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Send the ISS To the Moon
jmichaelg writes "Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it in low earth orbit. (While we're at it, we should re-brand it as the 'International Space Ship.') He points out that it's already designed to be moved periodically to higher orbits so instead of just boosting it a few miles, strap on some ion engines and put it in orbit around the moon instead of the earth. That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans. Benson concludes: 'Let's begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.'"
One major problem that the author ignores is cosmic rays. In Low Earth Orbit, the ISS is protected from cosmic rays and the solar wind by the Van Allen belts. If you move it out to the moon it won't have this protection any more and the occupants would be exposed to high energy particls much more so than in low earth orbit. I'm not sure of the level of shielding on the ISS but it's probably insufficient to protect the crew.
Instead of putting it in to standard orbit around ether the Earth or the moon can we put it into a orbit where it orbits both? That way it could be used as a spaceship traveling between the earth and the moon. It could be refueled and resupplied as it pass around earth. It could then carry passengers to a moonbase or whatever is up there.
Try standing on the side of the highway and handing a hamburger to someone who's driving past at 70 miles per hour.
If the ISS was orbiting the moon+earth, it would always be going fast enough to get all the way to the moon. Any resupply ship would have to be going the same speed to make contact, which would mean that the resupply ship would also have to be capable of making it all the way to the moon. Which means that things wouldn't be any cheaper.
The other problem is that the ISS isn't designed to handle radiation that far out. If I remember correctly the moon is outside the Van Allen belts. Radiation from Solar Flares would be much higher. I am not sure that the electronics are shielded enough to handle it. Even if they where you would have too add an improved storm shelter for the crew.
Other than that it is an interesting idea.
Boosting it wouldn't be that bad. No need to beef it up if you used ION engines. A nuclear powered Ion engine or one with a lot of extra solar cells would be needed to do it in a reasonable amount of time.
I am not fond of the Aries vehicles. I would rather see a next generation Saturn.
An Improved Saturn 1b that using the F-1A (test fired back in the late 60s) and an AL/LI first stage and an AL/LI second stage using the J2S would seem like a good plan.
An improved Saturn V again with F-1As would be make a good heavy lifter. If you want more lift strap on some SRBs and get a really big lift.
Building a Saturn V today would be stupid. But a next gen Saturn V and Ib could be done and probably done pretty quickly. We have the plans we would just have to build the tooling for the motors, The tanks could be based on the Shuttle ET and the electronics are now easy.
Retrofitting the VAB and the pads would probably be the hard part.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Remember inertia. The cheapest thing you can do is simply move inertially. Moving to high speeds, then slowing back down, is twice as hard as moving to high speeds and staying there. There's absolutely no equivalent of "speed bursts" in space. (Heck, it's not even a very good intuition for things moving around on Earth, either.)
Orbital mechanics can absolutely not be approached intuitively, until you've completely retrained your intuition. It's right up there with QM, in that regard, though IMHO easier to learn the basics of.
If the ISS was orbiting the moon+earth, it would always be going fast enough to get all the way to the moon. Any resupply ship would have to be going the same speed to make contact, which would mean that the resupply ship would also have to be capable of making it all the way to the moon. Which means that things wouldn't be any cheaper.
Just curious, wouldn't it only need to be able to go as fast as the ISS for a much shorter period of time? It seems like that would be cheaper than a vehicle that needed to go that fast all the way to the moon.
Are you joking? Am I gonna get a well-deserved "whoosh" for this reply?
If you're going the same direction and the same speed as something that's orbiting in such a way that it'll get to the moon, then you could climb inside and ride with it to the moon - or you could just chill out and get there on your own. Your speed would continue to match that of the orbiting station, because you would, in fact, be in the same orbit...
Bow-ties are cool.
Oooh, what a great use for MIR, or SpaceLab. Oh wait, WE THREW THEM AWAY.
Eventually someone is going to say.. Hey, this stuff costs a bajazillion dollars to build and $14,000 an ounce to get into orbit, maybe we should keep it in orbit and see if it can be reused?*
-ellie
Why not take a page from all those sci-fi books and put it in a Lagrange Point?
(according to Wikipedia, several missions are planned there already)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I'm not too knowledgeable about this sort of stuff but wouldn't the reaction of the new container being tugged cause the ISS to change it's direction? unless that is only the effect on earth due to friction
We threw them away because they weren't worth what it would take to use them in any sort of meaningful way.
Objects in space are under a lot of abuse. Wild swings in temperature, a nearly-perfect vaccum all around, bombardment by energetic radiation, micro-meteors and sometimes not-so-micro meteors. Anything we launch into earth orbit has to be constantly maintained or it will degrade into uselessness. Add to that the fact that there really is no such thing as a stable orbit, just one that takes a certain amount of time to degrade before the satellite will fall back to earth.
Keeping satellites operational and useful takes a lot of time, effort, and cash. You need to maintain the structure of the satellite, keep any equipment up to date, and periodically boost it back into it's proper orbit. If you don't do these things then you'll have a huge hazard (or worse a million little hazards) in orbit for a while. Then when the satellite's orbit begins to decay you'll have a rain of parts across the Earth, possibly in highly populated areas.
I'm all for reusing items we have already put into space but we have to be realistic about it. MIR and Skylab did their jobs and they had to be de-orbited for cost and safety reasons.
Sapere aude!
Well, that's great in theory. But part of the reason for getting rid of what junk we have up there is that space (in orbit) is a lot smaller than it seems. Having something the size of a penny smash into your craft while orbiting can really ruin your day, let alone what might happen if creamed by something the size of MIR.
More like the orbit of MIR quickly decays if you don't give it the fuel to occasionally thrust a bit to make up for the atmospheric drag. Yes, atmospheric drag, low-earth orbit satellites suffer from atmospheric drag, which makes them get lower and lower until they eventually get so low they burn. Which is why you either keep them fueled or they're goners anyways. "Getting hit by MIR" wouldn't have been a risk for very long I believe.
You just got troll'd!