Pat Flannery wrote:


kT wrote:


What the **** are you gonna do with it, let it drift until it explodes?


What are you going to do with it?

Keep it with me at all times, until which time it is to reenter.

1.) Make a space station module out of it?

That immediately comes to mind. Basically Krafft Ehricke envisioned
entering into the hydrogen tank with a space suit, from the capsule
side. I'm building a freaking capsule to go onto a five meter tank, so
I'm damn well going to install my hooks on the factory floor. It's a
very clear shot into the top of the hydrogen tank, and it's right there,
I can talk to Mitsubishi directly about the interface modification.

2.) Refuel it and use it to go somewhere?

Na, I'm just going to breathe the oxygen, and enjoy the water and
electricity while it lasts. The food will eventually run out anyways.

3.) Cut it up and use the pieces?

Are you nuts, it's all going to be worked out on the factory floor.

Because that's about the limits of what it's good for.

That's all I want to do, breathe, drink, stay warm and grow plants in
little grow rooms inside of Mitsubishi hydrogen tanks. The SSME SSTO
part of it is just so I can get larger and larger hydrogen tanks. I want
to get the efficiency down to the point where I can just hang some solar
panel sunshade arrays onto them, and start ganging them together for
larger and larger spacecraft. But the visiting thing is only going to be
for the delivery of cargo (upper stages, fuel, water, electricity,
heat and tourists and enough meals to cover the trip, plus a tip for the
long duration crew, various sundries and delights, you wouldn't know
about these things unless you've done these kinds of long tours in the
bush).

The ET has the foam on it, and one of the things that mitigated against
its use as a space station module is that the foam is going to start to
debond after a while in space, as it wasn't designed to take the solar
radiation and atomic oxygen.

The foam is definitely out. I've been looking at some ideas like massive
gravity feed from high storage, and various fast fill technologies, and
I'm not particularly worried about any booster blowoff anyways. I want
bare metal and passively shielded with solar arrays. Just very basic.

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