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Space Station Module Could Carry Humans To Asteroid
Soulskill writes "Brian Wilcox, a JPL roboticist, spoke at a NASA workshop about the possibility of detaching one of the International Space Station's modules and using it as the primary living space for astronauts on a trip to an asteroid. 'The node could be connected to two space exploration vehicles and have add-on inflatable modules. ... The space station is slated to operate through at least 2020, which roughly coincides with the earliest likely launch date for human exploration of an asteroid. In April President Barack Obama set a 2025 goal for a manned mission to an asteroid.'"
The cheapest and safest way to finish the mission would be to load the crew and samples into an apollo style capsule and reenter directly. The article doesn't describe that.
Also the module doesn't seem big enough for the centrifuge they describe. They could have a module on a boom, then rotate the whole vehicle. Perhaps the high gravity module could slide along the boom and dock with the main vehicle. If this goes anywhere I expect the centrifuge will be dropped. It is just too hard to engineer.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In April President Barack Obama set a 2025 goal for a manned mission to an asteroid.
Seeings how much NASA gets pushed and pulled by every administration and every budget I wouldn't count on anything NASA has as far as long term goals being so concrete as to put a date to them. Politicians really need to stop using NASA as a token in a pissing match. It's petty and counterproductive.
Hell, if it weren't for JFK taking a bullet to the head we may have never even gotten to the moon.
BP might also end up flooding (oops pun) the market with rugged drillers looking for a job. So the crew should be easy to put together.
Aw shucks. There goes my plan to glue the Hubble, two Progress capsules, an Iridium satellite and a capsule made by Bert Rutan.
Why bother to go to an asteroid, when you could just wait and hope an asteroid smashes into you?
Although talking about moving the entire ISS, not part of it.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/07/15/1852231.shtml
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
If you put wings and jet engines on a bus it would be an airliner..
Is there some specific asteroid that is going to be coming close enough to the ISS that it could be reached by detaching one of the modules?
You are probably going to need a lot of delta-v to match obits with the asteroid unless you 'visit' consists of hitting it or watching it whoosh past you at umpteen km/sec
We now know what to do with an ageing Bruce Willis!
There are no aerodynamics to worry about, only torsional stresses caused by the low thrust engine.
We keep thinking in terms of rockets - and clean lines - just to make it into orbit - but once in orbit that no longer matters if you don't plan to land it again.
You wouldn't be moving the pig with chemical engines, you'd be using plasma or solar sails where the forces can be measured in grams. If you want decent gravity, add a couple of outriggers and spin the whole thing - that would be a lot more force than the propulsion system will cause.
The expensive bit - getting the mass into orbit has been done, just fly up a relatively lightweight propulsion system and reuse the ISS.
O.K. the OTHER expensive bit will be food/water for a long trip, but this could do multiple missions. Park fuel/food in orbit - send a crew out for as long a loop as is deemed survivable then refuel/refill and swap crews on return.
Hell - stuff it to the rafters with food and park it above Mars for a year after a trial trip to an asteroid - no need to design an entirely new "ship" to do this - we have one we can use already. Thinking about it, no need to store water internally either, stuff it in a big plastic bag and tow it, thaw as needed.
The summary of the summary (emphasis mine):
"Brian Wilcox, a JPL roboticist, spoke at a NASA workshop about the possibility of [..]. 'The node could be connected [..]. ..." (followed by some unrelated info).
How the fuck is this news, guys and girls? I could have a pony in a year. Nobody cares until I actually have one. Please post summaries of stuff that's happening, not what someone fantasies of.
Here is the actual presentation, from the agenda (which has all of the presentations).
Perusal of that shows that gravity was to be obtained by a rotating tether, not within a module.
get your ass to maaa.....oops ok asteroid ???
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Do you really want to take a vehicle, not originally designed for the task, that has been in space for ~20 years, into deep space?
That would be like taking a modified, 20 year old, Toyota Hilux to the North Pole. Such a challenge is difficult for a new vehicle specifically built for the task.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
but wont, nasa is full of what if's and could but yet never manages to do
I could win the lottery, but I am not going to write an article on it
""Brian Wilcox, a JPL roboticist, spoke at a NASA workshop about the possibility of detaching one of the International Space Station's modules and using it as the primary living space for astronauts on a trip to an asteroid."
And, with sufficient wing area, pigs could fly.
Seriously, Tranquility (Node 3) would require such major reconstruction to do this that they might as well build a new module. Not only is it not built for the thermal, radiation, and micrometeorite enviroment beyond LEO... It's also not built to take the stresses of being boosted out of orbit. (Module's launched by the Shuttle 'hang' by their sides, not sit on their tails.)
Nor can it really be rebuilt on orbit. When the shuttle goes out of service, we lose the ability to boost the racks that fit Tranquility's existing structure. We also lose the ability to resupply the US airlock, which means we won't have the capacity to support the spacewalks such a conversion would require.
Yes. The ISS modules are 1/4 to 1/2" rolled aluminum alloy pressure vessels, their design life was estimated at 50 years minimum, unlimited maximum. All other aspects pertaining to the asteroid rendezvous missions are bolt on or bolt in. Life Support, Power Bus, Flight Avionics, Stores, Crew Accommodation, New Shielding in the form of high molecular weight plastics, Interconnector/Docking for a crew return Capsule, Utility Block, everything else would be new and mission specific. The only thing the ISS module would be doing is forming a scaffolding and holding pressure for the crew. The nice thing is you could really take time and build it properly on orbit at the ISS, largely in a shirt sleeve environment.
Space exploration is not Arctic Exploration, Pickup Trucks are not Space Craft.
... we need a few billion more to 1) actually make it go somewhere, 2) shield astronauts from radiation during the trip, and 3) make it have enough food, water, air, power, etc. for the crew to survive.
Sorry, my bad. I'll send a bill.