Bloomberg reported today that SpaceX won the contract to bring down the International Space Station. The idea is for a spacecraft to grab hold of the ISS and set it on a trajectory to burn up in the atmosphere. Truck it to the incinerator, as it were.

That makes me nervous. I don’t know what the likelihood of failure is here, but the cost of failure can be pretty high. Something goes wrong and pieces of the ISS start raining down on a populated area. Back in March, some junk from the ISS that was supposed to burn up in the atmosphere crashed through two floors of a family home in Florida. The family has filed a claim with NASA, requesting that they pay for damages.

The debris that fell on the house in Florida was part of a 2.9 ton pallet of batteries. The International Space Station weighs something like 460 tons, and it’s not just one solid piece. Undoubtedly pieces would break off as it’s falling through the atmosphere, and some of those pieces could fail to burn up. Whereas I suspect whoever came up with this idea has taken that into account, I don’t see how they’re going to solve that problem.

I especially don’t see how they’re going to solve that problem within the constraints of the budget: $843 million.

It’ll be interesting to understand how SpaceX is planning to do this. I just don’t see how they could deorbit the station intact and expect it all to burn up in the atmosphere. And I don’t see how they can disassemble the station into smaller parts and deorbit them individually for less than a billion dollars. How will they guarantee that pieces won’t fall to Earth in populated areas?

I wonder. Is it possible to deorbit the station on a trajectory that doesn’t pass over populated areas, and has a very low likelihood of shedding pieces that would deviate dangerously from that trajectory? I’ll have to look into that.