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Perimeter Railway for ISS; HETE-1 Comes Down
Quirk writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is touting the mission to start construction of an orbiting railway. Space Shuttle Atlantis will carry the astronauts who will initiate the planned 107 meter rail line along the outside of the International Space Station. The remote controlled train will move at speeds of 2.5 centimeters a second and be able to carry more than 20 tonnes of cargo. Construction is projected for completion in 2004." And B3avis followed up with news about the HETE re-entry: "The pieces of the HETE-1 spacecraft seem to have crashed somewhere in the Himalayas.
"The final notification from Space Command indicates that the debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East." says NASA. And they should know."
The crushed remains of the legendary beast 'Yeti' were found today, near a recent crater of unspecified origin...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Interesting similarity, IIS and ISS both carry a huge load and move very, very slowly.
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Space STATION" eh? :D
When finished in 2004 the line will stretch about 107 metres along the outside of the International Space Station, 400 kilometres above the planet.
/. comments in an effort to keep up on DMCA and tech issues is really getting frustrating...
It's just a robotic system for manipulating cargo outside the ISS without the need for someone to do a EVA. It's not like it's that hard to figure out from the article, if you'd actually read it.
Does anyone know a better site that has tech news with a higher signal to noise ratio? Because wading through the same tiresome uninformed
Basically this is to allow automated construction of the IIS as it grows in size. That site also mentions they are installing a new expansion hub,to which new modules are attached (maybe by the robotic arm)
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What is the sound of this sentence?
... it's faster than the British rail network, and probably cheaper to build/run as well
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
How long do you suppose it would take to bring 20 *tons* of material up to the ISS that's going to stay there? Not only that, but be in one place at one time, which just happens to be on a 1m by 3m cart.
Also...I see a lot of people complaining about the speed (or lack thereof) of this thing. If you have 20 tons of material moving, and you want it to stop, you have some serious momentum issues. The speed seems appropriate for this application, I would think.
-kwishot
Now, the question on everyone's lips is...
What is that in (gallons)^1/2 / (century * sqrt(lightyears) )?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
"Although the $A357 million train..."
Is that "A" a typo, or are the numbers in hexadecimal to make it look cheaper?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the late departure of the 17:48 'Dark Side of the Station' service. This is due to the wrong kind of sub-atomic particles bombarding the track. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce the cancellation of the 17:53 'Earthside' service. This is due to a shortage of rolling stock. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
"NASA Spacetrains (UK) regret to announce that all anti-clockwise trains are running approximately three hours late. This is due to overrunning engineering works and signalling problems near Mars. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."
etc...
(Probably have to have experienced UK trains to find any of that funny. If you have experienced UK trains though, then you have my deepest sympathies.)
Cheers,
Ian
The reason for the 20 ton mass requirement is due to the fact that the train track will be expected to 'build itself'. As new sections of the truss are brought up in the shuttle payload bay (each massing about 14,000 kg), they need to be attached to the ends of the truss already in place. The shuttle robot arm won't be able to reach that far out, so the station's robot arm (with one end on the 'train') will chug out along the rails on top of the truss, then lock itself down, grab the payload from the shuttle, and swing it accros and attach it onto the end of the truss. Repeat eight times (with eight shuttle flights, and lots of spanner weilding astronouts to bolt it together), and the truss is completed by 2004 or so.
Also, a lot of very heavy equipment is mounted in/on the truss (things like storage batteries for example), and these need to be replaced every so often, so the train will be used for that also.
Regarding the water, the US considers it a waste product, and actually dumps quite a lot of it from the US lab on the station. (quite a lot of it builds as condensation from the people on board, several liters per person per day). The Russians on the other hand, consider it a resource, and pump the 'waste' water from their AirConditioner into a electrolosis unit which electrically splits off the oxygen for breathing purposes. In any case the condensed water would not be safe for drinking, but fresh drinking water is supplied by the shuttle, as a by-product of the shuttle fuel cells. (Cyrogenic H2 + 02 = lots of electricty + pure water) The shuttle actually produces a *lot* of water, but dosn't really carry much into orbit to start with!
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights