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Mickey Mouse Propels ISS To New Heights

Posted by Hemos on 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?"

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Progress & ATV by Chairboy · · Score: 5

    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...

    1. Re:Progress & ATV by Greyfox · · Score: 5
      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.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  2. External Tanks as stations by Chairboy · · Score: 5

    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.