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#71
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Shuttle program extension?
"Brian Thorn" wrote in message ... On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:57:35 -0400, "Jeff Findley" wrote: (Though one could argue that at some point one may want to simply accept that lifeboats aren't required for 100% of the crew.) Never gonna happen. That's a political non-starter. It's a political non-starter, but it's a bit silly. ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. Tell that to the guys at the South Pole research station. Where's their lifeboats? On top of that, evac from there in the middle of the winter is extremely dangerous at best. At some point, your station grows so big you simply can't supply lifeboats for everyone. What do you do for a Mars mission? Multiple reentry vehicles? Do you make them the safe haven for the trip back as well as the return vehicle? How big would they need to be to support the astronauts for the entire trip back? I think the lifeboat analogy breaks down for a Mars mission. Jeff -- A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein |
#72
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Shuttle program extension?
"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
... On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:57:35 -0400, "Jeff Findley" wrote: (Though one could argue that at some point one may want to simply accept that lifeboats aren't required for 100% of the crew.) Never gonna happen. That's a political non-starter. It's a political non-starter, but it's a bit silly. ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. Remember, most Titantic boats didn't even carry a full complement of passengers. So having even more lifeboats wouldn't have helped all that much. Brian -- Greg Moore Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC. |
#73
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Shuttle program extension?
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:09:59 GMT, in a place far, far away, Brian
Thorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:57:35 -0400, "Jeff Findley" wrote: (Though one could argue that at some point one may want to simply accept that lifeboats aren't required for 100% of the crew.) Never gonna happen. That's a political non-starter. It's a political non-starter, but it's a bit silly. ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. But we don't insist that they be able to deliver ship's complement all the way back to Southampton. NASA demands a lot more than a "lifeboat." |
#74
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Shuttle program extension?
Al wrote: The Dean Drive! I remember when John Campbell was extolling that to the sky! Funniest thing to come out of the Dean Drive madness (besides John Campbell taking another step down hill in the eyes of the science fiction community) was that the United Statess Patents Office wrote Dean back saying he should get in touch with the mining industry , that he has a good invention for using on mining processing shaker tables! (I don't know if Dean ever followed up on this!) Western Gear corporation actually did some tests on the Dean Drive. There's more on it he http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/dean.html Then there's the other wild space drive from the same time period, T. Townsend Brown's strange widget: http://members.gcronline.com/cbrauda/0001.htm For me, the test of a antigravity device would be to seal it in a watertight sphere weighted to achieve neutral buoyancy, rev it up and drop it into a swimming pool so that it is fully submerged, but not touching the bottom. If it starts moving in one direction, you are on to something. Pat |
#75
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Shuttle program extension?
Jeff Findley wrote: ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. With the US and Russian segments, you have completely separate systems for life support. Even if something catastrophic happened, it's not very likely to take out both sets of life support systems. Unless they close airtight hatches as they move from one module to the next, one meter hit that blew a foot-wide hole in the thing is going to vacuumate it in short order. Even if you were in a sealed-off module, it had better have spacesuits in it if you want to get to the escape Soyuz. Even a rescue Shuttle EVA would be a real problem...you'd have to repressurize the station before you opened the door to the module they were trapped in, or detach the module with them in it and return it to Earth. Pat |
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#77
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Shuttle program extension?
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:53:06 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
wrote: So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. Tell that to the guys at the South Pole research station. Where's their lifeboats? Last I checked, dry-land facilities don't require lifeboats, no matter how remote. Ships universally do. On top of that, evac from there in the middle of the winter is extremely dangerous at best. But not impossible. It has been done. Without a lifeboat on ISS, you're dead when the O2, the scrubbers, or the power die. At some point, your station grows so big you simply can't supply lifeboats for everyone. That's ridiculous. Why not? What do you do for a Mars mission? We have to accept a greater risk for deep space exploration. That's a given. Without warp drive, you can't get back to Earth in a reasonable amount of time or expect a rescue ship in a reasonable amount of time. ISS has no such excuse. There are no fundamental physics that prevent a lifeboat for all ISS crew, it is simply a matter of cost. If an ISS crew dies because they have no lifeboat, the press, critics, and the crew's survivors will universally, and loudly, proclaim that the crew died because the government was too cheap to pay for a lifeboat when the technology was essentially off-the-shelf. And the government knows this, which is why, as I said, it is a political non-starter. Brian |
#78
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Shuttle program extension?
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:39:27 GMT, in a place far, far away, Brian
Thorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:04:01 GMT, h (Rand Simberg) wrote: So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. But we don't insist that they be able to deliver ship's complement all the way back to Southampton. NASA demands a lot more than a "lifeboat." They have to. The sea lanes are relatively crowded, while LEO has exactly one human-capable "ship". Then that's the problem to be solved, not developing a "lifeboat" that comes all the way to earth and idiotically abandons a hundred-billion-dollar space station. |
#79
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Shuttle program extension?
"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
... On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:04:01 GMT, h (Rand Simberg) wrote: So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. But we don't insist that they be able to deliver ship's complement all the way back to Southampton. NASA demands a lot more than a "lifeboat." They have to. Define "have to". Question that assumption. At some point one has to make the choice to not spend the money. The sea lanes are relatively crowded, while LEO has exactly one human-capable "ship". The Titanic's lifeboats were only needed to await the next ship to come along. ISS's lifeboats don't have that luxury. Titanic had many ships within hours' travel of rescue The Californian was within sight (her radioman had gone to sleep and distress rockets were ignored by her captain, another change after Titanic was that all large ships have their radios manned 24 hours a day) and the Carpathia arrived on scene just after sunrise. ISS cannot expect to have other ships available to rescue the crew within a reasonable amount of time. Then either that has to change, or the assumption that it's a requirement has to change. As I pointed out, there are already scenarios where lifeboats won't do you much good. The government already sends hundreds of employees out on craft which have rescue capabilities that are far more feel good than actually useful. One of our own here served on one such craft. Being able to "deliver all the way back to Southampton" is a lot cheaper for NASA than having a Carpathia on standby for launch 24/7. Or is it? Seriously. I do wonder if anyone has looked at the cost of either developing a rescue craft for the next 4-5 years, paying the Russians or simply doing what is being done for Hubble. A hassle, sure, but workable if one really wants to do it. Heck I'd argue it might open up more options than what we have now. Brian |
#80
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Shuttle program extension?
"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
... On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:53:06 -0400, "Jeff Findley" wrote: So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone. Tell that to the guys at the South Pole research station. Where's their lifeboats? Last I checked, dry-land facilities don't require lifeboats, no matter how remote. Ships universally do. Really? Can you find a diagram of Los Angeles class submarines and tell me where the lifeboats are? And in any case, why should dry-land facilities be any different? When deep night hints the Antartic, that's it. You're basically there until things improve. The dramatic rescue of Dr. Nielson was just that because of the winter issues. On top of that, evac from there in the middle of the winter is extremely dangerous at best. But not impossible. It has been done. Without a lifeboat on ISS, you're dead when the O2, the scrubbers, or the power die. No, not really. There was an extremely dangerous airdrop done in July, an attempt at evacuating here didn't occur until mid-October, several months later. At some point, your station grows so big you simply can't supply lifeboats for everyone. That's ridiculous. Why not? What do you do for a Mars mission? We have to accept a greater risk for deep space exploration. That's a given. Without warp drive, you can't get back to Earth in a reasonable amount of time or expect a rescue ship in a reasonable amount of time. ISS has no such excuse. There are no fundamental physics that prevent a lifeboat for all ISS crew, it is simply a matter of cost. If an ISS crew dies because they have no lifeboat, the press, critics, and the crew's survivors will universally, and loudly, proclaim that the crew died because the government was too cheap to pay for a lifeboat when the technology was essentially off-the-shelf. And the government knows this, which is why, as I said, it is a political non-starter. And that's an attitude that needs to be changed. Again, we already have scenarios where the current lifeboat won't do much good. Witness the fire on Mir, had it been much worse we might have seen an astronaut die. Brian -- Greg Moore Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC. |
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