Herb Schaltegger wrote:
Worse - you have to DESIGN it first. And that part is expensive and
very, very time-consuming. Fabrication is rather anti-climactic after
all the drama of design, re-design, PDR, CDR, and qual.


Repeating:

The design of the interfaces to emulate the cargo bay is done. It is
defined and documented. It is just a question of emulating it by adding
support struts and proper attach points and the mechanisms to release
it. It isn't a question os re-inventing the wheel here.

When MD Robotics built the extension boom, the design and schematics of
the interface of the arm effector to which the boom would connect was
already done, they just had to build a connector that was compatible and
build another effector at the end of the boom. They didn't have to spend
years in committes deciding how many connectors and what type of
connectros and how the connectors should be arranged in the effector,
this work had been done decades earlier.

Same for modules that were designed to be carried in the cargo bay. The
interfaces are known and documented. It isn't a question of designing
new ones from scratch, it is a question of emulating them.


And since you're concerned about noise/vibration, ESA has already put
Columbus through its noise/vibration lab. So they can put it in it again
with the data from Arianne instead of Shuttle and compare the
differences. Check out the ESA web site.

Nobody is saying that they can just pop Columbus at the top of Arianne
and launch it. What you need are modifications to the ATV service
module to support modules meant for the shuttle (power, data and
support) and obviously software changes to ATV for the approach to ISS.
(Or somehow put a russian docking collar up front and put a PGDF on the
station where the arm could reach for the module, extract it and then
let ATV undock and de-orbit with just struts linking the docking collar
with the service module and nothing left in between.