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Space Tug to Save the Hubble?
Aglassis writes "In an article at SpaceRef, the CTO of Orbital Recovery Corporation claims that his company will be able to develop a space tug that could save the Hubble Space Telescope (from becoming 'a ballisticly implanted reef in the Pacific') by either moving it into a much higher stable orbit, or by moving it to the ISS where it could be maintained and operated. Some of the reasons that he cites are that the Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, could be delayed or suffer some sort of failure. Since the JWST will be at the L2 point, servicing will be impossible."
Quoth rw2: "Spend that money on ground based observatories with advanced systems that allow better than hubble imaging from earth."
Are there any? Doesn't atmospheric distortion limit the imaging ability of ground-based systems?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Which of those advanced systems are going to allow for observing at wavelengths to which our atmosphere is opaque?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
It seems to me that this technology could be used to clean up a lot of the space junk orbiting the earth. Set up an intergalactic recycling station and move all of the inoperable satellites to it and strip them down for parts. Which leads to another question. Are there laws that dictate ownership of property once it leaves the planet and is in orbit?
And it may even give the IIS a reason to exist. At the moment, it only seems to exist to give the shuttle a place to go...which isn't really happening right now.
I feel the IIS is just not very useful. Other than studying the long-term effects of microgravity on people, it doesn't do so much else. The massive loads of money spend on this thing could have gone to other, more useful, space projects. Instead it was built because we've always felt we needed a space station. Now we have one (partially, at least) and don't know what to do with it.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
Currently, there are no viable means of prolonging the useful life of telecommunications satellites, resulting in the wasteful loss of valuable assets every year.
The problem is that a refueling mission would probably cost as much as a new satellite (not to mention reducing the fuel capacity of the orginal satellite by allocating precious mass budget to a refueling port and subsystems). Which is better: spending $250 million every 8 years to refuel an aging commsat (a mission that might bork the commsat anyway) or spending $250 million every 10 years to replace the commsat with a brand new one?
Until we find an ultra-cheap way to get to GEO, the commsats will continue to be replaced. Perhaps cheaper ion engines, with their high specific impulse, would enable longer-lived commsats.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm not going to discount the value of a manned mission to Mars, but if there's anyway that can be done without having it mandate the end of Hubble, then we need to do it. Hubble has not only been nothing less than an incredible boon to science, it is also very near the only positive PR that the space program has had in better than a decade. The value of that is almost immeasureable.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
This all seems to imply that our so-called presence in space is really only limited to a very small volume of space and that any manned or unmanned missions are only capable of reaching certain specific places. There is currently no ability whatsoever to actually travel freely in space. That should be our longterm goal. To be able to go anywhere we want without worry about carrying our lunch along. In other words, we need to be able to generate our own fuel as we go along. There are options in this area but they don't seem to be at the forefront of research. One almost has to wonder if the governments of the Earth aren't afraid of such free-flying craft. And perhaps they should be.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Yeah, that is one thing that really annoys me about the current approach to space travel. It is way too mission-oriented. Frankly, it doesn't make logical sense to build "craft X for mission Y" and "craft W for mission Z". It would make much more sense to make a multipurpose "Craft XYZ" that could perform missions Y, Z, Q, and R, either with different vehicles, maybe even on the same vehicle after some refueling and maintenence. (and yes, it would make sense for this craft to remain out in space for the whole time)
No one wanted their satellites repaired at NASA prices. It's cheaper to launch a new satellite.
That is a very good point. Your thoughts about governments in relation to space travel certainly match most governments' current ways of thinking. It seems that because of the rapid development of technology, no one is particularly concerned with long term solutions. Instead, there is this frantic dash to get things done, because apparently we cannot be satisfied with where we are at. I'm not saying that we should be content with the state of the world (or technology, for that matter), but everything tends to be hectic for the wrong reasons. Why not stop throwing poorly built spacecraft and satellites into space? Can't we pause and take time to develop safe nuclear power for any space application? I have already seen examples of proposed probes that use nuclear power, and do so relatively cheaply. If a space telescope had a halfway decent power facility then we would not have to worry about sending repair vehicles. It should then be capable of repairing itself. I'll stop my random rant here, but I think these are things to consider if they haven't been already.
I am feeling fat and sassy
Well, a very expensive mounting system could be designed - after all, the cost of getting it into place is a lot anyways. Making the Hubble accessible to the ISS would be a good thing - even if only by space walk. Perhaps there could be some way to keep them close to each other, though not directly attached? The hubble would have to be held at a long length to prevent EM produced by the ISS from messing it up. Still, given the long time until the next space telescope is ready, it might be worthwhile. At worst, the Hubble has reduced (but not nullified) usefulness and can still be used to obvserve our local space neighborhood.
I dont think the idea is to attach it to the ISS. The general idea is to bring it into a close orbit with the ISS so it can be serviced then boost it into a higher orbit and just bring it back down whenever it needs more servicing.
On a similar note, the ISS needs space tugs like this one and needs to prove its usefulness as a repair shop in space. If you could use the ISS in this fasion to repair the HST then you could easily retro fit the ISS to build the type of vehicles needed to send a manned mission to the moon and mars a lot easier than if you were to simply launch the vehicles whole or try to assemble them in open space with the space shuttle(or its replacement) as your only aid.
An ISS with space tugs and large Saturn V style rockets could prove to be an excelent assembly area for any manned missions to the moon or mars. Without such a facility you need to send up the man power to assemble the vehicles along with a work platform each time you want to assemble a manned mission to mars. But with the ISS you have a permanent facility to do all the science and assembly work that the space program really needs. I think this kind of space tug is one of the very items that is nessicary to carry out space travel that is both cheap and useful for science and the common man. The other three items being the ISS, a heavy lift vehicle(such as the Saturn V in a modernized version), and cheap, reusable shuttles ala the X-Prize. If NASA had these four items then manned missions to mars and the moon would become so much cheaper and easier, and the added science that could be done would be emense.
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
The shuttle was supposed to be your Craft XYZ. Unfortunately, it became Craft UVWXYZ which cut down on its fitness for duty. Too many conflicting design constraints.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
"Horizontal drilling" increased continental Natural Gas reserves by huge amounts over the past decade or two. It's why you can still afford to waste the stuff heating your house, rather than just cooking with it.
Just suppose that 20 years from now, laser drills are cutting exploration and production costs of natural gas by huge margins, enabling North American companies to burn the stuff to crack the oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands (which contain more oil than Saudi Arabia) and tell OPEC to go fuck themselves. North American energy independence.
And we'll have a moonbase, where we'll be starting to mine Helium-3, or fuse all that silicate stuff into solar panels, and beam the power back to Earth. Planetary energy independence.
Will we be saying "Bushy's corny CEOs", or will we be saying "Holy crap. That space programme we started in 2004 had some really awesome spinoffs!"
But you're right. All that rocketry stuff was just pork for Bell Labs and Raytheon. Transistors? Integrated circuits? Pah! Just subsidized R&D for Kennedy and Nixon's crony CEOs.
The only reason for those smaller, more expensive gadgets, is so that better guidance "computers" can be crammed into the spatial constraints of the nose cones of missiles. Nobody will ever benefit from those technologies, because vaccuum tubes are just fine for radios and televisions, and business can do all the "computing" it need with a room full of clerks and hand-operated mechanical calculators, thank you very much! We should never have gone to the moon in 1969.
You might see them reboost HST into a high orbit, but it's NOT going to ISS.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I Think you'll find its already half european owned....
Scientifically speaking, I think it might be much more productive to admit that the ISS is a scientific and economic failure. Stop shuttle flights to the ISS, send all remaining shuttles in pairs (one as a life boat) to service Hubble for as long as it lasts. Stop throwing good money (and amazing optical/UV telescopes) after bad!