ISS News

One of the fun things about going to the AIAA Space 2003 conference last
week is getting the straight scope from old ISS buddies.

Top 3

Beta cloth on the truss segments is degrading due to atomic oxygen (will
make debris). It will need to be replaced in the next few years.
The MCA in the US Lab completely failed. Now, no one can make sure the air
in different location on ISS is good (people joked about flying 10-20 small
birds..microgravity research.. yeah that's it Ug research!).
The H2O runs out the end of April 2004.

Other than that, the future for space missions looks real bright!

Bit

One of the fun things about going to the AIAA Space 2003 conference
last week is getting the straight scope from old ISS buddies.

Sound like solvable problems. But yes, thanks for posting. Always
good to hear about this.

And I do like the "Canary in the ISS" method of assessing air quality.

bitflip wrote:
Beta cloth on the truss segments is degrading due to atomic oxygen (will
make debris). It will need to be replaced in the next few years.

Is that cloth used anywhere else ? (Z1, P6 ?)

The MCA in the US Lab completely failed.

Is there a backup solution for this ?


The H2O runs out the end of April 2004.

Now, that is the big piece of news. Any confirmation of this ? This news is
quite disconcerting, if true, his would put undue pressure on NASA to launch
the Shuttle in March.

At this point in time, are there any Progress-based solutions that would
enable a longer automomy ? (an extra launch) ?

Any chance ATV could be launched earlier ?

Any chance ATV could be launched earlier ?


ESA was asked to, but from what I hear they cannot speed it up, in fact
might be a small delay.

Speaking of news, will be be a White House announcement about budget supplemental
for Return To Flight? Can't see it being done on the old 04 budget.

Speaking of news, will be be a White House announcement about budget
supplemental for Return To Flight? Can't see it being done on the old
04 budget.

I don't know, but I did find this:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=863
which does discuss a supplemental for FY2004.

I also vaguely remember seeing someone gripe about these "emergency"
supplementals, for Iraq and shuttle and I forget what else. But it
would probably be hard to track down that specific remark.

Jim Kingdon wrote in message ...
Speaking of news, will be be a White House announcement about budget
supplemental for Return To Flight? Can't see it being done on the old
04 budget.

I don't know, but I did find this:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=863
which does discuss a supplemental for FY2004.

I also vaguely remember seeing someone gripe about these "emergency"
supplementals, for Iraq and shuttle and I forget what else. But it
would probably be hard to track down that specific remark.

I see, that was mid. Sept., ... o well..., wonder what is going on?

In article , Jack O'Neil wrote:

The H2O runs out the end of April 2004.

Now, that is the big piece of news. Any confirmation of this ? This news is
quite disconcerting, if true, his would put undue pressure on NASA to launch
the Shuttle in March.

A week later, we find the newly revised manifest...

STS Date Time Orbiter Payload
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

114 12 Sep 04 - Atl-27 ISS-17-ULF1, MPLM 2(P)-03 (ISPRs)
ESP-2 w/ORUs, LMC (CMG)
121 15 Nov 04 - Dis-31 ISS-18-ULF1.1, MPLM(P), ICC, LMC

That's, what, four an a half months between the nominal H2O problem and
Shuttle replenishment... interesting. Anyone heard anything else about
this?

--
-Andrew Gray

Andrew Gray wrote:
The H2O runs out the end of April 2004.
114 12 Sep 04 - Atl-27 ISS-17-ULF1, MPLM 2(P)-03 (ISPRs)
ESP-2 w/ORUs, LMC (CMG)

That's, what, four an a half months between the nominal H2O problem and
Shuttle replenishment... interesting. Anyone heard anything else about
this?

Perhaps with a planned return in march, they had planned Progress flights to
keep station up to April 2004. Now that NASA has essentially officially
delayed Shuttle to September, the Russians may be forced to review production
schedules for progress as well as review cargo manifest to include more water
at the expense of other stuff.

In their current rythm on the station, how much rationing of water is done ?
Is there any chance that they may consider boiling condensate to make it
usable again as drinking water ?

Also, looking at the www.russianspaceweb.com section on Progress.

Progress M M1 - M1 is current since about 2000.
Water 420kg 300kg ( 1kg of water is 1 litre )
Air/O2 50kg 40kg


These reductions in life-support capabilities were done to increase fuel
capacity. Water is now stored inside the pressurised compartment. With
Progress-M, it was stored in the unpressurised section. These changes made
sense in an ISS context since the Shuttle produced lots of water as a by
product of its fuel cells. But as the sole providor of life support to ISS,
the addional 120 litres of water would probably be quite welcomed.

(notes: dates are launch dates. I think in Moscow or Baikonour time
information from www.russianspaceweb.com, with a few holes plugged from nasa
press releases).

Launches:
Feb 2 2003 10P M 47
June 8 2003 11P M1-10
Aug 29 12P M-48
Nov 18 ??
Jan 30 2004 13P M1-11 This one was originally scheduled for nov 11
May 25 14P
July 22 15P

Days between launches:
10P (126) 11P (82) 12P (81) ?? (73) 13P (116) 14P ( 58) 15P

With 4 launches per year, It means an average elapsed 91 days between
launches. Between fbruary 2003 and Jan 2004, the average will have been 78
days. So the russians have narrowed launch dats by 13 days.

With a re-launch date of february for Shuttle, we can see why the russians
would have put a large gap between jan-30 and may-25, which would allow them
to get back on track with production schedules. But with the shuttle not
flying, it will be most interesting to see if the russians are able to
continue to launch progress vehicles with about 10 days less than usual.

It is also interesting that according to russianspaceweb.com, the november
18th launch seems to be "added", with no designated number.

Also, other non-official information I have gathered shows a consumption of
about 625 litres of water for a period of 160 days, which would yield 3.9
litres per day, or 1.95 litre per day per person.

300 litres would last 76.8 days.
420 litres would last 107.5 days.

Now, I am not sure what happens to water consumption during the soyuz taxi
missions, especially this upcoming one with a 3rd crewmember. If the station
supports 5 crewmembers instead of 2 for about one week, that would be quite a
drain on resources.

It will be most interesting to see if Duque is replaced by a large bag of
water on the next Soyuz mission, now that it is known that the shuttle ain't
flying till Sept 2004. If they can add 80 kilos of water instead of Duque,
that is 20 days worth of water, which would greatly help bridge that 116 day
gap between jan and may 2004.

Thomas Paris wrote:
[snip]

It will be most interesting to see if Duque is replaced by a large bag of
water on the next Soyuz mission, now that it is known that the shuttle ain't
flying till Sept 2004. If they can add 80 kilos of water instead of Duque,
that is 20 days worth of water, which would greatly help bridge that 116 day
gap between jan and may 2004.

Thanks for the very informative post.
I guess it's time to start bottling up the urine!
I wonder if they'll minimize TEVIS time.