Ian Parker wrote:
:On 17 Jan, 02:18, "Jorge R. Frank" wrote:
:
: In addition to Rand's arguments on orbital inclination, the argument on
: orbital altitude is that ISS had to be situated below the Van Allen
: belts to minimize radiation shielding requirements, and had to be
: reachable by both the space shuttle and Soyuz/Progress, the latter of
: which has an altitude ceiling of 425 km.
:
:That is the reason for the low orbit. The inlination is another
:matter, If anything a high inclination gives more radiation.
:
You're ignoring the latter part of his comments, Ian. Decrease the
inclination of the orbit and Soyuz/Progress can't reach it anymore,
regardless of altitude. One of the requirements once we brought the
Russians in was that Soyuz/Progress must be able to reach it, so the
inclination of the original intended orbit was increased to allow
that.
Original plans put it in the inclination most convenient for the US,
which is much lower.
:
:As far as myself and the necessity for VN machines is cioncerned I
:feel I should say this. What is clearly necessary for MANNED
:spaceflight is a series of intermediate points. These intermediate
oints must be set up using the resources of space. We have low orbits
Earth, Mars etc.) surfaces and quadratures.
:
True, but no VN machines are required for that.
:
:A Zubrin type system is needed.
:
Not necessarily, but it does make the required lift smaller and allow
you to do things earlier.
:
:By this I am not really
:distinguishiong between methane and hydrogen, whether of not you have
:CO2 or just H2O is a detail. To achieve Zubrin you need one hell of a
:lot of automation.
:
Doesn't require either AI or a VN machine.
:
:You would cetainly want to know whether the system
:worked or not before you risked the lives of astronatuts.
:
Again, doesn't require either AI or a VN machine.
:
:There is one
:further point Zubrin solves one problem, how to get back from Mars.
:There is still a raft of other problems.
:
There always are.
:
:The level of automation requires :-
:
:Essential
:
:1) The ability to assemble a chemical processing kit, and operate it
:reliably.
:
It could be launched in one piece or it could be 'self-assembling' in
a simple way.
:
:Interestingly I see that Pat Flannery regards the breakdown
f CO2 as "desirable" for the ISS. Needed a piece of solar processing
:kit that operates reliably.
:
Solar is only one way to power things.
:
:Stongly desirable
:
:2) The ability to build a habitat on Mars. The ability to carry out
:what is in essense a small scale civil engineering project completely
:automatically.
:
Not required nor even particularly desirable. If you wait for this
you will wait forever.
:
:3) The ability to repair a chemical processing plant should it go
:wrong.
:
That would be nice, but if the thing goes wrong you just don't launch
the humans. Or, if the humans are already there, THEY fix it.
:
esirable
:
:4) Complete self repair
:
:This is NOT a strict VN machine, but I think it comes fairly close.
:
Omniscience and omnipotence would be handy, too, but I don't think
they're required and I don't think we need to wait until we have them.
:
:Unmanned flight by contrast simply means building on the corpus of
:knowlwedge we have already built up. Desirable might well include fast
~5km/h) movement on the surface of Mars.
:
Which we'll never do, since a single bad decision on the part of the
vehicle leads to loss of a very expensive mission.
:
:Are the resources of space required for SSP? No, but they are strongly
:desirable.
:
Probably required if you're going to produce economically competitive
power.
:
:Essential for transmission is a coherent array.
:
If by 'coherent array' you mean your wet dream about 'fragments', it's
not required.
:
:A number of people seem to be in complete denial about this. They seem
:to think thast there is some agic solution that will provide cheap
:access to LEO.
:
What does "agic solution" mean?
:
:In point of fact the Pentagon has already done a series
f experiments documented here.
:
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstar_(spaceplane)
:
All speculation. Please show REAL evidence that any such program even
existed.
:
:Fred, Rand et al. all know this better than me. Why they keep
:wittering on about low cost spacflight in the presence of all this
:evidence I really don't know. If their ideas were sound the Pentagon
:would be flying now. I think it is all part of the master's degree in
sychology and is calcklated disinformation.
:
Sorry, no degree in psychology here. Ian, as usual, is raving on
again.
:
:Martha Adams in fact strikes me as one of the more sensible people in
:this group.
:
This says more about how loony you are than it does about anything
else.
--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine