goes isolationist, and USA focuses on their already heavily-invested in SLS program. ESA will be somewhere doing odd missions and making great videos and concepts of missions that they will never pursue on their own for lack of budget and ambition.

send a repair guy.

>Repair an entire mega-structure that was built with thousands of people on the ground

At some point it becomes cheaper to build something new than deal with never-ending problems of fixing something not meant to last so long.

What do you think about 50000 years into the future, related to space travel, research, life.

It makes no sense to predict such events in that long term. A few decades is the most anyone can broadly guess the future. Beyond that you are just guessing.

Someone in the 1950s would have found it hard to imagine the technology we have today or the way the world looks today.

Now imagine someone in 1000BCE. That is what you are asking for.

Exactly that's why aliens are real. Just because we can't understand their anti-gravity or FTL doesn't mean it can't be real. Fly over Ancient Rome in a B-2 bomber what are they going to say?

>> it looked fucking amazing
You look out the window and see pic related what do?

Replacing the failing components would be very expensive. Like taking apart the whole thing in space expensive. Even shit like welding in space. We may even need to send up completely new components like a whole new hull, in which case we might as well build a new one.

The structure is the part that could fail. A majority of the ISS is made of aluminium which is susceptible to fatigue. Eventually the pressure hulls are going to fail. This happens to airplanes and this is why we have junkyards filled with airplanes.

Leaving it up there means it's a huge space junk liability. Something could collide with it and generate a huge amount of space junk.

Now ideally, we would 'scrap' the ISS. Grind it up and melt it down into a big ball of aluminum, that people in the future could remanufacturer into something else.

It would also demonstrate vital in space recycling capabilities. It'd be a huge space junk risk though.

>>manned Lunar Base
ok, now I'm honestly wonder if we can land some of those ISS modules on the fucking moon. Shit, even a couple hole filled aluminum cans would be good enough to start building a moon base.

In 50000 years all humans might have easily gone extinct.

Hell, in the next 100 years humanity might go extinct.

That is why it is pointless to make sure long-term predictions.

>ISS getting dumped
What the fuck are we just abandoning space??? We can't afford to do that. Why are our leaders so shit these days? We need to keep pushing forward or we're fucked..

We need to spend more money on Africa.

>tfw remember it being annouced Mir was being scrapped and feeling a profound disappointment

>youtube.com/watch?v=E-lq2ErdlXY

ESA talks about doing Lunar Bases every now and then. But it never leaves conception phase.

Problem is that the organization is a nightmare, with funds being fickle as a result of ESA being a voluntary organization and EU being a mess.

Countries like Italy are a nightmare to deal with and refuse to do funding unless they get special kickbacks and 'muh jobs', which almost always ends up driving costs and delaying projects. And every country insists on doing everything in their own language making cooperation even worse. Manuals and research has to be translated and re-translated dozens of times. Then we get into Union culture, forced diversity, etc. all of which is rampant in Neo-Liberal Europe.

And since it is a multi-cooperation there is no sense of national pride in these missions driving ambition like it did during the first Space Race.

So ESA will never commit without US or Russia doing the heavy-lifting. Neither of them seem interested with Russian focus being OPSEK and US focus being SLS, and India/China aren't interested either. So no chance of a consortium in the near future.

ISS only worked because 90s-era Russia was willing to compromise being in debt and a position of weakness. It is unlikely they will join again. US only joined because Russia was willing to do so as well.

because the russian and american governments keep fucking around with budgets even though NASA and RosCosmos want to keep working together.

>Mir
what a glorious clusterfuck of a space station, its amazing people didn't die on it
youtube.com/watch?v=tM7fTLLmgbk

>even though NASA and RosCosmos want to keep working together

Congress fucked it up by forcing NASA to end all cooperation with Russia.

NASA -> SLS

RosCosmos -> OPSEK

These will be the next big missions for both agencies. There is not enough funding or manpower for either of them to do anything else meaningful with each other, at least not in a big way like ISS.

I don't know what ESA is doing apart from Ariane 6. ExoMars and Galilean moon probes?

Well if some piece of space junk hits the station we could get kessler syndrome. One day those pressure hulls are gonna pop too.

cool bird

Why would I wanna feed starving people when I could be exploring the universe?

It's just rocks out there. If they don't find aliens by 2030 I am done with space exploration.

We already found water on Mars dude. And the government already knows about aliens, but they must all be gay or something because they're not ready to tell us yet

Well i hope that when boots are finally on the ground the secret will be out. I'll even sign up to go there myself, I'll find those fuckers.

You'll be doin God's work

Thank you

My opinion is that by then we will have better and cheaper options than the ISS. Spacex and inflatable modules will make it considerably cheaper to launch bigger and cheaper space stations.