With 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX was selected to design and develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for a precise, controlled deorbit of the @Space_Station
Looks like there will be 30 draco engines on the back of that thing. Pretty Kerbal!
Edit:
Cool, but not the best use of $0.8 billion. NASA should go to the UN and try to get a load of countries to agree to just accept the risk of an uncontrolled re-entry. Keep $0.01 billion to compensate for any damage/injury caused. Give the rest to poverty alleviation.
Out of interest, if there are specific parts of the ISS that are expected to survive re-entry, could they be removed and put in a Cygnus or something? Leaving the rest to fully burn up?
And how bad an idea would it be to wait until the ISS is a day away from re-entry, and then launch a missile at it? (Presumably it would be better if they could use a trajectory where the missile approaches the ISS from above.)
(Yes, I know, none of this will ever happen. I'm just interested in any thoughts anyone has.)
For a bit of context, Give Well reckons there's at least one charitable programme where it only costs $5000 to save a human life.
Also, the total budget request for this deorbit plan (including launch and operating costs, etc.) is more like $1.5 billion.
And again, I know something like this US Deorbit Vehicle is the only realistic option. But if I was Bill Nelson I'd at least be writing a quick letter to the UN; let them be the ones to make this (probably) wrong decision.
Let's not set the precedent of having the UN make decisions about space.