Orbital Express Launches Tonight

airshowfan writes "When a geosynchronous satellite is launched into space, no human ever gets to touch it again. This means that, other than for minor software issues, there is no way to fix it if it breaks, so it has to work perfectly, almost autonomously, for 20 years non-stop. There is also no way to refuel it once it's out of thruster fuel, the reason why it can't last more than 20 years even if it gets to that mark working very well, with batteries and solar cells still going, which is often the case. If only there were a robotic spacecraft in geostationary orbit that could change broken satellite components and refuel those older satellites, then satellites would be a lot less risky and would last a lot longer. Does this robotic spacecraft mechanic sound like science fiction? It launches tonight."

Comments

Orbital Express Launches Tonight

[Original Replica]

where did they find the hot cyclops to pilot it?

Re:There is no way to fix it if it breaks?

[fruity_pebbles]

Someone must have missed all those Hubble missions.

Someone must have missed that Hubble is not in geosynchronous orbit.

I can't believe this guy

[TubeSteak]

"I think it' extremely valuable for the entire space arena," [USAF Lt. Col. Fred Kennedy, project manager for Orbital Express] said of Orbital Express' goal, adding that the mission could help ease the stringent requirements of long-life satellites. "Maybe you can accept a level of imperfection that will allow you to go up later and perform upgrades and perform repairs, and put more propellant onboard to get the job done. That will be a sea change in the way we do business."

Dude, wtf?
This is rocket science, not something you'd patch with Windows Update.

Which is more expensive:
A) Build the satellite correctly the first time around
B) Build the satellite cheaply & then pay to get it fixed in orbit

I know which is better for Lt. Col. Fred Kennedy's bottom line.

Re:I can't believe this guy

[Sean Riordan]

All of the 'long life' birds take a dozen or more years and ludicrous amounts of money to build. They are basically archaic tech before they leave the integration highbay, much less the launch pad.

The small, relatively inexpensive short lifespan spacecraft are fairly current as far as technology goes and still very viable. Being able to perform minor repairs on orbit extends that capability a good bit. The more important factor is the prerequisite of standard parts and a small number of standard and modular buses which will cut the development time way down and drop costs. Since the first Plug'n'Play type satellite is already in development, we should start seeing this as a viable option in a few years.

Re:I can't believe this guy

[Iron Condor]

The best example was Galileo, where the high gain antenna failed to deploy properly and new compression algorithms were uploaded to get the most out of the low gain antenna.

Actually the best example is probably Cassini, which was launched without any viable software in the orbiter at all. Because everybody knew there were going to be seven years of coasting time to Saturn and there was no point at all in spending a whole lot of effort on writing software before the launch. Software is something you can upload later.

Re:Who will refuel it?

[Goaway]

Oh man, they must have totally forgotten about that! Good thing you caught it in time, there's still a chance to stop the launch!

Re:There is no way to fix it if it breaks?

[Deadstick]

Roughly a 22,000 mile technicality.

rj

Great Weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the military applications - you can send it out to do interesting things like attaching remote controlled explosive packages onto satellites. Then when war breaks out you can kill them in orbit.

You could attach thruster packages to geostationary satellites and boost them into completely different orbits.

You could just cut their solar panels off like pulling wings of flies.

Given the problems with remote refuelling satellites when they are all one-off devices, this gadget seems to be more of a weapon than a tool.

There has to be a Clancy novel in here somewhere

Re:who supplies parts to it?

[MichaelSmith]

where does it get it's spares from when they run out

Satellites from competing companies?

Re:Woot

[porl]

Sometimes run-on sentences are not as bad as some people think, although there are definitely times when they would be correct in saying that run-on sentences are 'grotesque' or 'ambiguous' (these are, of course, both subjective terms, and should be treated as such), but these thoughts are not the only thoughts that can be had of run-on sentences, and you should not assume that everyone else believes that run-on sentences are grotesque and ambiguous, because other people have feelings too and you shouldn't assume that your opinion is more important than theirs, because they might think otherwise, and that is how arguments start.

Re:Woot

[DoraLives]

Pretty shoot.

Watched it from the driveway of the house here in South Patrick Shores.

Clear as a bell, and the lox/kerosene flame of the first stage was a beautiful brilliant orange coming out of the engine, tapering away to a bluish tip. It arced into the cloudless sky and went right between the two endmost bowl stars of the little dipper as I watched through binoculars. Not much rumble. Along toward the end of the first stage burn, it started emitting these pale streamers of exhaust that flared out far away from the bright light of the engine. Very beautiful. And then at MECO, a rapidly widening black circle seemed to emanate from where the doused flame was a split second before, and then grew and expanded till it gobbled up the last little bit of the streamers. Weird effect. Never seen one do anything quite like that before. After a short pause, another puff of gas, and then the RL-10 kicked into gear as a star-like pinpoint of white light. With the northern launch azimuth, the apparent motion across the sky slowed down to a crawl as the slowly fading pinpoint seemed to drift horizonward in ever-increasingly slow motion. Finally lost it visually somewhere around T-plus nine or ten minutes, just over the roof of the house. By then it was getting out there, more or less a thousand miles away from where I leaned against my car in the driveway to help steady the binocs.

Like I said earlier, "Pretty shoot."