NASA Has Plans for 2nd Space Station at L1 439
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."
5/6 is stopping short (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, THAT'LL happen (Score:5, Interesting)
cant even afford current station (Score:5, Interesting)
The new IMAX movie about the first three years of space station construction is fascinating.
:tcejbus (Score:3, Interesting)
radiation (Score:2, Interesting)
Replacement for ISS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mixed emotions... (Score:2, Interesting)
As it is now, I put my $.02 on the idea that NASA is under-budgeting in order to gte the crooks^H^H^H^H^H^Hpoliticans to accept the project.
Nobody is going to tell me that NASA is not smart enough to put out a price that looks good, get the funding and then slowly, but steadily increase the cost.
New scientists. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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
radiation shielding (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news, radiation sheilding on the space station isn't so good.
Lead and tungsten are your friends.
(I suppose that this might be a good time to come out in favor of developing a cheap, non-man-rated left vehicle, suitable for lofting dense, space-station-module-sized things into LEO...?)
It's time to leave LEO (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
NASA couldn't even go to the moon now (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Moon surfing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, it'd be easier to leave from L1, as they would have to fight the gravity of the moon to get back into space. I hope that's what you meant...
I thought an L space colony would look like.. (Score:5, Interesting)
What about that newly discovered asteroid? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Although only about 100 metres across 2002 AA29 may play a role in the manned exploration of space out of all proportion to its size.
Already researchers are speculating that it could be visited by an unmanned spaceprobe or even become the first object after the Moon to be stepped on by astronauts.
The object could tell us a lot about the composition of asteroids.
Some have speculated that it could be nudged into a permanent Earth orbit where it could be studied at greater length."
If you could nudge this thing into the right orbit wouldn't it make a wonderful station? Lots of room, some raw materials, and you could burrow into to escape the radiation. I understand that some asteroids are nothing more than loose collections of rocks and dust. But it's an intriguing, and plausible idea.
Re:Radiation is a solved problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Radiation inside the ISS, and the now defunct Mir, is caused when the fast, heavy ions that make up cosmic rays collide with the aluminium hull, releasing a shower of secondary particles into the living quarters.
To mitigate this effect, the ISS has been fitted with additional polyethylene shielding that contains lighter atomic nuclei, which are less likely to throw out neutrons when hit by cosmic rays.
Re:Replacement for ISS? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Magnetic shielding... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe the magnetic fields required are too strong to be practical. IANA physicist.
Why not just go to the moon. (Score:5, Interesting)
If there are more informed people out there who see what I don't, I'd love to hear it.
Re:NASA couldn't even go to the moon now (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
So how much area is occupied in the Lpoint (Score:2, Interesting)
Acceptable risk? (Score:5, Interesting)
Was it a good thing to spend that money on? Is the IIS over-engineered in favour of preventing un unfortunate death? (Aside - How many of you, after viewing the interior of an Apollo era craft, would still go into space in one of those?)
Let's look at a little history. If during the 18th century, we had spent an equivalent amount of dough on sailing ships (with the (un)stated goal of preventing deaths (monarchs HATE to look bad)) I think we'd still be looking for our assholes with a mirror. We'd never have left Europe. The economy of the day would not have tolerated it.
My father-in-law was one of the Canadians who helped develop the nuclear power station system called CANDU. His stories are quite telling. His take on risk? - during development of CANDU the engineering studies required would fill a couple of banker's boxes. Today, those studies would fill a small stadium. With a exponential rise in cost. Why? What's the return? A couple of lives? A dozen lives?
My point is - we have tried to reduce the risk to zero and this is not only stupid, but unwise. Stupid because there will always be a risk. How much money are we going to let timid politicians/bureaucrats spend on that last
"Acceptable risk" is a term that has been lost from the West's vocabulary and it is time to bring it back.
Radiation Shielding: Just the sleeping closets. (Score:3, Interesting)
We should think hard before gunking up Lagranges (Score:4, Interesting)
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:what about an electro-magnetic shield? (Score:3, Interesting)
If it really is ions causing the problem then a strong magnetic field should provide some protection, just as the earth's field does. In fact the article talks about a significant increase in radiation when outside the earth's magnetic field.
A strong magnetic field might be enough to allow deep space travel. If it's primarily electromagnetic radiation, i.e. photons then your screwed, of course.
Re:Radiation is a solved problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Using waste water could work. Wether reclaimed from air, or from body fluids, this would only have been jettisoned into space or reprocessed (and reprocessed water tastes like crap!) anyway.
For that matter, waste biomatter may actually be good at shielding radiation, but you wouldn't want a leak anywhere on the inside of the station! Ewwwww!
Also, you could generate oxygen and hydrogen from water by electrolysis (well you'd have big solar panels anyway). You could use these as a propellant, since any craft at the L1 point still would need some sort of station keeping thrusters (any craft docking/departing the station, or small impacts from space debris, will change the station's balance and momentum, knocking it out of the "perfect centre" it should be sitting at), and this could provide some of the required fuel. Or you could use some of the oxygen to add to the air mix, and the hydrogen in fuel cells.
Only problem with using a liquid as a shield is that when the station is in darkness it'll be frozen, and when it's in light it'll be warm or boiling. Water changes a LOT in volume with heat, so the hull would have to be able to stand that change. And any leak where there is liquid or steam would have to be plugged, otherwise you'd end up with the liquid ejecting into space and propelling the station out of it's nice stable placement.
In the meantime, just make sure the astronauts dose up on their caffiene and they'll be fine. *grin*
Re:Half right (Score:2, Interesting)
True. But the dynamics in that halo orbit are very messy. Just getting to the orbit is a pain - the trajectory requires a lot of work before the mission - and if you need to perform a maneuver while you're in your halo (e.g. to rendezvous and dock), well, good luck. One small delta-v in the wrong direction and you're on the unstable manifold of the halo and an express elevator to whoe knows where.
There are plans for a probe at the Earth-Sun L1 point (about 4 times farther than the moon)that will similiarly orbit that L1 point but for different reasons. If it were precisely at the L1 point, then we would have point our antenae directly at the sun to communicate with it. The noise from the sun would make it essentially impossible to communicate with, hence the offset.
Actually, I can almost guarantee that the reason the probe is going to a halo or lissajous orbit is that it is well nigh impossible to stay at the Sun-Earth L1 without burning an insane amount of fuel. The Sun-Earth L1 is unstable. I would however not be surprised to find that the particular orbit selected (the size of the halo) was driven by the need to achieve a certain angular separation from the sun.
Bottom line: stupid idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is this stupid? Here's why:
So what do you have when you break it down: A dynamically complex region of space that will make proximity maneuvers extremely difficult to perform. And if you make one small mistake in those difficult maneuvers, you're basically headed for Pluto. Bottom line: L1 is just about the stupidest place to put a space station that you could pick.
Re:Bottom line: stupid idea (Score:5, Interesting)
While maintaining position at L1 is technically more challenging than maintaining position at L4 or L5, it has a higher payoff. For one, you won't be trying to build your space station in a veritable gravel pit in space. Secondly, it's trivial to launch vehicles from the point - you just let them go and they'll drift off without active station keeping. And considering how the intended primary purpose would be as a place to launch other missions from, that's a slightly useful thing.
Re:5/6 is stopping short (Score:2, Interesting)
If the SOHO satellite and the proposed space station are both at L1, how close will they be? Visible distance?
How big are these "point"s? I get that there's going to be one optimum point, which is L1's location, but how big is the area where the effects of L1 are still felt to the degree where it's a useful place to park something? I.E., how big is this space station's playpen?
Re:Radiation is a solved problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:5/6 is stopping short (Score:1, Interesting)
The moon is in orbit because of a gravitational pull by the Earth. It's velocity (or whatever the proper term is in astrophysics) is what makes it seem to change its visible side.
For it to have gained that velocity/trajectory/momentm/whatever, the moon had to have, at one point in the history of the universe, collided with the Earth. The physics of the collision set the moon at a certain range from the Earth. The geography of the Earth changed from the impact, and the moon was sent spinning off into the orbit it has.
Now, the moon was off in orbit over the Earth, having absorbed some kinetic energy from the planet. My current knowledge tells me that the exchange of said energy aeons ago pushed the moon into a trajectory around our planet that is slowly pushing the moon away from the Earth. I believe at a rate of 2 inches a year.
So, I'm wondering if the LaGrange (sorry bout the spelling folks) points are completely stable. Has the math been done to account for the continual shift in distance, or am I mistaken?
Re:Building Infrastructure for the Future (Score:1, Interesting)
Call me naive, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
The forces wouldn't cancel each other out. Right?
(Actually, I can see how L3 would work, if the satellite had the same orbital period as the moon. But L2 confuses my little general-arts-degree mind.)
Shielding for moon voyage (Score:2, Interesting)
What about Luna? Is the Moon still within the Earth's magnetic sheild? It is many times farther out than the ISS. We sent a couple of people there, or so they tell me. Did they have any adverse health problems? I would think that the shielding used on that trip was probably not as advanced as todays sheilding.
How much radiation were the people on the Apollo missions receiving compared to a year on Earth?
Re:5/6 is stopping short (Score:2, Interesting)
As for your other question, a libration (or Lagrange, or Lagrangian, or whatever) point is just that: a point. L1 is the dimensionless point in space where the gravitational forces pulling toward Earth and toward the moon exactly equal one another. If the center of mass (also a dimensionless point) of a body is parked exactly on the libration point, then the body will experience no net gravitational pull in either direction, because the forces will be balanced.
Of course, keeping the center of mass of a body parked on the L1 point is not a trivial thing. Even the pressure of light from the sun will be enough to nudge it slightly out of position, and once out of position, the body will tend to fall further out of position due to gravity of either the Earth or the moon. So the real question is this: how gentle or steep is the gravity gradient surrounding the L1 point? In other words, how much does the force of gravity change over time as one moves in and out of the L1 point?
Remember that gravity is an inverse-square relation. The force varies with the square of the distance between two objects. So when the two objects are close together, the force varies a lot over a small distance. But when the objects are farther apart, the force varies less over the same distance. When bodies are far, the gravitational gradient (distance rate change of force) between them is said to be shallow or smooth, and when they're close together it's said to be steep.
All that adds up to is this: it's easier to keep a body at the Earth-Sun L1 point than at the Earth-moon L1 point because the gravitational gradient is steeper in the Earth-moon system than in the Earth-Sun system.
Now, the L4 and L5 points are different. L4 and L5 are local attractors; you could put an object in orbit around L4 or L5 itself, and it would tend toward stability. So it's easier to put multiple objects at L4 and L5 than it is to put them at L1, L2, or L3.
Behold the march of progress (Score:3, Interesting)
This is obviously a richly researched topic with lots of published papers. Some [ieec.fcr.es] of them talk about new algorithms for tackling the complex dynamics you're talking about. And of course there's always Moore's Law; the computers used for Apollo missions were about as powerful as (or maybe much less than?) Palm Pilots.
It's probably quite feasible to give the L1 station a radio link to an orbital mechanics cluster on the ground, which can be as big as is needed, and could run equations of motion for a couple dozen nearby orbits in faster-than-real-time.
Re:Bottom line: stupid idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Regarding SOHO, it was not teh first, and is not the only spacecraft at a libration point (I believe that the first was ISEE-3 - the most recent I know of is Genesis). But it is a far different proposition to place a spacecraft in a single, carefully pre-planned orbit and keep it there than it is to jump between halos, and perform proximity operations or rendezvous and docking (which would be needed for a manned platform, or even an autonomously assembling spacecraft). I'll say it again: the dynamics in the vicinity of a libration point are very complex, and presently our understanding of them is limited.
Re:Bottom line: stupid idea (Score:2, Interesting)