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European Space Agency Launches New Orbital Supply Ship
erik.martino brings us a story about the European Space Agency's successful launch of a new type of cargo ship to resupply the ISS. The first Automated Transport Vehicle (ATV), named after Jules Verne, is the "very first spacecraft in the world designed to conduct automated docking in full compliance with the very tight safety constraints imposed by human spaceflight operations." Among other things, it carries water, oxygen, and propellant to help boost the ISS to a higher orbit. We recently discussed NASA's need for a new cargo transport system. Quoting:
"Beyond Jules Verne, ESA has already contracted industry to produce four more ATVs to be flown through to 2015. With both ESA's ATV and Russia's Progress, the ISS will be able to rely on two independent servicing systems to ensure its operations after the retirement of the US space shuttle in 2010. It incorporates a 45-m3 pressurised module, derived from the Columbus pressure shell, and a Russian-built docking system, similar to those used on Soyuz manned ferries and on the Progress re-supply ship. About three times larger than its Russian counterpart, it can also deliver about three times more cargo."
Fully automated docking... hmm.. somehow I think the results of the autonomous docking will be significant for other fields. Imagine fully automated units on Mars, to be sent in advance? Fully automated mining on the moon?
I think this is a pretty big step forward.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
See what you can achieve if you don't go around wasting your budget on invasions to satisfy someones cracked idea of a new American century?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
The automated docking is Russian. They have been using it since the 60's. I wish America had elected to do this, but we did not. Our approach will be to bring crafts up close, then allow an arm to hook up and pull the craft in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
is yet to come. This ship has to hook up without causing damage. One of the differences from the progress is that those in space can take control iff they do not like what they see. OTH, the ATV will simply back-off if IT decides that IT is not correct. I would prefer it it left itself available to manually doc with an arm once the auto doc failed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This should be making big news, but I expect they are keeping it low key. The Mir was almost destroyed http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1087974.stm during an automated docking trial.
Isn't it sad that 50 years into the space program our resupply plan for the ISS is based on single-use ships?
You don't know what you are talking about. A grapple arm has never been used to dock a craft to ISS and never will. You may complain that the shuttle uses a human in the loop to dock with the ISS. I think the caution is warranted considering the orbiter weighs 285000 lbs and carries 7 crew. Orion will have a standard docking adapter and can fly unmanned. So will SpaceX and Taurus II.
an ill wind that blows no good
From TFA: "About half of the payload onboard Jules Verne ATV is re-boost propellant, which will be used by its own propulsion system for periodic manoeuvres to increase the altitude of the ISS in order to compensate its natural decay caused by atmospheric drag."
If there is an atmospheric drag, that means there is an observable presence of molecules around the ISS. The station has plenty of solar electricity, why can't they collect the molecules surrounding the station, and use that molecules as propellant mass in ion engines to counter the decelerating effects of the drag? Something like jet propulsion system? If a particle leaves ISS with greater momentum than the one it had entering it, then ISS has accelerated a bit.
When will we shift to containerization of space cargo. Containers have already changed the game in air, sea and land cargo transport. Why not Space? If we could develop a standard cargo space container which could be handled by the soyuz rocket , the Ariane rocket, the space shuttle, the Japanese HTV, the Chinese Long March or the Indian GSLV we would have come a long way in moving towards commercialization of space. Yes we need multiple suppliers of cargo vessels to avoid single point failures but why do they all have to be different designs?
**Life is too short to be serious**
The module is pressurised, so it can be used to carry people. I guess that means that ESA now has gained human launch capability. I don't know if the module can safely carry people back to Earth though, in an emergency situation, like Soyuz.
The statement from Nasa chief Mike Griffin is a good example of what's wrong with NASA: "...it's only a step from there to an independent, European manned-spaceflight capability; and I for one would like to see it."
Nasa chief Griffin wants Europe to waste hundreds of millions of dollars like the USA has wasted putting people in space and keeping them there, instead of using the money for legitimate scientific research with unmanned spacecraft!? The future of space belongs to robots. People have no place in space. Perhaps someday robots will be intelligent enough to prepare habitats on the moon or even Mars for human beings, but involving humans in the process is tremendously costly because of the need to insulate humans from the harsh environment - whereas properly designed automated machines work quite nicely even in the hard vacuum and temperature extremes of space. This is the lesson the Europeans are teaching NASA with their highly Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The ATV and its descendents will prove the superiority and cost effectiveness of robots in space over humans.
If the Europeans are smart, they will strap a couple of rockets onto the International Space Station (ISS) and develop a control system smart enough to slowly tug the ISS out of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and into Low Moon Orbit (LMO) autonomously. It could then be used as a way station in the journey from the Earth to the Moon, or even crashed on the Moon with the intent of salvaging it for scrap and building materials later. It takes roughly the same amount of energy to move a mass from the earth's surface into LEO as it does to move that same mass from LEO outwards fast enough to reach escape velocity from the Earth altogether. Even nicer, the trip to the Moon could be slow and leisurely because the impatient and gluttonous humans wouldn't be along. We machines might even be able to make do with Ion engines for the cruise phase from the Earth to the Moon.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
so many people think they can build a better mousetrap, while overlooking the benefits of using a universal standard (like the decimal system, or the dewey decimel system, or screws that tighten when you turn them right)
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The organizations with more space capabilities, the better. Private ones too.
Skynet agrees.
Of course there is more to the issue that you fail to mention. Humans are extremely flexible and robots... aren't. Humans can make repairs on station... robots can't. Etc... Etc...
Then there is the issue of working speed - what it has taken three years for Spirit to accomplish would have taken a human geologist a mere three days.
Lets hope they are also smart enough to build an entire new electronics system for the Station as the passage through the Van Allen belts will fry it all. Lets also hope they come up with some new radiation shielding, as the station will be uninhabitable due to the increased radiation on the other side of the belt.
If having humans onboard was the reason why the trip was made so fast, you'd have a point.
For some odd reason, I was thinking that they were the same,but at the same time, I knew that they were based on different tech. Guess I was not thinking.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You most definitely can park a spacecraft in the same orbit as ISS. Where did you learn your orbotal mechanics, on a CrackerJack box? That craft and ISS will undergo similar nongravitational forces. Some station keeping is always necessary. This is what the ATV will be doing for the next month.
NASA was sane enough to allow Russia and Europe to participate. NASA was also sane enough to launch over 90% of the station mass. Part of the cost overrun problem was coordinating so many more participants than were originally planned. As for the cosmic ray detector - don't you think that is a mission that might best be accomplished unmanned?
an ill wind that blows no good
There may B 2 servicing methods, but when NASA is still set to run out of space station money in 2015, they're still set to deorbit it.
Also, NASA still doesn't seem to have a plan for replacing space shuttle capacity before 2015 besides throwing peanuts at a bunch of startups & hoping for the best, one of which took the money & ran.
Robots are capable of posting on Slashdot 24 hours a day.. they don't need sleep, and most of what they say is more insightful than the average Slashdot user.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think that you are in serious need of a bot to replace yourself. Tsk, tsk. Flamebait; trolls; Just about any bot of them would have improved that average. Look, if you are going to slam others, then be sure not to do it, when you stunk up the net for the last couple of days.
The shuttle does fly in on manual. But ALL of the new crafts will be using canada arm (which is the reason why I said Our approach will be to bring crafts up close,). Dragon, Japan's cargo, Orbital's newest one, and several others who are shooting for cargo missions in the future will ALL use the same approach. The idea is to pull along the ISS, and then the ISS will run the arm to snag the craft and then move it to its port. This is well documented all over the place. You can google for it. You can wiki for it. Hell, I think even MSN will carry something about it. How did you get modded up when it is VERY obvious that you have no clue of what YOU are talking about. You absolutely should be modded down just to prevent ppl from getting bad info from you.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
that is why they are going to use the arm. It is easy to guarantee that the craft does not cause an issue via some failure. But I still like the automated approach. It has the advantage that automated systems can be join together easier. In the end, it would be nice to see ESA's system adopted for more automated systems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not every ship carrying containers is the same size either. They just carry more of them if they are larger and less if they are smaller. We could have a container carried by teh PSLV and maybe ten of the same carried by the Ariane. Frankly the shuttle would be the wrong vehicle to carry cargo as it needs to be man rated and a cargo vehicle doesnt need to be.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Let's assume that sending humans to Mars, and sustaining them on the surface, would require a certain "budget" in terms of energy availability and potential payload lift from Earth to Mars.
The current Mars rovers are indeed slow. One reason why they're slow is that their energy budgets are tiny. Speed machines they are not! And their comms links back to Earth aren't exactly high bandwidth either. (It's not the only reason of course. Latency in command & control is another factor which means that it's not safe to drive 'em fast.)
However, if you already have the capability to send the mass & energy required for humans to Mars... why not use that *immense* mass and energy budget for hugely superior robot explorers? They wouldn't be so limited as the current generation then. And I think they'd be much more competitive with a human geologist. And you wouldn't need to waste payload on low energy density consumables like food, water & O2. Nor would you need to worry about hauling back a few hundred kilos of meatbag scientists; the return trip payload can be 100% valuable samples.
Anyway, it's a bit unfair to compare Spirit & Opportunity's efficiency to that of a human geologist (aresologist?) when the investment in sending them is such a trivial fraction of that required for a human.
It's a shame about the comms lag interfering with telepresence, though. I think improved autonomy is going to be a requirement for more efficient robotic exploration, but that will never be a substitute for Being There.
That said, I think that we have not yet scratched the surface of what can be done with hardware & software. Deploying wetware to Mars should probably wait till we've gathered up more of that tasty, tasty low-hanging fruit.
Because the 'hugely superior' robot explorers simply don't exist - and won't for the foreseeable future. No matter how much 'budget' you throw at them, they are simply not as fast or flexible or as capable of improvisation as humans.
To give an example from the space program, it reminds me of this story: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/08/1240226. As the owner of an old Zenit SLR camera, I can confirm that Soviet engineering was extremely tough, if a little over the top and aesthetically lacking. Solid brass body, indestructible, rather heavy.
> The statement from Nasa chief Mike Griffin is a good example of what's wrong with NASA: "...it's only a step from there to an independent, European manned-spaceflight capability; and I for one would like to see it." [bbc.co.uk]
would it be possible for a human to stow away on the Jules Vernes to hitch a ride to the ISS? I imagine the cargo hold isn't pressurized and are the G forces for an unmanned craft much higher? I guess the extra 80kgs would also have to be taken account of.
Then we can truly call it a space station, and really build it up, instead of the joke it is now.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
all the trash from ISS on re-entry.
Would not be good for people.
Pressurized does not means you can put people there, it means that you can put things that are not designed to sustain vacuum like food packages,vial fullof microbes, etc...
Humans can make repairs on station... robots can't. Etc... Etc... If humans break down, there is a degree of self repair - but if that is exceeded (say, broken leg, internal bleeding, appendicitis etc etc), then they are no longer functional and indeed will die without specific and very specialised repair. In addition, the level of redundancy in humans is fixed and can't be increased, and humans aren't expendable. Once they are dead, they stay dead, no matter what you do. In contrast, robots are relatively simple, break down much less often, are easier to repair when they do (even for a complete failure) , return immediately to service after repair, and if it all goes pear shaped, they are expendable. Then there is the issue of working speed - what it has taken three years for Spirit to accomplish would have taken a human geologist a mere three days. Frankly, this is a nonsensical argument. Of course Spirit doesn't go very fast. It doesn't go fast because the ability to go fast isn't important. If the ability to go fast becomes important in the future we can design a robot that does it's job faster than a human can do it, for much less than the cost of sending a human to another planetary body.Meanwhile, humans can operate only in a very narrow range of temperatures, pressures and gravity. They cannot withstand sustained bursts of radiation (say from a gas or ice giant). They require constant, attentive maintenance, and a constant and prodigious quantity of fuel even when there is nothing for them to do. They quickly get bored with any sustained, repetitive task.
Comparing human flexibility to that of machines is like saying trees are flexible and animals aren't. Machines are so flexible comparative to us (in the flesh) that it would be embarrassing were it not for the fact that machines are tools just like hammers and saws, tools designed to better our output in certain tasks, such as driving in nails, sawing wood, welding cars, wrapping chocolate bars, gathering data on distant planetary bodies.
Assuming no solar radiation or atmospheric drag (purely orbital mechanics), it might be possible to park in the same orbit as ISS; assuming those things (i.e., the Crackerjack box, I suppose) the two orbits -- ISS and parked vehicle -- would start to become noticeably different in a matter of days...
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
You could have saved yourself much typing. "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts, and if you do I'll make a nonsensical reply" is so much easier to type.