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."

Comments

Can also carry people

[hattig]

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.

Re:Can also carry people

[Daneboy]

I agree there aren't many reasons to move around up there today -- but there may be in the future. I'm just thinking that, given the presence of maneuverable ships in orbit, keeping at least one or two of them up there would give us a capability we would not otherwise have.

Maybe they could be dire-emergency lifeboats, giving the ISS crew an in-orbit shelter where they could wait for a rescue shuttle? Maybe they could take astronauts out on satellite repair missions? Maybe they could be used to to move cargo orbiting structures we haven't even thought of yet?

Again, I'm not so much thinking of what we'd do with them now -- but it costs a lot money to get 'em into orbit, and keeping them there would most likely be less expensive than launching something else if/when we need an orbital taxi for something.

Re:Can also carry people

[Dun Malg]

...it costs a lot money to get 'em into orbit, and keeping them there would most likely be less expensive than launching something else if/when we need an orbital taxi for something. See, right there is the trouble with your entire line of reasoning. It's not less expensive to keep a fairly heavy empty box in LEO on the off chance you might find a use for it later. They have to send the resupply ships all the time just to keep the ISS running. You sound like my mother. Stop cluttering up the garage with empty boxes! If you need a box for something, you can just buy one, and then you'll get the right size box to begin with. With the enormous costs associated with the delivery of space cargo, arguing over the box it came in is ridiculous.

Re:Non-reusable vehicles

[Daneboy]

Yes, it's tragicomically wasteful. I don't understand why they can't design a cargo/supply ship that STAYS IN ORBIT. I mean, sure, let's go ahead and de-orbit the ISS trash in some kind of disposable carrying module -- but leave the ship itself in orbit, and design it so it can potentially be refueled from the station later. Then just "park" it in orbit a few miles from the Station, and leave it there. At some point in time, we could probably think of something useful to do in space with a handful of these -- and we would finally have the "pickup truck in space" that NASA wanted a few years ago. The whole concept of multi-million-dollar disposable rockets is just ludicrous!

Re:Not trivial

[JohnyDog]

You do realize that crash happened during manual docking trial ? i.e. that Progress dockings were always automatic, but they wanted to train emergency manual docking procedure and failure was indeed human factor ? (Murphy's laws in action i'd say).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Mir_Program#Priroda.2C_fire_and_collision_.281996.E2.80.931997.29

Foale's Increment proceeded fairly normally until June 25, when during the second test of the Progress manual docking system, TORU, the resupply ship collided with solar arrays on the Spektr module and crashed into the module's outer shell, holing the module and causing a depressurisation of the station, the first ever on-orbit depressurisation in the history of spaceflight. Only quick actions on the part of the crew, cutting cables leading to the module and closing Spektr's hatch, prevented the crew abandoning the station in their Soyuz lifeboat.

Robots will take the sky away from you mere humans

[RKBA]

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.

But can Europe & Russia afford it after 2015?

[heroine]

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.