Russia to Down the ISS in 2020; Will Anybody Notice?

On the one hand, the International Space Station was started in 1998. So if the Russians crash her in 2020, it'll have spent more than two decades in orbit. Except, on the other hand, the ISS isn't scheduled to be completed until next year.

Oddly, nobody seems to think the Russians are telling the truth about this.

"We will be forced to sink the ISS. We cannot leave it in orbit as it is a very complicated and a heavy object," Roscosmos' deputy head Vitaly Davydov said in an interview posted on the agency's website.

"We have agreed with our partners that the ISS would function roughly until 2020," he noted.

After sinking hundreds of millions into construction of the space station -- billions if you include the cost of the space shuttle flights that carried the ISS modules into orbit -- knowledgeable government sources and NASA spokesmen were aghast at Davydov's plans to sink the station in the ocean.

This isn't the first time I've seen Russia come out with a statement that seems to be coming out of their own stovepipes," one congressional representative told FoxNews.com. "I would give it no credence at all."

Quick, without looking it up on Google, tell me what the ISS has been good for. No cheating, you!

posted by Gabriel Malor at 07:36 PM

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