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Getting the Most Out of the Space Station (Before It's Too Late)

Posted by Soulskill on from the remember-when-we-let-our-space-program-die dept.

bmahersciwriter writes: NASA administrators are strategizing a push to do more science on the International Space Station in the coming years. The pressure is on, given the rapidly cooling relations between the U.S. and Russia, whose deputy prime minister recently suggested that U.S. astronauts use a trampoline if they want to get into orbit. Aiding in the push for more research is the development of two-way cargo ships by SpaceX, which should allow for return of research materials (formerly a hurdle to doing useful experiments). NASA soon aims to send new earth-monitoring equipment to the station and expanded rodent facilities. And geneLAB will send a range of model organisms like fruit flies and nematodes into space for months at a time.

6 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Mother Russia... by mlw4428 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ol' Mother Russia should not forget that NASA pays them good monies to send our astronauts into space. Space X is slowly becoming a viable option and American commercialized companies will carry far more weight with NASA than Russia will. Putini should also strongly consider the effects of the US (and US's allies) in implementing trade sanctions and embargos on his nation and how quickly things can go south without a single bullet needing to be fired.

    1. Re:Mother Russia... by khallow · · Score: 5, Informative

      You do not know what you are talking about. They recently developed the RD-191 and RD-0124 staged combustion engines. They are developing the Angara rocket to replace Proton. Russia is one of the largest launch services providers in the world.

      In other words, they upgraded the labels on rocket designs from the 1960s and 1970s. The RD-0110 was first flown in 1964 and the RD-170 was first developed for the Engergia rocket in the late 70s.

      If instead, we're going to compare apples to apples. we'll also have to note that SpaceX has similarly upgraded its rocket engines during the same period. For example, there are three substantial upgrades of the original Merlin 1 rocket engine (the rocket used on the Falcon 9) and a second upgrade to the Draco rocket engine (a in-space rocket engine used for maneuvering). So

      And while Russia claims to be developing Angara, as you already noted, they aren't due to the "delays" attributed to funding (which is actually the easiest part of the puzzle for Russia to fix - just add money).

      So to summarize the current count: SpaceX has developed four rocket engine designs from scratch and upgraded these four times in the same sense that Russia has upgraded the RD-170 and the RD-0110. Then they developed two launch vehicles while Russia has experienced delays in its alleged development of the Angara. Finally, SpaceX developed a new spacecraft and vertical landing technology while Russia did neither. I think you see where I'm going with this.

    2. Re:Mother Russia... by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You call replacing a gas generator engine (RD-0110) with a staged combustion engine (RD-0124) with over twice the chamber pressure an 'upgrade'? You don't know WTF you are talking about. The engine is completely new with no relation other than that it is used as a drop in replacement with compatible interfaces.

      The RD-191 to a lot of people maybe be just an RD-170 with a quarter of the combustion chambers but things are a lot more complicated than that. Plus I only gave those two engines as examples. There are more.

      Pump fed engines, Kestrel and Draco, are trivial to design in comparison. The Russians also designed some of those much later than what you mention such as the S5.98M engine used in the Briz-M upper stage used in Proton. They also designed a LOX/LH2 expander cycle engine called the RD-0146. No man. The Russians are the world leaders in liquid rocket engine design and anyone who thinks otherwise are deluding themselves.

      SpaceX is doing a nice job so far but their engines are still not state of the art.

    3. Re:Mother Russia... by cheesybagel · · Score: 4, Informative

      I guess you don't get the point. State of the art is not economical. An engine that is trivial to design and build, and which gives reasonable ISP and thrust/weight is a superior choice for rockets where you want more value out of them than you put in.

      The Russians claim staged combustion engines are more cost effective than gas generator engines. Who am I to say any different? As for SpaceX they wouldn't be working on the Raptor using a LOX/Methane staged combustion cycle while moving away from gas generators like Merlin if they thought the Russians were wrong.

      In fact if you look at the Merlin-1D a lot of the advances it has are clearly Russian tech derived like the channel wall nozzle. You know which other two stage to orbit LOX/Kerosene rocket is available in the market other than Falcon 9? Zenit.

      SpaceX is not using staged combustion now because solving those issues to get LOX/Kerosene oxidizer rich staged combustion is certainly not trivial. RD-171 took a long time to develop. Supposedly it is easier to solve the technical issues with LOX/Methane staged combustion, of which the Russians also have working engines, because it has less polymerization and coking issues.

  2. Re:Mistake to go in with the Ruskies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It never was really a science project, it was a diplomatic venture. Precisely because of the cold relations between the USA and Russia, the ISS was to showcase how antagonistic nations could set aside their differences to work together for the good of humanity. The ideal was that such a display would encourage other nations and tribes to see their personal conflicts as a little less important in the grand scheme of life. As an observation of wars since the launch of the ISS can show you, it didn't have much of an effect outside the nations that were already getting sick of open warfare.

    If Russia goes through with effectively confiscating the whole project, the RSS (too bad they're not claiming the title "Soviet" like before, "SSS" has a fun ring to it) will change from a sign of cooperation to a sign of Russian ascendency and peerlessness. What, if anything, that changes on the ground is hard to guess at. I'm not even sure most nations or people would notice, it would just be mentioned whenever someone thinks it can be used to shame an opponent in an argument (debate hasn't been the rule of politics in quite some time).

  3. Centrifugal gravity by werepants · · Score: 4, Informative

    The most useful and relevant modules would have been those that can provide artificial gravity - everybody is banking on this for enabling long term space habitation but we have just about zero on-orbit experimental data. If they only do one more thing with the ISS, that would be it. Japan even built a module for this, but it didn't get deployed so it is now just a museum piece.

    For your reading enjoyment:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...