@WordsmithFL
Original architects and designers of the ISS have written a letter urging them not to deorbit it but rather to put it in a higher orbit for decades using the same or less amount of fuel it will take to deorbit it and trash it.
@FireMonkey All of that has been studied in excruciating detail, which NASA has documented. The stress on pushing it into a higher orbit would probably cause it to break up, resulting in an even bigger problem. It would also enter the orbits of other spacecraft. Over time, it would start to deorbit on its own, this time uncontrolled, creating a bigger problem.
Once it's in a higher orbit ... Then what?! It's already deteriorating. No one is going to buy it. It will fall apart anyway.
@FireMonkey This is the #ISS deborbit summary #NASA published in June.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/iss-deorbit-analysis-summary.pdf
@WordsmithFL
Well, it appears that the original folks who want to save it are a bit sentimental about it then.
Dadgum boomers and greatest generation engineers and architects who want to hang their greatest project on a hook for a thousand years.
Who can blame them? But yes it *looks* unfeasible.
@FireMonkey I got that all the time when I did #NASA education at #KSC:
"Why didn't they save the launch pads intact from the Apollo era?!"
Because it would have been hideously expensive, and we would have had to build new ones for Shuttle.
One launch tower was saved at the last minute, because a local group said they'd raise the money to preserve it. So the tower sat in a field for years, leeching toxic chemicals into the ground. They never raised a penny. The tower was finally scrapped.