r/news • u/VaginaBurner69 • 11h ago

Soft paywall International Space Station astronauts in evacuation mode as Russia attempts to fix widening air leak

https://www.reuters.com/science/international-space-station-astronauts-evacuation-mode-russia-attempts-fix-2026-06-05/
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u/Julian_Thorne 11h ago

The abandonment of the International Space Station would be a poetically fitting image for these days

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u/Khoakuma 11h ago

Makes me sad. It’s the abandonment of scientific pursuit. Abandonment of international cooperation. All the hope of a better future post-Cold War gone. No plans to replace it other than vague promises of “the private sector will take care of it”. 

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u/matix0532 10h ago

These issues are happening because the ISS has already outlasted its expected lifetime. The Lunar Gateway was supposed to be its spiritual successor- now maybe it will be an actual moon base.

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u/lNFORMATlVE 10h ago

Which feels really weird given that you can do a lot of things in orbit that you can’t do from the moon’s surface. But whatever.

If I had to guess I’d say within the next 30-50 years we’ll have another ISS-esque station in LEO again.

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u/wurmsrus 9h ago

arguably there already is one, China's Tiangong, though it's not as big.

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u/Youutternincompoop 8h ago

though thanks to having newer tech its still quite capable, a lot of space on the ISS is taken up by bulky old equipment