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

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.

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.

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.

Agreed 100%.

>It is very concerning to see that in an article that claims to be scientific.

Anything with Dark Matter or Dark Energy is going to be clickbait. And so we see these piles of drivel almost daily here. :(

I find articles talking about dark matter/energy to be manipulative, here is why.

If you read the article itself you'll find that those names were invented as merely labels for the inconsistencies in how Universe behaved. So yes dark energy "exists" because inconsistency exists, and dark energy is merely a label name for that inconsistency, but nothing more. It's not given nor claimed by scientists that it is proven to actually exist as energy.

The manipulative part is that the words used in those labels bear their own meaning. "Matter" means something objectively detectable made of physical particles which you're able to interact with. But we don't actually know if that's the case.

What is more concerning is statements like this:

>Perhaps dark matter will never be detected, apart from its gravitational effects. Even so, that would not be an argument against its existence

Saying that if we cannot detect something does not mean that something does not exist its basically Russell's teapot claim. It is very concerning to see that in an article that claims to be scientific.

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.

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

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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.

It's honestly amazing how often dark energy is brought up without mentioning that:

1. non-zero vacuum energy is a prediction of QFT

2. non-zero vacuum energy would contribute to the cosmological constant

Instead people just use the same line over and over about how it's completely mysterious and we have no idea what it is.

It's nice to see an article written by an actual astrophysicist for a popsci audience that mentions these things and actually clarifies some of the things that popsci "journalists" like to make sound as sensationalized as possible.

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

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

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.

Another problem already solved in Kerbal Space Program. ;)

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

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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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.