NASA Has Plans for 2nd Space Station at L1

Keith Gabryelski writes "New Scientist has an article on NASA's unveiling of a "blueprint for the future" of space exploration. It entails a Space Station 5/6ths of the way to the moon. In other news, radiation sheilding on the space station isn't so good."

Re:5/6 is stopping short

From a physics standpoint, getting men and material to and from the Lagrangian points would be vastly cheaper than getting them to and from the moon. Until we could utilize the raw materials of the moon to produce things, it isn't going to be cost-effective to have a moon presence.

Re:5/6 is stopping short

a space station at a LaGrange point (in this case L1) wouldn't have to use thrusters to maintain a stable orbit and would never leave it's stable orbit around the earth

That's not true. L1, L2, and L3 are all gravitationally unstable points. A space station at L1, if nudged out of position even slightly, will tend to spiral inward toward Earth or outward toward the moon. The L4 and L5 points are the only stable Lagrangian points in a two-body system.

Re:5/6 is stopping short

I have mod points, but since I work on SOHO and someone modded the parent "Informative", I have to straighten things out :)

GiliadGreene has made some [slashdot.org] good [slashdot.org] points [slashdot.org]already about SOHO being in a halo orbit around the L1, not at the actual L1 "point".

Orbit corrections are performed every 17 weeks (four months, not one).

The halo orbit is much saner than trying to stay at the L1 point, and it attenuates solar interference. Ironically, the COMSAT link that DSN uses to get data from Madrid to California gets more solar interference than the spacecraft to ground link.

We should think hard before gunking up Lagranges

You know, a couple of rounds of budget cuts later, their next grand space station will be another useless pile of expensive junk just like the first one. The problem is that it will be squatting one of only five stable points at which long-term space projects can be built.

Well, I don't like it. What gives NASA the right to squat on what is probably one of the five most valuable places in the universe (from our perspective)? Will there be a deal arranged that in 50 years, when a better space agency comes up with a better project for the liberation point, they'll move their junk out of there? There had better be. Seriously, the UN has to get on this fast. Right now, the USA has basically called dibs on two of the five liberation lunar liberation points, plus there's that second-generation telescope that they want to put into the liberation point behind the earth, where it is always shielded from the sun. Well, this is the ideal place to build a telescope, and once something is there, everybody else, even people with a better telescope idea, are shit out of luck. They'll have to spend billions to make heat shielding because NASA is squatting on the one spot where the heat shielding is natural (permanently in the shadow of Earth).

If I were the UN, I would set a squatting limit of 30 years on any given liberation point. If somebody wants to use it after that, whoever was there before has to get the fuck out and clean up after themselves. I think it's likely that in 30 years all the liberation points will have something, and in another 30, countries will be duking it out over who gets to go there next. The people who want it most will have to compensate the other people who want it. In any case, this is not too soon to be thinking about making international laws about this.

Re:5/6 is stopping short

Why not just build on the moon?

Apples and oranges. Having a station in zero gravity is really useful for launching probes and ships from, and as a gateway between the Earth and the rest of the solar system. Having a moonbase gives you mining capabilities and so forth.

They're both very important aspects of stepping into space, for different reasons.

Re:5/6 is stopping short

Why not just build on the moon? Why stop at 5/6 the way to the moon?

Because the whole point of staging at L1 is that it allows low-energy transfers to other points in the solar system. Launching a trip to Mars, for example, from L1 would require much less energy than from either the surface of the Earth, or low Earth orbit, or the surface of the moon.

Of course, this ignores the biggest problem with the L1 point: it's unstable. A body placed at L1 will tend to either fall inward toward the Earth or outward toward the moon at the slightest push. Any space station at L1 will have to correct its position regularly, probably using simple chemical rockets. These rockets will have to be refueled periodically and so on, making for a nontrivial amount of effort to keep an L1 space station in position.

The L4 and L5 points, on the other hand, are gravitationally stable. If a body at L4 or L5 starts to drift out of position-- due to a collision or outgassing or whatever-- the Earth-moon system will tend to pull it back to the point of stability again. But since L4 and L5 are farther from Earth than L1 is, it takes more time and energy to get there from LEO.

Re:Can someone explain this?

They aren't global attractors. Meaning that if I stick something on the other side of the solar system, it's going to be pulled towards Earth, not the two stable Lagrange points.

However, they are locally stable. Meaning that anything put in that general area gets pulled into the Lagrange point. The 'general area' is mathematically defined by the gravitational equations, but you can think of it like a dip in the side of a bowl. A marble placed in the bowl rolls toward the bottom. But if you put the marble close enough to the dip, it will settle there instead.

Re: What's L4,5?

L1 is about 5/6 of the way to the moon, along a direct line from the earth to the moon.

L2 is opposite the L1, over the far side of the moon from the earth.

L3 is close to the moon's orbit around the earth, but on the opposite side of the earth from the moon.

L4 and L5 are also in the orbit of the moon around the earth, but one is 60 degrees ahead of the moon in its orbit and the other is 60 degrees behind.

You can find more information at this web site [montana.edu] and there is even more detailed information to be found here [instantlearning.net]

yeah but...

radiation sheilding on the space station isn't so good.

but my tan is great!

Telescopes for high-energy radiation.

My take on the subject is that we don't have any materials heavy/stable enough to reflect high energy radiation.

The problem is that conventional materials of all types misbehave as photon energy substantially exceeds the chemical binding energies. You go from having materials acting like ideal classical conductors or dielectrics interacting with photons that act more or less like classical EM waves [normal reflection and transmission], to having materials that act like a set of quantum energy levels and photons that act like particles [photoelectric effect], to having materials that act like a diffuse sea of particles that scatter photons which also behave like particles [Compton scattering].

As the valence shell binding energies in atoms are at most on the order of a few tens of eV, there is a hard upper limit on the frequency of radiation that conventional optical elements made of normal matter can handle.

The limit's mushy in one respect, in that grazing-incidence devices see an effective frequency that's inversely proportional to the angle of incidence. However, practical devices limit the benefit of this to between a factor of 10 and a factor of 100 (so you can see some x-rays, but gamma rays are still tricky).

Non-conventional optics made of normal matter can still work under some conditions. Because the inter-atomic spacings in crystals are in the same ballpark as high-energy photon wavelengths, you can get diffraction occurring when an x- or gamma-ray beam passes through a crystal (due to scattering off of inner-shell electrons and the nuclei). This is commonly used to identify materials (x-ray diffraction patterns have been used to image atoms in everything up to and including crystals of viruses). Gamma ray telescopes using crystalline blocks to construct diffractive optics have been built.

Lastly, the final and most difficult way to cheat involves using plasma as a mirror. As it's a gas of free ions, it should have near-perfect reflection even at high wavelengths (subject to a few probably-nontrivial conditions). Keeping a cloud of ions confined to an optically flat surface is left as an exercise for the reader.

Sure, THAT'LL happen

With the insane ammounts of cost overruns and mismanagement in the ISS project, who thinks that a jaded congress is going to vote a new space station [no matter how much MORE useful than the ISS it may be] any funds whatsoever?

Re:Replacement for ISS?

The USA: Taking the I out of ISS.

It's like a playground spat: "We don't want you bringing your friends to our treehouse, it's for members only!"

Of course, the reason Russia can afford to keep contributing to the ISS, is because of those "jackasses". The US needs to stop whining. Russia obviously has a huge interest in the ISS, or they wouldn't bother selling rides to finance their parts of the project.

Building Infrastructure for the Future

Yes, it is true that the International Space Station has taken a horrendous amount of money that could've been spent on real science. I admit that I'd like to see more money spent on real science missions like probes to Pluto or Europa or on more Space-based telescopes, but unfortunately as these devices increase in size (satellites, space telescopes, probes, etc.) it becomes infeasible to launch them in a confined shuttle (I believe Chandra X-ray telescope reached the volume limits on what could be launched in one piece).

That said, we need to be building an infrastructure for launching larger and more complex devices into space. This requires places where things can be assembled once in orbit, places such as the ISS or another station at a Lagrangian point. In and of themselves, these stations aren't spectacular, they don't produce good science and they are very expensive, but they need to be created to assist other scientific endeavors as our technology continues to develop. As an example, routers, fiber, and transcontinental backbones are expensive and to the layman, they produce no real science or pretty pictures, but they are necessary as an infrastructure over which people can do some really cool things.

Anyway, I think that even if this doesn't get passed by congress or the things run behind schedule, it is good that we are at least PLANNING to do some really cool stuff like this.

Space tourims

How much for a trip to this baby?

And where can I pre-order a ticket?

cant even afford current station

There is only room for three people for extended stays, due to Congressional budget cuts in the habitation module and escape vehicle. The original intention is seven people. That means the crew of three must spend 75% of their time in maintenance with only a small amount for experiments and other innovation. Unlikely the current administration will increase funding. Many republicans hate NASA because of its environmental monitoring programs. And the previous scientific leader of NASA has been replaced by an accountant (cut and slash).

The new IMAX movie about the first three years of space station construction is fascinating.

Re:cant even afford current station

I agree about the Imax movie, it's excellent. Even Tom Cruise's hugely overdone voiceover doesn't ruin it: "And the VIEW HERE is... AWESOME. Just... AWESOME. No really, it's TOTALLY... AWESOME." Kinda like a cross between Keanu Reeves and William Shatner, with liberal snorts of cocaine.

Plan ahead.

"If you sent two people to Mars, one of them would die," says Marco Durante of the Federico II University in Naples

I think the key to preventing this is to pack enough food that the astronauts are not forced to resort to cannabalism.

Re:Plan ahead.

Or send somebody else instead of the guy who'll die.

Re:Plan ahead.

Solution: Only send one guy.

Madhouse: Satirized for your protection. [insaneabode.com]

Mixed emotions...

The explorer part of me is saying, "Yay! It's about time we started building more structures in space. The Lagrange point would make a good neutral spot halfway to the moon." But then the realist in me says, "Given that NASA has proven that it can't stick to a budget, how much is this overrun going to cost?" And the article agrees with me.

Government is not the answer to promoting outer space as a new resource -- market forces have shown to be the driving force in all new ventures. We need competition in getting things into orbit, tourism to build hotels, industry to build fab plants, mining on the moon...

Re:Mixed emotions...

market forces have shown to be the driving force in all new ventures

[sigh] I am getting really sick of hearing this bit of ideology repeated as though it were an established fact. Some things happen as a result of market forces, some as a result of government forces, and some (actually most) as a result of the combination of the two. Just because a generally capitalist economic system is healthier and more innovative than a generally socialist economic system (which is true) does not mean that "the market will take care of" everything, all the time.

If the Internet depended on "market forces," it wouldn't exist -- we'd be living in a world of multiple incompatible networks with users of any one network unable to communicate with those of others. If the highway system depended on "market forces," there would be no way in hell you could drive from one coast to the other. If education depended on "market forces," only the children of the rich would ever get an education. Etc. And if space exploration depends on "market forces," then you can kiss any chance you or your great-grandchildren have of ever getting off this planet goodbye.

Re:Mixed emotions...

the Interstate Highway System, the TVA, rural electrification, the Public Library system (just off the top of my head)... none of these were driven by these elusive "market forces" the original poster refers to.

(which is not to say that they didn't precipitate in quite a little jolt for this nation's capitalists)...

Clearly there's a bit of saliency to the argument that a little "push" by the govt. can jump-start some of these "market forces."

:tcejbus

space is a harsh place. Radiation, temperature extremes, enormous distances of nothingness. It'll be nice when it isn't almost senselessly prohibitive to go.

Re:Radiation is a solved problem

Lead is really heavy... Maybe? Do you know how many N*Sync members you could get in space instead of a couple of sheets of lead?

Re:Radiation is a solved problem

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that lead is heavy, and heavy things cost more to get into space?

Re:Radiation is a solved problem

I don't understand why NASA does not employ lead shielding to protect its astronauts.

Fair question, but one with a fairly simple answer. Lets do some numbers...

To within a factor of a few, what matters in radiation shielding is "surface density", i.e. how many grams of material per square centimeter there are in your shield. So you can have a thick shield of light material, or a thin shield of dense material; for the same area they will provide the same shielding effect if they have the same mass.

Say for a moment that you want as much shielding as provided by the Earths atmosphere; that works out to be about 10 tons/square meter. (If you SCUBA dive: remember that the pressure goes up by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth. A 10x 1x1 meter column of water weighs 10 tons.) Those ten tons/m2 can be in any form you want: a 10 km thick air shield, 10 meters of ice, 2 meters of rock, or a meter of lead.

So, you want to put a couple of guys in a spaceship and send them to Mars? Well, put them in a cramped tube, say 10 meters long and 3 meters in diameter. That gives you about 100 square meters of surface area.... or 1000 tons of shielding.

At current prices it costs about $20,000 to put a kilogram of material into low Earth orbit. The biggest rocket flown to date can put about 100 tons into orbit. With current technology you either hit up Bill Gates for the 20 billion, or you can skimp on the shielding. The space station skimps by a factor of 300 (you get a years ' worth of background radiation in a single day). You could also play games like have most of the spacecraft lightly shielded, but have a lead-lined "storm shelter" for the times when solar flares erupt. This works because much of the radiation comes in bursts. However, it isn't useful for going to places with continuous high levels of radiation, like Jupiter.

That's why we need a new and cheaper space launch system.

Quick!

Someone file a patent on flying to the moon! I can see NASA paying some major royalties.

third brightest object in the sky

After the Sun and Moon. Its been fascinating to watch it get brighter as they add more cylinders and panels every year.

The station is visible in the evenings about one week a month and mornings one week a month, so the orbit can wobble over the US, Russia, Europe, and Japan. Sky & Telescope [skyandtelescope.com] (set zip code, click on almanac) shows pass times & locations, as do other websites.

Re:third brightest object in the sky

Here's an even better site: Heavens Above [heavens-above.com].

It covers any location in the world (not just USA and Canada). It has fly-by data for hundreds of satellites (including ISS) and my personal favorites, the Iridium flares. If you've never seen a -7 magnitude Iridium flare, do yourself a favor and check it out. It's absolutely awesome.

Heavens Above will tell you where to look (direction and azimuth) and when to look - accurate down to the second!

New scientists.

If i'm to be modded down for offtopicness, well, I deserve it, but I need to get this off my chest:

I simply can't read new scientist anymore. When the site actually loads (regardless of slashdotting), every single article they publish seems to be the scientific equivalent of the paparazzi.

I mean, really, one thing is to have a non-peer-reviewed magazine, and an entirely different thing is to intentionally publish exagerated, ridiculous, absolutely un-proved (and almost always un-provable) "facts". Even the simplest of stories is spinned beyond recognition. If a story comes up of some scientists spotting a .00001% deviation from expected results researching *.*, right after they make clear that most likely it's due to faulty measurement equipment, New Scientist will publish that they found aliens, that they have a draft of the alien invasion plan, that Einstains's GToR is therefore void, and that in fact he himself WAS an alien trying to distract us from the truth. And then they _really_ start speculating and tell you that they infer from the inforamtion that Einstein was a shape shifter and that he was also the first husband of Melinda Gates.

Now, I haven't read this article (not that I could even if I wanted to, NS' site goes DoS when they're linked from my cousin's non-porn website), but I'm sure I'll get more substance out of /.er's comments than NS (if you can believe that!)

Why get upset?

The New Scientist is to Nature what the National Enquirer is to the New York Times. But, hey, lots of people read the National Enquirer for fun as well. Only that when people start taking it seriously that people get hurt.

It's time to leave LEO

The time between when Columbus "discovered" the new world and Magellen circumnavigated the globe was 30 years. It has now been 30 years since Apollo 17, the last time man visited the moon, the last time man left low earth orbit. I think it's a great failure of our race that we've dragged our feet such.

To think that technological advance is blazingly fast in this day in age is misleading. We're not doing too well at hitting the important targets. NASA might just now be waking up to this, but it's yet to be seen if their budget wakes up to it. (Nasa funding was 4% of the national budget at the height of the Apollo program, it's less than 1% now)

So I applaud their very recent efforts to finally mention some vague goals away from Low Earth Orbit. L1 is a fine stepping stone, but Mars is where the public eye is. Nasa administrator Daniel Goldin had some brave words about the possibility of sending men to Mars in this decade or the next, but Bush put a bean counter in charge of Nasa pretty quickly to throttle cost overruns from the ISS.

What we really need is a president giving NASA a kick in the pants, and the funding to follow, as Kennedy did. Either that or wait around for private space exploration to become worthwhile, and we're going to be waiting quite a while in that case. Another space race? maybe China? I hope so. Because the current NASA schedule is anything but ambitious.

Re:It's time to leave LEO

NASA is doing this for science, and they are publically funded.

The explorers did it in order to find/establish trade routes, and had a lot of private monies.

See the difference? Money.

NASA couldn't even go to the moon now

After the Apollo missions, there was no budget to keep up the plans for the Apollo V spacecraft. If NASA wanted to land men on the moon again, they would have to reinvent the great rocket science of Wernher von Braun. NASA should just shoot for going to the moon now and establishing a science based set of missions.

Apollo was not built around science. It was built as another battlefield of the Cold War. The space program wasn't even important until the Soviet Union beat America into space. When NASA can make routine, scientific trips to the moon, then they can concentrate on building a space station at L1 and worry about getting to Mars.

The Space Shuttle is routine now, and usually stays within budget. NASA should build on this technology, slowly and gradually. We will learn so much more this way rather than putting a thermometer and a seismometer on the moon as quickly as possible.

Re:NASA couldn't even go to the moon now

Not to be picky, but this is Slashdot. Picky is what we do here. The rocket for the lunar Apollo missions was the Saturn V series booster, not the Apollo V.

The Saturn series was used after the Lunar Apollo four times (correct me if I'm wrong). Three were Apollo CSMs (one to ASTP, two to Skylab), and one, a Saturn INT-21 (a modified Saturn V) boosted Skylab, which really was a good scientific experiment, to orbit.