this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Astronomy
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You can't do that because it will physically fall apart. That's the main issue with boosting it up higher and just leaving it there. It was never designed to be existing for a thousand years, and eventually wear and tear will make the station naturally break apart. It's significantly more dangerous for small fragments to drop over time as compared to a deorbit and decomm. At least the deorbit is planned, while the disintegration would be pretty random and not fun to deal with.
Don't know where you ever got that idea. It raises and lowers itself all of the time these days to avoid debris.
It could easily be raised to 2-5000 miles by adding energy from a similar small engine (with a decent-sized fuel tank) over a few months/years.
'Wear and tear' from what? Micrometeorites? The orbits of any 'small fragments' (of what?) would decay very slowly and instantly burn-up many centuries later.