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Additional Lab To Be Added To the ISS
Matt_dk writes "Apparently the International Space Station is going to get bigger. NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) are preparing to sign an agreement to add another laboratory to the ISS by using a modified multipurpose logistics module (Raffaello) during the final Space Shuttle mission. It will be attached in September 2010 during Endeavour's STS-133 mission. The idea had originally been rejected, but earlier this year ISS program manager Michael Suffredini said using an MPLM for an additional module was being reconsidered."
I still can't understand the construction-use-burn schedule for the ISS...
I hear some say it's a waste of money
Some say it has been useful to learn to build stuff in space
I still don't know... but anything that has people on it and it's orbiting us, does catch my attention...
-- Counting backwards since 1984!
It's going to be decommissioned in 5 years. Maybe they should be planning the lab for the next generation space station.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I don't get why we're not planning to dock the shuttles to the ISS and leave them up there, too, with their useful engines, robotic arms, and so forth. The space museums would be sad, but someone would undoubtably think up some cool things that could be accomplished with them up there.
The point is to get other countries to pointless.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The point is to get other countries to <3 the USA by showing "global leadership" in space. It's all about "soft power" and, like most political things, it really doesn't matter if it is actually pointless.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't know why they didn't open up bidding on the last module slot (for this revised construction proposal) to a hotel chain and start luring consumers to spend the weekend in orbit in luxury. What a missed opportunity, they could have been working on testing sheets and bathrobes for orbital space-worthiness.
"And so forth"? You certainly mean their crew, don't you ...?
Yes. Long-term storage of human beings in space.
Nice idea in theory, but the practicalities make it next to impossible. Maintenance, costs, complexity etc. If you fly it up there then you need to keep it in working order, potentially for years - and that would mean costs in flying up spare-parts, engineers, undertaking safety inspections - essentially it would require setting up the first spaceship yard - costs NASA no doubt don't want to be liable for. The alternative is to fly it up and then simply agree not to service it, but at that point its usefulness would be virtually zero, as it couldn't even be sued as an emergency escape as they can't put people inside something that isn't being serviced. Then when the space station is decommissioned (whenever that is) they will be unable to bring it back down to earth so it will be burnt up upon re-entry with the station - a bit of a waste.
I don't get why we're not planning to dock the shuttles to the ISS and leave them up there, too, with their useful engines, robotic arms, and so forth.
Duct taping the remaining shuttles to the ISS, arkansas style up on concrete blocks, has the following problems:
1) There's not enough space on the truss to leave them bolted on and still have space for resupply missions to dock.
2) They will rapidly permanently break down and become more or less useless. Either leave the fuel cells running, in which case they run out of H2 in about a month with no was in space to refuel and no in-orbit liquid H2 transport available (at least they "could" refill the O2 tanks, in theory), or shut them off and let the electrolyte and water exhaust freeze in place, cracking the lines. When the freon leaks out of the coolant system, no way to refill... Most of the onboard systems are like that, limited on-orbit lifetime and no on-orbit maintainability, at all.
3) So, they're deadweight, whats the loss? Well, they need to boost the station so it doesn't reenter, and boosts are expensive. Plus it adds surface area to speed reentry so you need MORE reboosts but just BIGGER reboosts.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yes. Long-term storage of human beings in space.
Two ships go up, one ship comes down. It shouldn't be hard to leave at least a little bit of equipment up there.
On the topic of leaving them up their with their robotic arms, I would like to see some sort of small, orbital building yard - for now it doesn't have to do much, but even some sort of recycling processor to deal with random bits of junk that float past would be interesting, and pave the way for a whole new set of interesting technology.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Makes sense, the MPLMs are built like modules anyway, and are going to be useless without the shuttle. Leaving at least one on orbit is the best use possible, marginally usable or not. As for the talk of decommissioning, quite frankly it's not going to happen. It may well get effectively turned over to ESA and the Russians, but giving the station to Russia isn't politically feasible, the Russians aren't going to abandon it any time soon and we can't deorbit the station unilaterally. Actually, I would not be at all surprised to see the other two launched as permanent modules at some point in the future; having a premade pressure hull does save quite a lot over a new build, and some kind of joint ESA/Russian lab would be a nice replacement for some of the stuff cut by the Russians and the abandoned joint capsule project.
ISS Mafia Lab 1
No jews in space
You'd rather see Hitler on Ice?
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Leaving my topic of the humans-a-returning (or not):
Nice thought, but space debris is so rare an event you have to wait for years for it to even come close. And, if it does, it will do so possibly with several thousand mph. Winky-winky with your little robotic arm ...
Yeah really... It'd be kinda like keeping the old pickup truck out back. Some day some old geezer will go out and charge up the battery and see if it fires up.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Or maybe even a Holiday Inn.
The ISS already has enough labs. Why not go for something at least a little more interesting? Maybe a daschund or a beagle?
Be relentless!
Yeah, even a nudged away tool bag couldn't be retrieved, and orbit-crossing paths will tend to be at very high relative speeds.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Because the shuttle's batteries run out after 3 weeks and the ISS can't power them.
Wasting money, wasting money, wasting money, and wasting money.
Why are they even bothering when they want to blow the fucking thing up?
Billions in effort just to go whack off the atmosphere, explode in to googols of bits and land at the bottom of the ocean never to be reclaimed by humans for centuries, possibly never.
The space agencies are a joke, they are huge wasters, they don't deserve to do such things and just get away with it.
That space station could be recycled pretty easily if only they'd send up a module WITH such facilities, but do they? NO!
They can even use the sun better than we can due to their being no atmosphere, a few mirrors focusing light could melt metals with ease.
And they say that they employ the smartest minds at these places? Yeah, and the hairs on my ass wrote Shakespeare.
Yeah, i expect to get modded troll, but it still won't stop it being true. You know they are wasting money just as much as i do.
And the fact that they get such a little budget compared to most of the other industries, they should be doing every single thing they can do to recycle "junk" up there and stop wasting it. Every single piece of junk up there is worth more than gold.
I'd bet money on private corporations "buying-out" ISS or "renting" time/space for things like manufacturing insanely pure insulin crystals (e.g.) in microgravity, or something along those lines. I've no doubt ISS will be useful for many more years to come.
Seems some use for it could be made in the future. Scrap, airtight or easily-sealable containers, storage bits for a manned mars mission, surely something that doesn't require high reliability could be thought of.
And they could try boosting it cheaply using LAO or ProSEDS.
Might be a nice experiment.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Actually, the ISS can and does power the shuttle batteries. That is why missions to the ISS can be much longer than ones not to the ISS; they get a very valuable powerboost during the visit.
It is amazing that we are not going to add all of the MLM, but the reason is that Raffaello was done differently then the others; It has electrical and HVAC hookups. But this is better than nothing, since it is already going up.
Personally, I would really like to see us add a Sundancer AND a BA-330. If we put these up in the next 2 years, they will get a nice shake out (similar to how the 2 are running around). If NASA is really concerned about lifetime, then the easy answer is to use these for storage for a time and keep the hatch closed. Though, I would not be surprised if the crew do not push to have space there. Apparently, the regular ISS is VERY noisy. The BA* should be very quiet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You do? Why?
All you need to do is make sure it's airtight. You can scrap the engines. You can scrap the avionics and flight controls. You can scrap the radio equipment and the computers and pretty much everything in the cockpit. You can feed electricity and air to it from the station, allowing you to scrap the life support system and generators and batteries, or you can keep them as a backup in case the station craps out. He wasn't suggesting using the shuttle as a shuttle so much as just using it for extra space.
Since there are so many complaints about this in different locations I am just replying directly to the parent...
In response to:
1. Power: The question isn't if the ISS power system can interface with the shuttle, etc. The issue would be if the station could continuously keep multiple shuttles running. The benefits could potentially be using the shuttle as a reserve power/O2 system in the event of failure of the station systems
2. 'How are the astronauts getting down': The other non shuttle missions that are going to the ISS maybe?
3. What are the extra benefits? Storage, a possible escape vehicle/lifeboat, extra equipment, etc.
4. No way to keep the shuttles and resupply vehicles attached: I would think bringing up an extra module to do this would be beneficial enough it would be considered.
Also, keep one of two in working order in case there is an failure in the station that puts lives at risk, the shuttle could be used either until the station can be repaired, or a trip can be made to rescue everyone. If the shuttle is in good enough condition, just fly it back to earth.
The US is now looked with disdain, some fear but zero respect. It is considered a bully that resolves all matters through force, and is willing to invest 10x more in maintaining that attitude than in continuing its historical path of exploration and invention.
It would be nice if we moved past a Machiavellian world, but we haven't. Pretending there are no barbarians left in the world doesn't make it so.
Good will and tender feelings are fickle, and any positive effects from those factors are based on common interests anyway.
For those we don't have common interests with, fear is much more reliable. For those we do have common interests with, those shared interests will weather many a tiff over a variety of issues.
So really, international admiration and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee. I have a very limited interest in being abstractly loved by countries around the world, and I hardly think your line of thought accurately reflects the opinion of the 5.7 billion + people outside the US anyway.
Incidentally, 'fear' and 'respect' are often used interchangeably.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
You make the assumption that semen is a homogeneous inert liquid, which it isn't. You could very well be correct if, in fact, the surface tension of the semen droplet is a much stronger force than other internal forces which might structure the semen otherwise.
Has any research with useful, practical applications actually come out of the ISS yet?
Not saying there hasn't been, necessarily, but if there has, I haven't heard about it.
There was a joke which went around about the Mars Rover, which I think really personified the problem of the genuine usefulness of space exploration, for me.
"Scientists today were stunned by the revelation, received from the Mars Rover, that the Martian landscape consists primarily of rocks, apparently similar to those commonly found in the Nevada Desert.
The scientists have said that they will not rest until every one of these Martian rocks have been thoroughly analysed and catalogued."
I think that smaller and less active breeds would be much preferable in orbit for all of the obvious reasons.
What we need is a ninja robotic arm, with the ability to catch swords^H^H^H^H^H^H debris moving at high velocities.
Well they seem to have already gotten to work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfdHY26E2jc&fmt=18
Probably the main problem is you can't even use a shuttle as a dead bulk mass shield for the ISS because it's tacked together.
Park it where it will take a hit from anything coming fast? Nope.
Imagine a cloud of tiles in orbit, coming back around past the station every 90 minutes.
"Widens" says the spamblock recognition software.
Damn, there's an AI reading the drafts and picking the test images now?
Why can't ISS be used as a Ship Yard for space craft construction? Aerodynamics in space is gravity oriented, not friction oriented. A craft built in space, for space travel doesn't require an exterior skin for leaving the gravity well. Granted, the craft will look like a Tinker Toy project gone wrong, but If something comes up broken, then another can be brought up. The project logistics cost will be massively reduced because of the "Second Chance Option" of holding a craft in a Parking Orbit while a replacement part is brought up. I just hope AIG doesn't read /. or this Proof of Concept will never happen.
I've been saying this all along, about recycling parts for the space station, to make the life last longer then predicted, and also, maybe send up one way trip shuttles that will be reconfigured or dismantled to use the parts up for other stuf...even maybe a smelt up there to remold iron / steel for other stuff then first designed. The cost is pretty high to travel up there but once up there, it can even go so far as to harvest broken satellites that instead of coming back down to earth, can be smelted down to be reused for repairs or whatever...!!!
We would launch rockets whose end stages would have to match orbits and velocities with the ISS, and then a small team of astronauts would take hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of hours to assemble the spacecraft, doing spacewalks and controlling robot arms. And then, once it is assembled, you would have to boost it up out of that orbit. Launching it as one piece from the ground, you can time it and angle it right to catch favorable 'slingshot' trajectories to your planet/asteroid/etc. of interest, and you can have a much larger pool of non-spacesuited specialists assemble it. (This includes 'small' issues like a master welder not having to cross-train as an astronaut.) Assembly in space makes sense once we start mining the asteroid belt and maybe the moon. My question - is it feasible to boost the ISS to a more favorable orbit or one of the Lagrange points?
The ISS doesn't charge the batteries, it just provides power so that the shuttle doesn't draw on its own batteries as much. This only extends a shuttle mission by four days.