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Space Science

Mickey Mouse Propels ISS To New Heights 42

Posted by Hemos from the planning-ahead dept.
TOTKChief writes "Aviation Now is reporting that NASA will use the Structural Test Article for the new Propulsion Module design for the International Space Station. NASA Watch is carrying a good rendering of the concept as well as a rendering of what the Prop Module would look like attached to ISS. FWIW, this is called the "Mickey Option" because of the resemblance to Mickey Mouse. Only the Feds would choose the Mickey Mouse route, right?"
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Mickey Mouse Propels ISS to New Heights More

Mickey Mouse Propels ISS to New Heights

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  • Ok this is interesting, disguising a different url as a goatse.cx link, what is the point in that?
  • That's exactly right. The Russians have come closer to loosing people in space than the Americans have: two cosmonauts died on rentry when an external valve failed to close, thus sucking the air out of the capsule. I'm not sure that counts as "in space".

  • Don't get me wrong, I believe that the US press has absolutely no idea what they're talking about WRT Russian space technology. They've got more experience, more reliable equipment, and are basically ahead of us in every way other than reusable spacecraft. However...

    Just to straighten things out a little... the Zvezda module on the ISS has already had its fuel tanks automatically refilled by the Progress supply craft currently docked on the station, a week before Atlantis made it into orbit.

    Also, I'm sure that you don't have your facts straight about the CO2 scrubbing capability of the ISS; the Expedition 1 crew is scheduled to launch October 30 on a Soyuz rocket, so there won't be any Space Shuttle available to provide extra C02 scrubbing ability when they get there.

    And, just as a final quip, if "the state of the US space station art hasn't changed since Skylab" then what the hell do you call the multiple tons of ISS equipment in Boeing warehouses ready to be launched?


  • the article says (emphasis mine):

    "...the Propulsion Module is now intended as one among many sources of propulsion that will be available to Station operators. In addition to propulsion supplied by Zvezda and Russia's Progress resupply capsules, Hawes said,Station reboost also will be provided by visiting Space Shuttles and the planned European and Japanese orbital transfer vehicles."

    The additional PM will relax the schedule for the visiting spacecraft and add a fallback option, should planned visits get delayed.

  • You've got far far to much to worry about in those 4 minutes of liftoff to add a large container of combustables to that cargo bay. Better to design a resupply ship and send up all the feul without people being anywhere close to it.

    Do you really think that the amount of fuel on board a space tug that can fit into the Shuttle cargo bay is at all consequential compared to the 102,619 pounds of liquid H2 and 1,359,142 pounds of liquid O2 onboard the external tank at liftoff?

    However, an unmanned shuttle equivalent is always something that I've thought would be a good idea. One concept that was floated around in the early 80s was the Shuttle-C [friends-partners.org] ("C" for cargo). Also, what about Robert Zubrin's Ares booster [gatech.edu] idea? The Ares would simply be a cargo section attached to an STS external tank and SRB package with Shuttle main engines strapped to the bottom of the ET.



  • spiralx? - no, not articulate enough...

    vlad?

    Emerson Willowick: Troll, Troll, Troll.
  • You're right about that. My friends and I were talking about the MIR television program/contest coming up. I told them that I would only want to be launched in a Soyuz. They thought I was nuts! I would be nervous as hell in the shuttle. In a Soyuz, I would relax and really enjoy the trip.

  • Successful Mickey Mouse operations (Score:3)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:06PM (#754862)
    What I find funny is that everything titled "Mickey Mouse" becomes enormously successful. There's the original mouse of course (and the media titan attached to it).

    But there's also the New Jersey Devils who were initially titled a "Mickey Mouse team" by Wayne Gretsky, then proceeded to win 2 cups in a little over a decade.

    Apple was called a "Mickey Mouse computer company" before they inflitrated schools everywhere and made millions.

    If you believe in luck, calling something "Mickey Mouse" is probably the best suggestion of all.

  • I think one of the factors was safety. Almost any type of refueling accident, even a "minor" leak could damage both the shuttle, the ISS, and of course endanger the lives of anyone in orbit. NASA has never lost an astronaut in space, and I'm sure they want to keep it that way. The cost of hauling the modules back and forth is probably a lot cheaper than an accident that takes someone's life will cost them.

  • SOMEbody here gets alot more out of the words "mickey mouse" than i ever did...

  • I seem to recall having seen some documentation for a mouse driver that said movements from the mouse are converted to "pixels" from "mickeys".

    Of course this is a unit of measure, not a physical object, but I think the idea is the same--mickey has become almost as generic as klenex, xerox, and fedex. Fedex was smart--they took the generic term that everybody was using and painted it on the side of their trucks. Before that happened, people were actually saying things like "Do you want me to fedex that with Purolator or UPS?".

  • Progress & ATV (Score:5)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:13PM (#754867) Homepage
    Currently, the Russians have the only spacecraft capable of refuelling fuel tanks in orbit, and that's the Progress freighter. The Russians also have the only automated docking technology (KURS, used on Mir and the ISS), the cheapest and most reliable person transport (Soyuz, in service for over 30 years), and so on.

    Despite this, the western press still paints this image of Russian space hardware as being obsolete and unsafe! It's amazing, fewer Russians have died in space than US astronauts, and the Russians/Soviets have spent YEARS more in space then we have. Mir is a functional spacestation now with a proven reliabillity and track record while the ISS can't even properly scrub CO2 when there's more then 3 people onboard, they have to run vents from the shuttle!

    Now, we're paying Boeing millions additional to build these fuel tanks that can only be refuelling through a $500 million space shuttle launch? Look, if you ask nice, you can probably get a Progress-type fueller system installed! It'll cost 10% of what we're spending to make this half-ass system work, and it'll use existing technologies that have been proven since the Salyut stations in the 70s.

    Before anyone starts making cracks about dangerous Russian space and obsolete hardware, remember that the US doesn't have ANYTHING for space station ops other then the Shuttle, and the state of the US space station art hasn't changed since Skylab.

    If we're serious about building our own technologies so that we don't rely on Russian economics, we need to get federal startup money for companies like Roton (www.rotaryrocket.com), Kistler (www.kistleraerospace.com) and most importantly, get 100% behind the European ATV, a cargo freighter that performs what Progress does but carries something like 5 times the cargo and fuel to the ISS. Think of it like the old Soviet Star modules for Salyut, except launched on the Ariane 5.

    Of course, the best space freighter would be a cleverly tricked out Corellian freighter, but that'll just have to wait a bit...

  • The ISS is a turkey (Score:3)

    by flatpack ( 212454 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:16PM (#754868)

    And it's cost us a hell of a lot of money. The trouble is that for all of the advances in computing technology, which is governed by Moore's Law, the tecnology involved in keeping people alive and healthy in space has hardly advanced at all in the last 30 years. The always round the corner drop in costs for getting stuff into orbit have yet to materialise, and the ISS is just not practical.

    The whole point of the ISS was never anything more than a showpiece to get people interested in space again. There's no serious research going on up there, all of the money is going into providing living quarters and equipment for a small crew of people. It would be far more practical to have a set of automated laboratories up there engaged in experiments which could be controlled from the ground, but people have this rediculously quaint idea that people have to be there!

    This level of pandering to the sentimentality of the masses is both impractical and foolish. The ISS will never be more than a blip on the attention of a public too jaded from MTV to care, and all of the valuable research that could have been funded with the absurd sums of money they spent on it will never happen.

    Maybe NASA needs to start thinking of science rather than ratings.

  • It's amazing, fewer Russians have died in space than US astronauts

    I was under the impression that no-one's ever actually died in space - the US has had Apollo 1(launchpad) and Challenger (midair), and the Russians have had a few, er, issues with parachutes on re-entry...ICBW, have I missed anything?

  • >two cosmonauts died on rentry when an external
    >valve failed to close, thus sucking the air out
    >of the capsule.

    I thought it was three.

    My "history of spaceflight" memory is a bit hazy, but IIRC, the Russians wanted to be the first to get three men in space before the Apollo capsules were online. So they modifyed theit two-man capsule to carry three.

    The problem being, that in putting three men in a two-man capsule, they didn't have room to take their space suits along... whoopsie.

    I may be off base here, but I'm pretty sure thats what happened.

    No matter which side fate has favoured, the Russians HAVE always pushed their margins of safety a fair bit more than NASA has been willing to do so.

    And I think the previous poster was right anbout a parachute problem. One of their early one-man capsules IIRC re-entered just fine. But it's parachutes jammed when they tried to open, and the cosmonaut died on impact with the ground.

    john

    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • And I'm afraid they stole that line from Alan Shepard who is reputed to have made the comment " This whole thing was made by the lowest bidder" after being asked what he was thinking during the Mercury countdown.

    That and, of course, " I have to pee really bad."
  • Isn't IMDB great (even if the movie stank :)

    Rockhound: Hey Harry, you know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has two hundred thousand moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good doesn't it?
  • I worked on one of the concepts that lead up to this design when I was working at TRW. There were a number of different issues which made this propulsion system pretty unique and challenging.

    First, the sheer size of the thing... There have been few (if any) spacecraft propulsion systems this big and this powerful put up into space.

    Second is human safety. Take a look at the rendering and you'll see an access port running down between the two "ears". The shuttle docks there and the astronauts traverse it. Obviously, there are concerns about contaminates getting in there... There were questions about whether to pressurize this corridor or not - if it has to hold a pressurized environment, then it would end up being MUCH more expensive than if it wasn't. On the other hand, having to suit up to go from the station to the shuttle is a hassle and introduces other kinds of risk.

    Third was refuelability. We considered whether to have a system that could be refilled on orbit, versus one where one entire 'ear' is pulled off and brought back to earth for refurbishment. Obviously, there are pros and cons each way. One interesting issue is fluid depletion: If there was a problem with the system, you may need to vent out the tank contents before being able to refill it or take it home - so we have to be careful that whatever chemicals are ejected won't corrode or contaminate anything. It looks like they decided to go with a hydrazine monoprop system, which is very safe, but has less performance than other options, and thus will require more trips by the shuttle.

    It's interesting and a bit disappointing that NASA has chosen to stick with Boeing even after they failed so badly with the first design. Could have been a great opportunity for some other companies to get into the human rated spacecraft market. Ah well...

  • Yeah, I love the IMDB! It stank compared to Deep Impact, but not as much as John Carpenter's Vampires stank...

    Thanks for finding the exact quote. :)

  • Re:Progress & ATV (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2000 @01:16AM (#754875) Homepage Journal
    We may have "beat" them in the space race by getting to the moon first, but once we showed our dick and saw that it was bigger, we never really went back. What was the point? We'd WON after all!

    Except they were there to stay. They've been building their experience for years while we sat on earth playing with our big dick. Despite their rickedy hardware, they went up. They had men in orbit in Zero G for months at a time. Mir was a bucket of bolts but by God they lived on it! That's not the spirit of a loser, and in the end it turns out that the Russian dick was bigger than ours after all. Not because of one silly race, but because of their commitment to continue when we effectively gave up. Not that any of our politicians would ever admit that the red menace they used to frighten us for four decades ever beat us at anything.

    Bravo, guys.

  • My fault. Just looked at RussianSpace [russianspace.com] and confirmed that Vladimir Komarov died in 1967 when the first Soyuz spacecraft he was flying hit the ground much too hard. This NASA page [nasa.gov] confirms that Georgi Timofeyevich Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Nikolayevich Volkov, and Viktor Ivanovich Patsayev (the crew of Soyuz 11) died of suffocation on rentry after undocking from Salyut 1. However, Apollo 11 (with 3 astronauts) had already landed on the the moon when Soyuz 11 launched in 1971, so it wasn't an attempt to beat the Americans to putting 3 men in space simultaneously.

    Even more interesting, however, is a page I just found describing the fates of a number of "unnamed cosmonauts" early in the Soviet Space program. According to the author, James Oberg, the Soviets "lost" cosmonauts routinely, and many rumors circulated in Western circles about these mens' fate. It's a fascinating article, detailing Stalinistic photographic doctoring, and most interestingly a fatality in a Soviet high altitude simulation chamber which bears a grisly resemblance to the 1967 Apollo 1 fire, but which occured in 1961!


  • You will see it all when they will design solar panels after Pikachu's tail.
  • Do you really think that the amount of fuel on board a space tug that can fit into the Shuttle cargo bay is at all consequential compared to the 102,619 pounds of liquid H2 and 1,359,142 pounds of liquid O2 onboard the external tank at liftoff?

    At least (in theory) you can detach from it during liftoff. Sort of the option between pushing a button and opening the cargo doors. Yes, sometimes it takes too long to push the button.

    A US unmanned heavy launch option would be good. Unfortuantely it probably won't happen for 5 years.

  • ISS is a purely political project. Most space experts concede that the initial scientific motivations for building ISS have largely vanished - it really isn't going to serve much of a useful purpose at all in a scientific sense.

    The purpose it is serving is to prop up the military-industrial complexes in the US and Russia.

  • NASA needs to think of ratings because that's how the politicians gauge the popularity of spending billions of tax dollars for space.


    --
  • There have been many proposals to use the external tanks in orbital structures, including a space hotel.

    Of course using the external tank would be a cost-effective way to reuse something you have already built - hence it would never fly with NASA and America's trough-feeding aerospace industry.

  • Err, exactly how many US astronauts have died in space? None.

    How many Russians? Dunno, but as I recall, the Soviets literally had a crash course space program. They had something like 150 total deaths, whereas we had 10.

    Insanely enough, this might actually be better for the space program. We Americans get the idea that space is a nice, happy, easy going place and if anything happens to shake that notion, lots of people try to shut it down (how long after Challenger for shuttle flights to resume?). Having high casualties throughout the program kind of hardens you so that one accident doesn't shut down the whole operation.

    --

  • NASA decided last summer not to make the modifications necessary for the Shuttle fleet to be able to refuel the Propulsion Module in orbit, opting instead for a concept that would have the module brought back to Earth for refueling.

    I was under the mistaken impression that, except for supplies, this was supposed to be a permanent outpost in space. It hardly makes sense to sell it to the public as such if a large chunk has to be brought down and replaced every few years. I don't have an idea on the cost savings involved, but I would imagine the Right Thing to do would be to modify the Space Shuttle so that it could function as a shuttle for fuel between the ISS and planetside.

  • Still, the site says that the modifications and such are still under consideration, IE, they're not final. :)

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Micky Forever! (Score:3)

    by Tommi Morre ( 235789 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @09:24PM (#754885)

    "FWIW, this is called the "Mickey Option" because of the resemblance to Mickey Mouse. Only the Feds would choose the Mickey Mouse route, right?"

    Micky Mouse operations have been the USGov's Standard Operating Procedure for the last several decades (minimum) -- at least now they're admiting it!

  • Won't work (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And here's a rendering [freeyellow.com] of the forthcoming hull breach.
  • I think it looks more like Minnie, especially around the eyes. ;-)

    While we're off the topic, I read the other day that NASA has decided to not send a probe out to Pluto which seems a shame since all the other planets have had some kind of visitor now, even if some of them only had long-distance flybys.

  • External Tanks as stations (Score:5)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:29PM (#754888) Homepage
    If the US is serious about living in space, we need to build larger structures. The easiest way to do that economically is to use the external fuel tanks from the space shuttle.

    Each launch takes an external tank 95% of the way into orbit then throws it away. The shuttle would not need to store extra fuel to hold onto it through the OMS-2 burn (orbit circularization), it would be able to do it with the onboard supplies.

    Once in orbit, a tank could be converted (in 1 launch) to a living space 4 times that of the completed International Space Station (39 launches). On the second launch, attach the next tank by a cable to the first one. Spin them and you have a space station with artificial gravity.

    The best part of artificial gravity is that you get to stop re-inventing the wheel. No $5,000,000 toilets to work in zero g, no $300,000 anti-torque wrenches, nothing. You just use normal stuff from earth at a significant savings, plus you don't have to worry about muscle degradation.

    Need microgravity? Set up a farm of External Tanks to fly free next to the manned station. This is better anyhow because you don't distrurb experiments when using the treadmill or running into walls.

    Serious effort has been put into determining the feasibility of using ETs in orbit, and all the numbers point to it being the cheapest way to set up a serious presence in space. Slashdot your senator and demand that NASA implement one of the hundreds of viable low cost concepts and start storing ETs in orbit!

    Oh, and for the propellent freaks that complain the ET has such a high cross section that it would de-orbit quickly because of atmospheric friction, that's what space tethers (METS) are for, and if NASA would get off its collective ass and build a tether system for the ISS, those could be adapted for use on the ET farm as well.

    For more info, check out www.orbit6.com. Chris Fitch has a great website about using ETs in space.

  • Hmm... (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    The *only* good line from an unspeakable space movie had something to do with trusting your lives to billions of parts all made by the lowest bidder...

    ...sounds like the Mickey Mouse route to me, especially with what NASA's budget is these days.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Interesting. NASA chooses Mickey Mouse to describe a project and they have plans to send probes to Pluto. It looks to me as if those evil, heartless Disney execs are planning yet another theme park. I wonder if employees of Neptu Disney World will bathe.

  • Dear sirs... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As you know, thanks to the Sonny Bono Memorial Copyright Extention act, Mickey Mouse(TM)(C)(R) is a registered trademark of Walt Disney Company and is protected by both US and international copyright law.

    We summarily insist that you turn over all materials that bear the resemblence to Mickey Mouse(TM)(C)(R) and provide evidence that any documentation containing the above listed trademark as well as any images that may contain the appears of said registered trademark to Walt Disney no later than 5PM today.

    Should do fail to do that, Walt Disney will have no choice but to pursue legal action against NASA. It may be prudent to set aside whatever measly budget you have be alloted to pay for a long and protracted legal battle.

    Sincerely,

    Noel Scruples, Esq.
    The Legal-teers Lawclub(TM)(C)(R)
  • Well, they could only afford the royalties for one Disney character, so....

  • It's amazing, fewer Russians have died in space than US astronauts, and the Russians/Soviets have spent YEARS more in space then we have.

    Yes, they have spent more time in space than we have. One man was up there for over a year. This is not by choice, but because they couldn't afford to get him down!

  • Re:Interesting... (Score:3)

    by TrevorB ( 57780 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @10:00PM (#754894) Homepage
    I would imagine the Right Thing to do would be to modify the Space Shuttle so that it could function as a shuttle for fuel between the ISS and planetside.

    That modification would require converting the space shuttle into an unmanned spacecraft.

    You've got far far to much to worry about in those 4 minutes of liftoff to add a large container of combustables to that cargo bay. Better to design a resupply ship and send up all the feul without people being anywhere close to it.

    Gee, isn't this what the Russian Progress Module is? :)

    The Americans might do well to emulate the Russians somewhat. This is the American's second space station. It's the russians sixth? Seventh? They know what they're doing, they just have a hideous lack of funding. (OK, you can argue against this, but the division of Soyuz, Progress, and Proton rockets makes more sense than a single semi-reuable shuttle... Again, this may change once a true reusable launcher becomes feasable.

    Seperate out the functions of cargo into space and man into space. More rockets, but it should be more efficient that way. Only thing your missing is a "garage", that open payload bay of the space shuttle. Perhaps there should be some truss structure built onto the space station to haul the hubble space telescope back to the station to be worked on, etc. Also cool would be the pods from the movie "2001" (used in "Project: Space Station, for the C64 and IBM if I recall.. :)

    Oh well... ;)
  • There were seven Salyut stations, one Mir, and now ISS.
  • Not a quote, but an aside: Grumble. I've already moderated, now that point is wasted. Will someone go and mod up the question about whether anyone has actually died in space, as opposed to the lauch pad or mid-air?


    now onto the meat. More meat!

    how pucnture resistant are those tanks (or can they be made to be?). What about structural integrity in general; I presume they're mostly empty when they reach the low-presure part of the atmosphere, thus they don't really need to withstand a 1 atmosphere presure diff.

    Back to the deaths in space. A question for y'all: how much is x% extra saftey worth? Back in the good old days, life was cheap. This is what enabled explorers to risk life and limb to discover new trade routes (and flaunt certain death at the edge of the world). These days, life is much more expensive. Is it too expensive for us to afford exploration? discuss

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