European Space Agency Launches New Orbital Supply Ship

erik.martino brings us a story about the European Space Agency's successful launch of a new type of cargo ship to resupply the ISS. The first Automated Transport Vehicle (ATV), named after Jules Verne, is the "very first spacecraft in the world designed to conduct automated docking in full compliance with the very tight safety constraints imposed by human spaceflight operations." Among other things, it carries water, oxygen, and propellant to help boost the ISS to a higher orbit. We recently discussed NASA's need for a new cargo transport system. Quoting: "Beyond Jules Verne, ESA has already contracted industry to produce four more ATVs to be flown through to 2015. With both ESA's ATV and Russia's Progress, the ISS will be able to rely on two independent servicing systems to ensure its operations after the retirement of the US space shuttle in 2010. It incorporates a 45-m3 pressurised module, derived from the Columbus pressure shell, and a Russian-built docking system, similar to those used on Soyuz manned ferries and on the Progress re-supply ship. About three times larger than its Russian counterpart, it can also deliver about three times more cargo."

Automated?

[Jerry Smith]

Fully automated docking... hmm.. somehow I think the results of the autonomous docking will be significant for other fields. Imagine fully automated units on Mars, to be sent in advance? Fully automated mining on the moon?
I think this is a pretty big step forward.

See?

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

See what you can achieve if you don't go around wasting your budget on invasions to satisfy someones cracked idea of a new American century?

Re:See?

[kitsunewarlock]

Honestly? Every post, slashdot?

I don't like the war either. I think its a huge waste of money and an important issue. But this post is about the new orbital supply ship from Europe. The only thing this post has to do with the war is, and even the user agrees, the fact it says "European" and not "American". If that. I too wish we could divert all funds from our bloated and un-needed war machine and redirect it to space exploration so we can get off this rock and try out again somewhere else...especially given the fact one day this rock won't support us. But I don't think that day is soon and I don't think this news post is about redirecting funds from the space program (or anywhere else) into the war. In fact, I know its not. Its about the space shuttle program in Europe!

Either way, the above post is just a troll (albeit one I personally agree with)...and here I am feeding him. But I can't help it this time.

"Japan IDs its citizens"
If Japan didn't sent troops to Iraq the terrorists wouldn't be a threat to them. Lord knows why they went.

"Verizon: Fiber or Die?"
If the US government would put 1 week of the money we spend in Iraq on laying fiber lines across the country this wouldn't be an issue.

"Lessig on Corruption and Reform"
Ok, this one is a given.

"Olympic Website features Pirated Content"
And if we never went to Iraq we could focus on supporting industry in the states and then China's higher economy could allow for a better web-design.

"Wikileaks Calls for Global Boycott..."
See, if we never went to Iraq, domains would be free and this wouldn't be a problem.

The real test

[WindBourne]

is yet to come. This ship has to hook up without causing damage. One of the differences from the progress is that those in space can take control iff they do not like what they see. OTH, the ATV will simply back-off if IT decides that IT is not correct. I would prefer it it left itself available to manually doc with an arm once the auto doc failed.

Non-reusable vehicles

[l2718]

Isn't it sad that 50 years into the space program our resupply plan for the ISS is based on single-use ships?

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[amightywind]

Perhaps is says something about the ultimate utility of single use ships as opposed to reusable.

Re:Not trivial

[backwardMechanic]

Isn't the key word there 'trial'? According to the fine article, it happened back in '97, i.e. a decade ago. The article is interesting. It leaves me really impressed that Mir had all those troubles, but survived in orbit without killing anyone. This is meant to be cutting edge science and engineering. Things will go wrong. Yes, Mir wore out in the end, but after years of fine service.

Containers?

[ghoul]

When will we shift to containerization of space cargo. Containers have already changed the game in air, sea and land cargo transport. Why not Space? If we could develop a standard cargo space container which could be handled by the soyuz rocket , the Ariane rocket, the space shuttle, the Japanese HTV, the Chinese Long March or the Indian GSLV we would have come a long way in moving towards commercialization of space. Yes we need multiple suppliers of cargo vessels to avoid single point failures but why do they all have to be different designs?

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[ghoul]

Sometimes single use just makes sense. The dockyards and land ports of the world are full of containers which were used one wy and abandoned as it does not make sense to ship them back empty and this is on earth, the costs for space travel are an order of magnitude higher. For manned vessels we should be trying for reusable vehicles but for Cargo? I think not.

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[Lumpy]

And the fact that the Russians with their low tech systems can do it far more reliably than the United states and our "superior" technology and space program.

The russian space program has been way ahead of us in orbital operations for decades. That stupid shuttle set up back 20 years.

Re:Automated?

[kamapuaa]

Really there's very little relation between automated docking and automated mining of the moon. My telling machine is also automated, but that's not a step towards mining space rocks.

Re:why refueling

[Woek]

Interesting idea. Your last statement is only valid if there is no drag resulting from molecules not entering the intake, though. The intake needs to be large, which would be cumbersome... but still.

Re:Can also carry people

[KDR_11k]

Move where? There's not exactly many interesting places up there. These things would most likely just get in the way, especially since they won't remain up at the altitude the ISS is at (the ISS needs fuel to prevent deorbiting after all).

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[demachina]

You can't just "park" a ship a few miles from the ISS. The ISS orbit is constantly decaying and being boosted. You would have to exactly match its orbit to the ISS to keep anything "parked" anywhere near it. If its not doing anything useful there is no point burning the propellant.

You could maybe make a case for attaching all these ships to the ISS and growing its storage, lab or habitation space, but there are no docking ports designed for this, they would grow the mass of the ISS requiring more propellant to maintain orbit. They would also just complicate power, pressurization, etc so if they aren't doing anything useful they probably aren't really worth it. To make them useful on orbit would substantially increase the expense to build them and reduce their cargo capacity.

Otherwise this is awesome news and cheers for ESA. It is about time the NASA/Russia stanglehold on the ISS was broken. NASA and the U.S. in particular just haven't been sane managers of the ISS or just about anything else about the manned space program since Apollo ended. Its especially sad all the money that is being poured in to the cosmic ray detector that would actually do valuable research on ISS for a change, but NASA probably wont launch it.

It remains to be seen if ESA and Japan can make the ISS useful and worth the expense but they sure can't do any worse than NASA in this regard.

Re:Not trivial

[Dun Malg]

actually Mir never wore out, it had a few broken bits, but it could have kept on going just fine. The only reason it was destroyed was because it was replaced by the ISS, Russia agreed to ditch Mir to focus on the ISS.

The trouble with Mir was that it was a serious accident waiting to happen. Mir was built on the classic Soviet engineering model of "expediency rather than telling your boss it can't be done without (X) and getting sent to the gulag*".

* OK, engineers weren't sent to the gulag for that, but it was not unheard of to suddenly be reassigned as Third Assistant Headlight Bezel Engineer at the GAZ Truck Factory for "not being a team player".

Re:Containers?

[DerekLyons]

You want to know what happens when you standardize too soon? You end up with lock in, which leads to problems down the road when you learn what you really need. (See "IBM PC, History Of" and "HTML Standards, history of".)
 
The other problem is that vehicles you list have a wide variety of performance characteristics. A single standard 'container' (vehicle) that fit them all would end up being limited to the least common denominator.
 
And lastly - competition is good. Competition breeds innovation.

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[Dun Malg]

Yes, it's tragicomically wasteful. I don't understand why they can't design a cargo/supply ship that STAYS IN ORBIT. I mean, sure, let's go ahead and de-orbit the ISS trash in some kind of disposable carrying module

They could, but in doing so they'd have to redesign it from its current philosophy of disposable carrying module to that of reusable spacecraft. Then they'd have to design a new disposable carrying module to hold all the garbage, which people like you would again decry as "wasteful" and demand it be refueled and parked up on blocks in the ISS front yard "jest in case we needs a 'nuther pickup truck someday".

The whole concept of multi-million-dollar disposable rockets is just ludicrous!

The rockets are all disposable. The spacecraft you want to "save for later" is just the small bit at the end of the rocket.

Look, this is stupid. Space travel is inherently costly in terms of resources. You just can't look at it the same as (say) driving a semi from Los Angeles to Phoenix. So much has been expended in getting that tiny cargo there that arguing over throwing out the box it came in is just ridiculous.

Re:Can also carry people

[TheGavster]

I wonder this about all of our "used up" space modules. It's a fairly common near-future sci-fi theme to have fuel tanks and payload vehicles strapped together up in space as the nucleus of space stations; I wonder what the real-world problems are that keeps us from actually doing it.

Re:Automated?

[CaptnMArk]

I prefer the Lave to Zaonce run.

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[quanticle]

Right, but the Russians are paying significantly less, both in upfront and per-mission costs for their Soyuz and Progress launches than we are for our shuttle launches. Essentially we're getting the same reliability as the Russians, but paying a lot more for it.

Re:Not trivial

[emilper]

If my (slightly unhappy) experience with former SU consumer goods is any help, the SU products were overengineered for robustness while consuming a lot of electricity and looking kind of ugly. Could you give me some reference to stories of SU engineers sent to unpleasant jobs because they said "it can't be done on these therms" ?

Re:Not trivial

[Anspen]

Strangly this didn't stop the Mir from beging the record holder for space station duration.

Re:Robots will take the sky away from you mere hum

[sapphire wyvern]

Then there is the issue of working speed - what it has taken three years for Spirit to accomplish would have taken a human geologist a mere three days.

Let's assume that sending humans to Mars, and sustaining them on the surface, would require a certain "budget" in terms of energy availability and potential payload lift from Earth to Mars.

The current Mars rovers are indeed slow. One reason why they're slow is that their energy budgets are tiny. Speed machines they are not! And their comms links back to Earth aren't exactly high bandwidth either. (It's not the only reason of course. Latency in command & control is another factor which means that it's not safe to drive 'em fast.)

However, if you already have the capability to send the mass & energy required for humans to Mars... why not use that *immense* mass and energy budget for hugely superior robot explorers? They wouldn't be so limited as the current generation then. And I think they'd be much more competitive with a human geologist. And you wouldn't need to waste payload on low energy density consumables like food, water & O2. Nor would you need to worry about hauling back a few hundred kilos of meatbag scientists; the return trip payload can be 100% valuable samples.

Anyway, it's a bit unfair to compare Spirit & Opportunity's efficiency to that of a human geologist (aresologist?) when the investment in sending them is such a trivial fraction of that required for a human.

It's a shame about the comms lag interfering with telepresence, though. I think improved autonomy is going to be a requirement for more efficient robotic exploration, but that will never be a substitute for Being There.

That said, I think that we have not yet scratched the surface of what can be done with hardware & software. Deploying wetware to Mars should probably wait till we've gathered up more of that tasty, tasty low-hanging fruit.

Re:Not trivial

[Dun Malg]

If my (slightly unhappy) experience with former SU consumer goods is any help, the SU products were overengineered for robustness while consuming a lot of electricity and looking kind of ugly. Could you give me some reference to stories of SU engineers sent to unpleasant jobs because they said "it can't be done on these therms" ?

No, because as you can imagine, this was something simply not talked about. Generally, the unspoken threat of reassignment to an unpleasant job from a very prestigious one would be enough. The number of close calls and near disasters aboard Mir illustrate quite well that the Soviet design philosophy tends to put functionality over safety. Perhaps the most concrete example of the "do it or else" Soviet management system is, well, concrete. All over the former USSR you can see hundreds of concrete buildings that are crumbling. Corners are craking, flaking off, and/or held in place with chain link fence material. The problem comes from lack of cement due to over-optimistic production forecasts. A Soviet construction manager would say "we need 15 more cubic meters of concrete to finish this project", and his boss, usually a party idiot, would say "there is not enough cement--- you can have 11 meters, now get it done". So what does the manager do? He gets it done the only way he can. He orders the crew to add sand and aggregate to the concrete they do get to "stretch" it to 15 meters. It will eventually crumble, but it will last long enough for the manager to be dissociated with the project enough to not have to worry about being reassigned for "failure to perform". The post-Stalin Soviet Union had a serious problem in that regard. Granted, those working in the Soviet space program had more room to demand better resources, but the mindset was still there.