A Brief History of the Space Station 380
HyperbolicParabaloid writes "A story about the history of the International Space Station, and its utility or non-utility for space exploration. One interesting insight: after the Challenger explosion it became obvious that we would never refuel a rocket with volatile fuel at a space station because the threat to the station would be so great. And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
Added insight (Score:3, Interesting)
What I post will be my opinion only, and not that of Nasa or my employer. Look this evening, around 8 pm central time.
I had an erector set once. (Score:2, Interesting)
The space station can run longterm experiments in microgravity while we teach ourselves about working *really* high iron.
In my own life I too look at how things might be perfect all the time. But I don't expect them to be so. And so it is with all endevours. But somehow this one alone should stand out in singular fortuitious perfection?
Less crack more science.
Bah, Russians (Score:2, Interesting)
WARNING - PARENT FORGOT TO MAKE LNIK (Score:0, Interesting)
Whores.
nytimes.com/2004/...partner=GOOGLE [nytimes.com]
GO NOW!
Slashdhwores.
Re:"Insight" my foot (Score:5, Interesting)
Ummm... rubbish. Volatile fuel is its own atmosphere.
What you mean is, if we keep the two reactive agents which constitute most modern fuel system designs -away- from each other, then we should be able to safely store this material in space.
Still, I don't see why, with all that wiiiiiide empty space out there, we have to bunch it all together in the same x/y/z
Re:Terminal velocity (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting question though
Roger
Escape Velocities=Moon is Best (Score:5, Interesting)
A space station still works great as a waypoint. It just wouldn't be practical to start your adventure to anywhere except the Moon from there. So, create a new shuttle that can better move men and supplies with much greater abort options (hint: Fly the shuttle by a new next-gen plane to near-space [62 mi) then pop the bastard from there with far less needed fuel and still keep an abort option as both orbiter and booster plane are glideable or have powered-flight capacity).
Such a station would indeed have at least two (backups, remember?) moon shuttles, flyable only in space. What? Fuel? Who says you need to use liquid fuels? Try solids that can be lit and relit in space. The fuel cores could be sent on shuttles without as much worry about volatility than liquids. There is one way to stop a burn in space--stop the oxidizer (you're in vacuum, figure it out). Hypogolic fuels (ones that dont need an igniter--they burn when two substances touch) are still a nice bet as well, and may be safer to upload in separate trips.
Let the moon itself be the fuel depot, optionally--there is probably a way to produce what is needed there.
From the moon, with its puny 1.47 mi/sec escape velocity, trips to anywhere work great and require less energy to achieve. Most importantly, astronauts would have TWO in-space safe-haven return locales in case things get ratty somewhere along the Earth-Moon transits.
Once you're in route to Mars, however, you better be able to make oxygen from a can of Spam, because rescue options would be pretty sparse.
Mir (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, Mir was, towards the end, practically falling apart. But... it worked. It had guidance systems, attitude control, life support, power systems, everything you need for a long-term space vehicle. It also had mould, dents, leaks and a shredded solar panel, but we're not that bothered about that.
Start building the ISS as a set of add-on modules to Mir. Take advantage of Mir's facilities until you get the chance to replace them: run off the existing power bus until you get the replacement solar panels sent up (or, preferably, some RTGs). Use Mir's life support until the air recycler is installed. etc.
Eventually the new modules will be supplying all the functionality and the old parts of Mir will be unused. At which stage, you can either use them as living space, or depressurise them and mothball them. Maybe one day you can recycle the raw materials; even as scrap, Mir was ludicrously valuable.
But no, Mir went down in flames and the ISS went down in budget. All for annoying political reasons. IMO it's highly unlikely that the ISS will ever do anything useful. By the time it gets large enough, the commercial stations will be eclipsing it.
Re:Uh, no (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:High inclination (Score:1, Interesting)
Like in: low 30 deg orbit, payload 30 tonnes; low 50 deg (or was that polar?) orbit, 15 tonnes.
A two stage launcher would take this in its stride. Originally the idea was a two-stage double-decker aeroplane space shuttle, but when the costs started to get out of hand, the first stage was cut, the fuel storage externalized and solid boosters added. And that's where we are now.
I sometimes feel that it would have been smarter to just add recovery to two-stage boosters of existing, cylindrical design... didn't they once find a Gemini/Titan booster floating off Florida?
It is also not quite true that the 50 deg orbit somehow limits the lauch window much for going to the Moon or planets. The orbital plane precesses 6 deg per day relative to the Sun, making it do half a turn in 180/6 = 30 days. Yes, that gives a 10 day interval for the moon as mentioned in the article. But don't forget that the window is 'sharp' only for the arrival time... the travel time can be tuned in the range of 2-5 days at the cost of only a few 100 m/s in delta-v. For planetary missions you'll have windows opening at 30 day intervals, lasting at least several revolutions. If you cannot reliably use those, perhaps you have no business being in the interplanetary travel business :-)
Getting out from a high-inclination orbit also offers one small perk: you'll go around most of the powerful, outer radiation belt.
The major benefit of the ISS for interplanetary travel is as a concept study for interplanetary habitats, which will be needed when going to Mars or farther. One of these could be placed in Martian orbit (landed on Phobos?). It would be a major advantage to operate Martian rovers and the like from less than a light-second distance, even before landing any humans onto the surface. Another habitat could be placed in a transfer orbit, periodically visiting the Earth-Moon and Martian environments. These habitats would be pre-assembled in orbit with lots of expendibles, ionic engines/propellant and thick radiation shielding against the inevitable heavy primaries from the Sun. Getting on and off them and from the transfer habitat to the Mars orbiting one would be done with smaller, traditional rocket propelled craft, as would landing on the surface.
It is also not quite true that the Moon would be useless as a base for further expeditions; but the term 'base' should not be taken too literally. It would be a source of propellants, e.g., oxygen to be combined with hydrogen lifted from Earth (i.e. only 11% of the total propellant mass). The stuff could be catapulted off the Moon electromagnetically as O'Neill proposed in the 1970's -- no need to use rockets for that. And actually building, for any purpose other than studying the planet in question, a non-minimalistic 'base' on any planetary surface, as opposed to free space, is a thoroughly Bad Idea. Once you're out of the pit, stay out of the pit!
Sort of (Score:5, Interesting)
ISS was never intended to be a "jumping off point" to anywhere. The move to 51.6 to accomodate the russians was a political move. Thank Clinton, it was his bright idea to bring in the russians as full partners in the hope their missle techs wouldn't go somewhere else...like say Iran. Given ISS' mission (microgravity research, NOT a spacedock quit watching star trek) any orbit will do, but KSC's due east 28 degrees would be best case in terms of payload.
I actually turned down a chance to tour ISS elements in the processing facility.
Amusing ISS historical anecdote: While preparing to close the payload bay doors for the launch of Destiny (the US lab), it was discovered the camera on the elbow of the shuttle's robot arm came within an *inch* of the labs hull. Much hemming and hawwing, and I forget what the final solution was, but I think it's a little amusing that after all the billions had been spent, all the test had been done, they got an "awwwwwwcrap" at literally the 11th hour.
Re:Jumping off points (Score:5, Interesting)
No if you can setup an industrial base on the moon which can use the raw materials available to generate fuel and other supplies then a moon launch would be better, but getting a fully functioning fairly substantial base setup is a major proposition when we can't even do an orbiting station properly.
True, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Space Station (Score:4, Interesting)
And the US paid them to do all of that. One of the reasons for Russian participation in ISS was to give their rocket scientists something to do besides sell themselves to nations that might be trying to build ICBMs (such as N Korea). It would have been cheaper and faster to build the Russian contributions ourselves.
The trouble with ISS is that it has no real mission. If we really needed an experimental platform in LEO, why did we let Skylab fall? Turns out using unmanned vehicles lets you do safer and cheaper research on anything except the effect of space flight on humans. But NASA keeps marketing manned flight because they know that it sells well enough to keep their budget flowing. They push manned flight even when it kills real science.
I was working on the Earth Observing System (EOS) (also known as Mission to Planet Earth) when the ISS was given the go-ahead. ISS ate the EOS budget. It went from $15 billion, to 11, to 7, to (ISTR) 4 before I left. So we don't have the really good data that EOS would have given us on issues like global warming. Instead we have a missionless kludge that resulted from 4 (I think) down-designs.
NASA used to have visionaries and great engineers. Most of them left (or lost heart) after the end of Apollo and the end of Skylab. Now they are salesmen and bureaucrats
Re:Built by a committee (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Space Station (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite - we paid for one of their modules, the other they paid for. Of course, with their economy being a shambles they had trouble getting the money on time, so there were delays. But remember, we had delays too, and money was no excuse. Boeing did some pretty wacky shit, including inadvertently throwing away a $50 million O2 tank that they had to go rooting through a garbage dump for...
It would have been cheaper and faster to build the Russian contributions ourselves.
That is simply not true. 1) we had no design heritage or operational experience with station hardware that had actually flown (Skylab was a one-shot deal so there was no regenerative life support, for instance). They had 30 years of it. 2) Experience with the hardware we actually did build shows that it would have been ridiculously expensive, and likely late. The U.S. Node 1 cost $700 million and was late; and it doesn't actually contain anything. The Russian service module is a self-contained space station, and it cost $200 million.
The trouble with ISS is that it has no real mission. If we really needed an experimental platform in LEO, why did we let Skylab fall?
Its mission is that it's necessary for a sustained human presence in space - both for research and as an assembly point/stepping stone for further missions. If you reject the idea of human space flight, then yes, it doesn't have a mission. Skylab fell for the reason I've been lamenting: Congress and the people just never really cared enough to actually fund space at the required level.
They push manned flight even when it kills real science.
What do you mean by "real" science? The kind of science you happen to do, right? Look, ISS shouldn't take all the blame for the death of MTPE. Congress could and should have funded both at a reasonable level... Besides, in case you havene't noticed, the current Prez has gutted MTPE /EOS/SEC as well as the Station. I doubt he likes research into global warming...
Re:Escape Velocities=Moon is Best (Score:3, Interesting)
It works & NASA is seriously interested. The Scaled Composites is using a rubber + NOx engine in it's X-prize entry, SpaceShipOne.
Ion engines? (Score:1, Interesting)
Industrial Space Facility (Score:2, Interesting)
Several studies supported the ISF, and some even pointed out that a manned presence (even a heart beating) in a microgravity environment would contaminate the microgravity environment.
It turned out that the desigh was so sensible, that many of the big aerospace contractors percieved it as a threat. An ISF could be placed into orbit for a cost of about $700 million (vs the billions for the station) and would be an inexpensive (compared to the ISS) paltform to screen processes for space manufacturing. If and when an application was found, the operation would become self financing.
To make a long story short, there are dangers when trying to find a place among the hogs feeding at the federal money trough. The new company was stomped to the ground and eventually went away.
There is now talk about abandoning the ISS to redirect big $$$ for the mood and Mars exploration. A permanent manned predence in space is too dangerous and expensive to maintain.
Re:Space Station (Score:2, Interesting)
This is only valid if there are going to be further missions. NASA has not sold that idea to the taxpayers; they haven't even made an attempt. And before anyone brings up the current Prez's "lets go to Mars," consider that the real effect of this initiative will be to kill manned flight:
1)kill shuttle by 2010
2)abandon ISS, Hubble, etc. by 2010
3)go to Mars in 2014, but only if you get the funding. I must be cynical, but I don't think 3 will happen.
What do you mean by "real" science? The kind of science you happen to do, right?,
I do software, not science. But we have had humans in LEO for 40 years. We have even done some long-duration stays on orbit. There shouldn't be a whole lot left to learn. Staying in LEO for the sake of staying in LEO isn't science, but it is expensive and dangerous (we've lost 40% of the operational shuttles).
I'd sign up for an effort to terraform Mars, but not to go to Mars just to say we've been there. I'd sign up for putting massive observatories on the far side of the moon, but not for a moon base for the sake of a moon base.
Congress could and should have funded both at a reasonable level...
Congress answers to many masters. Did you know that because of the way appropriation bills are organized, NASA budgets are grouped with the Veterans Administration and a couple other agencies. Early in every budget cycle, appropriation bills are given a not-to-exceed cost. So adding to NASA means, in effect, taking away from Veterans. The reality is that any increase for manned space flight means a decrease for everything else in NASA.
The bottom line is that if you want to have manned space exploration, you have to sell it to the voters. And they haven't been buying. Not for the last 30 years.
Re:High inclination (Score:3, Interesting)
When you plan something big, you plan a big contigency plan, even if it's expensive. $400M Mars rovers have many contigency plans, most satellites at least have insurance, etc. One of the best contigency plans for a milti-billion $$$ space station would be to make sure that there is more than one nation that can fly to it. Now think of Shuttles... Even when they DID fly, they were worthless for boosting the altitude and doing correction maneuvers; the progress ships were the only ones capable of that...
If you don't like the 50 deg. inclination orbit that is designed to fit the Russians better, fine! You'd be left with a dead station in a better orbit now (as opposed to a live, though not doing anything useful, station in an orbit you don't like as much). Take a pick.
I am still figuring out what that whole 'jumping off' thing is all about. WHere did we want to jump again?
Earth = single point of failure (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Built by a committee (Score:3, Interesting)
For one thing, we need a lot more transport capacity: more tonnage per trip
We already *have* a lot of tonnage in the Shuttle design. It's got a hefty payload. The problem is that the expense of that thing is usually not worth it. The Shuttle is rarely used to it's full cargo capacity, and that means it's always a waste of money to use. What we need is something who's cost to operate scales with the size of the payload - so small things are cheap to launch, and it doesn't get expensive until you launch something big.