Why not Skylab Redux?

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:55:28 +0100, in a place far, far away, Darren J
Longhorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

On 26 Sep 2005 11:13:57 -0700, "Alex Terrell"
wrote:

It would be nice to put a space station into a Highly elliptical Earth
orbit. Then a CEV could launch form Earth and dock with the station at
perigee. Its apogee would pass near the moon. A lunar tug (fueled on
the surface of the moon) would rendezvous, bringing a returning CEV and
leaving with the CEV.

Very probably a dumb question, but could you dock with such a station
without being in the same highly elliptical orbit?

Yes, but it would be a very hard dock...

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 22:59:39 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:55:28 +0100, in a place far, far away, Darren J
Longhorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

On 26 Sep 2005 11:13:57 -0700, "Alex Terrell"
wrote:

It would be nice to put a space station into a Highly elliptical Earth
orbit. Then a CEV could launch form Earth and dock with the station at
perigee. Its apogee would pass near the moon. A lunar tug (fueled on
the surface of the moon) would rendezvous, bringing a returning CEV and
leaving with the CEV.

Very probably a dumb question, but could you dock with such a station
without being in the same highly elliptical orbit?

Yes, but it would be a very hard dock...

....and, presumably, vehicle doing the docking would have to be of
negligible mass compared to the station?

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 21:07:35 +0100, in a place far, far away, Darren J
Longhorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Very probably a dumb question, but could you dock with such a station
without being in the same highly elliptical orbit?

Yes, but it would be a very hard dock...

...and, presumably, vehicle doing the docking would have to be of
negligible mass compared to the station?

That would depend on how you wanted to apportion the damage.