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Only the Russian segment has the thrusters and control to do altitude management and debris avoidance maneuvers of the ISS. The US provides stability, but can't make large maneuvers in orbit. In the event of loss of attitude control (it has happened many times) the Russian thrusters are required to recover. The US MAY get reboost capability for a docked Cygnus or Boeing vehicle, but it will not get the level of control the Russian segment provides.
The US toilet system is actually Russian provided. Russia carries spare parts and resupplies for the US toilet, and also accepts the waste products (liquid brine) onto the Progress for disposal. The US may only have a few weeks capability without removal or resupply, and the toilet tends to be very finicky and needs repairs often. The US tested a new toilet, but it is not ready or capable to replace the current ISS toilet. The brine is a corrosive hazardous waste, and unless things have changed in the last couple of years the US has no good way to dispose of it. Cygnus or SpaceX, to my knowledge, do not normally carry hazardous liquid waste. (Maybe Cygnus can but doesn't?). Resupply is probably the bigger problem.
Departure/separation of the Russian modules may be difficult or impossible due to age and wear&tear. Loss or power down of any of the Russian segment will require major changes to management and control of the remaining station due to unknown or untested effects on the power and control systems, changes to center of gravity, changes to the thermal mass and management, and likely many others. It is also possible and may be probable that segment departure will cause excessive loads on the solar arrays and radiators that may result in damage or failure of some systems, and may also damage external science on station due to pluming or debris.
The US does not have any command and control capability of the Russian segment, so if the Russians choose to shut things down that's that.
If the Russians leave ISS, the US won't be far behind. If the ISS has a loss of attitude control, it may not be possible to safely undock a crew vehicle. The ISS may have to be left uncrewed for a period of time and "rescued" at a later date when thruster capability becomes available. But can't wait too long, as we are entering solar max and the orbit decay rate will be increasing. Skylab fell from orbit because of delays in shuttle readiness.
Last edited by RocketSci; 03-07-2022 at 06:04 PM..
If the Russians leave ISS, the US won't be far behind. If the ISS has a loss of attitude control, it may not be possible to safely undock a crew vehicle. The ISS may have to be left uncrewed for a period of time and "rescued" at a later date when thruster capability becomes available. But can't wait too long, as we are entering solar max and the orbit decay rate will be increasing. Skylab fell from orbit because of delays in shuttle readiness.
Do you give any credence to Elon's claim that SpaceX could boost ISS orbit? He didn't go into details to my knowledge, just that they could figure out how to do it with current vehicles.
Do you give any credence to Elon's claim that SpaceX could boost ISS orbit? He didn't go into details to my knowledge, just that they could figure out how to do it with current vehicles.
I do not believe that the locations of the thrusters on the current SpaceX design will allow it to boost the station without potentially damaging it. Of course maybe it "could" if it was redesigned, but there may be other issues in the docking port or station configuration that affect it. It took several years of iterative design and analysis work by NASA and SpaceX to come up with the current design and operation of it thrusters, as initial SpaceX assumptions did not fully take into account its effects on the station solar arrays when it began building the hardware. Fuel availability on the SpaceX may also be an issue if it is used for operations beyond its current needs.
So the ISS reenters the atmosphere somewhere over the United States and impacts within a radius of several hundred miles of the 'target' (to put it charitably). Or, rather, bits and pieces of the former ISS do. The odds of any of those parts hitting anything other than farmland or forest or desert are about 1000 to 1. I swear, Russia is doing its best to come off as the half-assed villain in an Austin Powers movie.
I wonder how awkward the atmosphere is on the ISS. Scientists and astronauts are by no means the most hawkish people, but it can't be the most comfortable setting either. Specially since astronaut are often former armed forces personnel. Anton Shkaplerov, one of the current cosmonauts on the ISS, used to be in the Russian air force. Mark T. Vande Hei, one of the current astronauts was in the US army, etc.
I wonder how awkward the atmosphere is on the ISS. Scientists and astronauts are by no means the most hawkish people, but it can't be the most comfortable setting either. Specially since astronaut are often former armed forces personnel. Anton Shkaplerov, one of the current cosmonauts on the ISS, used to be in the Russian air force. Mark T. Vande Hei, one of the current astronauts was in the US army, etc.
Well, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Space Agency, has threatened to disconnect the Russian module and not give Vande Hei his scheduled ride back to Earth and leave him on ISS. He will have been there for 355 days by his scheduled return in three weeks.
Well, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Space Agency, has threatened to disconnect the Russian module and not give Vande Hei his scheduled ride back to Earth and leave him on ISS. He will have been there for 355 days by his scheduled return in three weeks.
Luckily the US now have a crewed capability to the ISS. If this happened a few years ago they would have been powerless.
The ISS has had a continuous human presence since at least 2000 (over two decades), but I think it started even earlier, maybe mid or late 1990s.
Regardless of the current political swaggering, the Russian space program has had a good track record of relations with the US, and other international partners. They have a lot of smart thinkers and engineers on board. Not the type who easily jump ship or roll over due to bullying from above.
Looks like NASA is seriously considering getting Mark home on a Dragon flight, possibly the Axiom mission later this month. Apparently they need to get him a SpaceX suit made for a return in a Dragon which is something I never considered. Without giving it a thought I just assumed a space suit is a space suit. I don't know all the details but it seems to me anything is better than relying on the Russians to get him home.
Speaking of relying on the Russians, I can't imagine Roscosmos' commercial launch business having much, if any, demand after their defaults on upcoming launches.
The source of this "news" appears to be a video published more than a week ago by a Kremlin-aligned publication, RIA Novosti. Roscosmos TV provided footage for the video, but in sharing it acknowledged that the video was a "joke." Now, this is an exceptionally poor joke given the tensions on Earth, but it is important to understand that sharing a video a week ago does not mean Russia is threatening to leave Vande Hei behind. Nothing has changed since the video was posted.
Since the beginning of this crisis, NASA officials have said operations with Russian colleagues working on the space station have proceeded nominally. "Operations have not changed at all," one NASA source confirmed Friday. On Monday, NASA's manager of the International Space Program, Joel Montalbano, is scheduled to speak at a news conference about upcoming spacewalks. He likely will say something similar.
...
The first step toward trouble in the ISS partnership probably would entail Russia recalling its cosmonauts training for future missions in the United States or NASA recalling its flight controllers in Moscow and astronauts at Star City. That has not happened.
For the reasons Ars outlined Monday in a feature on the International Space Station, it remains in the best interests of the United States and Russia to continue flying the station; and in the near term at least both sides need the cooperation of one another to keep going.
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So Rogozin appears to be playing to his domestic audience. His behavior, certainly, is abhorrent to a Western audience. But it does not appear to be representative of many people in the Russian space program who continue the hard work of keeping a 20-year-old station, by far the largest spaceship humans have ever assembled in space, flying high.
But, as the article also pointed out, this could all change.
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