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NanoRacks Plans To Turn Used Rocket Fuel Tanks Into Space Habitats (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via IEEE Spectrum: A couple of weeks ago NASA announced it has committed $65 million to six companies over the course of two years for the purpose of developing and testing deep-space habitats that could be used for future missions to Mars. One of the six companies, called NanoRacks, is attempting to take empty fuel tanks from the upper stages of rockets and turn them into space habitats on-orbit. IEEE Spectrum reports: "A rocket like the the Atlas V, which can deliver payloads of nearly 19,000 kg to low Earth orbit, consists of three primary pieces: on the bottom, you've got the first stage booster, which consists of a huge engine and some big tanks holding kerosene fuel and oxidizer. Above that, there's the second stage, which consists of one or two smaller engines, a big tank for storing liquid hydrogen fuel, and a smaller tank for oxidizer. The payload, which is what all of the fuss is about, sits on top. The first stage launches the rocket off of the pad and continues firing for about four minutes. Meanwhile, the second stage fires up its own engine (or engines) to boost the payload the rest of the way into orbit. On the Atlas V, the second stage is called Centaur. Once Centaur gets its payload where it needs to go, it separates, and then suicides down into Earth's atmosphere. Getting a payload into space is so expensive because you have to build up this huge and complicated rocket, with engines and guidance systems and fuel tanks and stuff, and then you basically use it for like 15 minutes and throw it all away. But what about the second stage? You've got a whole bunch of hardware that made it to orbit, and when getting stuff to orbit costs something like $2,500 per kilogram, you then tell it to go it burn itself up in the atmosphere, because otherwise it's just useless space junk." NanoRacks thinks this is wasteful, so they want to turn these tanks into deep space habitats. IEEE notes that the hydrogen fuel tank on a Centaur upper stage has a diameter of over 4 meters, and an interior volume of 54 cubic meters, while the inflatable BEAM module that arrived at the ISS earlier this year has an interior volume of 16 cubic meters. For more details, IEEE Spectrum spoke with Jeff Manber, CEO of NanoRacks, and Mike Johnson, NanoRacks' Chief Designer. You can read their responses here.
And the US did launch a converted stage in the 70s with Skylab (albeit, Skylab was built on Earth and didn't contribute propellant / thrust... a rather different beast ;) ). That is, a dry workshop rather than a wet one.
To a rocket scientist, it's "obvious"; to a habitat designer, it's a nightmare. They're designed for dramatically different needs, and in-space construction is very difficult (and thus expensive). Orbital habitats are not just big shells, they're complex structures that take a lot of work to make. The original proponent of the wet workshop concept, George Mueller (who had worked with Von Braun on the idea), himself had switched to arguing for a dry workshop over a wet one by 1969 (this eventually became Skylab), telling congress that the wet concept had become just an inferior stopgap based on necessity rather that desirability.
There's this concept that launch costs are everything. They're not. A lot of times, it really is just cheaper to spend more in launch costs than to do more engineering, assembly, and/or in-orbit work.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Story by David Brin, using Shuttle external tanks. Whaddya know, the whole story is on the web: http://www.davidbrin.com/tankf...
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.