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International Effort Brings an Open Standard For Docking In Space

Posted by timothy on from the best-place-to-dock dept.

FTL writes "Engineers from the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe have come together to publish an International Docking Standard for spaceships. Currently the space station has three different types of incompatible docking ports, and the Chinese are developing their own. Standardizing on one type would permit interoperability and facilitate emergency rescues."

6 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Atmosphere by FTL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Docking of course is just the first step. One also needs agreement on the atmosphere. American spacecraft (Apollo, Skylab) used 100% oxygen at 5 psi. Soviet spacecraft (Soyuz, Salut, Mir) used 20% oxygen 80% nitrogen at 14.7 psi. Neither side could change this easilly. Thus even though Apollo and Soyuz were able to physically dock in 1975, they had to use an airlock between the two spacecraft. Otherwise the cosmonauts would have gotten the bends from decompression and Apollo could have ruptured from overpressure.

    Fortunately this is no longer much of an issue. As a result of the Apollo 1 fire and the deaths of Grissom, White and Chaffee, American spacecraft (starting with the Space Shuttle) adopted the Soviet approach.

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    1. Re:Atmosphere by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Operating at 5psi makes eva much easier. Lunary surface EVAs would not really have been possible on the moon if the crew had to decompress for three hours every day. They were busy enough anyway.

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    2. Re:Atmosphere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A downside of this is the need to pre-breath oxygen for 24 hours before a spacewalk. Spacesuits operate at the lowest possible pressure and to go straight-outside in one would give you diver's bends. Bends were never a risk on Apollo as there was simply no nitrgen there to cause it.

      Only true for US spacesuits. The russian suits use a higher pressure and need only a short prebreathing period (30 minutes).

    3. Re:Atmosphere by petermgreen · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Afaict the big issue with a pure O2 atmosphere in an earthed launch spacecraft is the launch and reentry.

      If you launch and reenter on low pressure pure oxygen then you have to design your cabin to resist pressure in both directions.

      If you launch and reenter on atmospheric pressure (afaict this is what apollo did) pure oxygen then you have an atmosphere during launch and reentry that is a massive fire risk.

      If you launch and reenter on an oxygen/nitrogen mix then your gas handling just got a whole lot more complicated.

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  2. Re:It's about time by cmowire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was.

    This is fairly similar to the APAS docking adapter they created for the Apollo-Soyuz test program in the 70s.

    Now... why the ISS doesn't use APAS for all links and why the ISPRs (international standard payload racks) that everything in the US section is contained within won't fit inside an APAS docking tunnel... well... heh heh.

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  3. Re:In Communist China... by cinderellamanson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law I think I will go to school to become a space lawyer.

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