Salvaging or recycling the International Space Station (ISS) is the killer app. There’s so much there that could be re-used, it would be a dying shame to have it be deorbited, burned up and crashed into the ocean somewhere.
Yes recycling the ISS is monumental today. Yes the probability of success is slim (at the moment). But ISS deorbit is now scheduled for 2031 (see NASA article. That gives us just 9 short years to develop the technology to recycle the ISS in orbit, to save the parts that have cost literally billions of $s to ship to space.
There’s little time to waste. We need to get sophisticated robots into orbit that can do the job when the time comes. The only way to get there then, is to start small and iterate like a startup until we reach business sustainability.
A beach head in space
One current need, that may help us initiate operations in space and start a technology iteration loop, is deorbiting space junk. Just about every space organization on earth is funding technology development or deorbiting mission development to clean up LEO and beyond.
I believe a focused startup can do this for millions less and am willing to put my time, effort (and money) pursuing this activity as a first step.
Once we have deorbiting systems in orbit we can work on adding more and more sophisticated robotics capabilities to our satellites, which will can lead to providing the services to recycle the ISS into parts and use them to help build the next generation of space infrastructure.
Reaching out for help, any way I can get it
Currently this is one man’s dream and I could use any help you want to offer. If you have any interest in helping out, please comment on this post and let me know how to contact you. I need every kind of skill to get something like this off the ground. But my intent is to do this alone if I have to.
Wish me luck,
Ray