They aren't designed for reentry. Instead, they are filled with
garbage, jettisoned, and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Plenty of Time If an evacuation were needed, there would
probably be plenty of time to do it in an orderly manner,
maximizing the chances that the station could be reoccupied
later on, Launius said. Assuming enough systems are working so
that the station's alignment can be maintained from Earth, he
said, "there's no reason to believe they couldn't just shut it
down in an orderly manner." Then, hopefully, "it's simply a
question of going back up and reactivating the systems," he
said. Something similar had to be done in 1973, he added, when
the original Skylab was first occupied. Before going aboard, he
said, the crew had to deploy a sunshade to deflect the sun, then
get the power systems up and running so they could turn on the
air conditioning and go aboard. (See a gallery of the best
pictures taken from the International Space Station.) The
Problem at Hand This week's computer failure