Habitability of station to 2005 ?

John Doe writes:

....

And if the shuttle must remain grounded until 2005, does the ATV
then become a serious possibility to help resupply the station ?
How realistic is it to expect an ATV to actually dock to the station
with real supplies between now and the shuttle's return to flight ?

First flight is planned for Sept. 2004.

http://launchers.esa.int/export/SPEC...XMS1VED_0.html

Does the ATV have any unpressurized cargo capacity ?

Does not look like it has unpressurized cargo capacity:
Dry cargo: 1500-5500 kg
Water: 0-840 kg
Gas (Nitrogen, Oxygen, air, 2 gasses/flight): 0-100 kg
ISS re-boost and attitude control propellant: 0-4500 kg
Total cargo upload capacity: 7667 kg

http://launchers.esa.int/export/esaH...MOC_iss_0.html

Given that the ATV is using a Progress/Soyuz docking port, all cargo
is either manually unloaded or in the case of liguids and gases
transferred through the automatic facilities incorporated in the
docking adapters (ATV is much like a Progress, only bigger).

The HTV (Japan) will have unpressurized cargo capability,
unfortunately it won't fly before 2007.

http://www.nasda.go.jp/projects/rock...mponent_e.html

--
Manfred Bartz

First flight is planned for Sept. 2004.

http://launchers.esa.int/export/SPEC...XMS1VED_0.html

Well they better hope there are no show stoppers found while inspecting the
remaining shuttles. Finding say something like a cracked fuel liner could screw
the schedule futher. With the daylight launch constraints pretty soon there
will be few opportunities to launch at all.

"Manfred Bartz" wrote in message
...
John Doe writes:
[snip]
Does the ATV have any unpressurized cargo capacity ?

Does not look like it has unpressurized cargo capacity:

It's worth noting that the Russians don't have any unpressurised cargo
capacity of their own either, unless they want to launch it in the same way
as DC-1. It would have to be *really* important for them to do that.

Dry cargo: 1500-5500 kg
Water: 0-840 kg
Gas (Nitrogen, Oxygen, air, 2 gasses/flight): 0-100 kg
ISS re-boost and attitude control propellant: 0-4500 kg
Total cargo upload capacity: 7667 kg

These figures are very interesting. The propellant capacity of the ATV is
almost 3/4 of the total capacity of Zarya's tanks. Even if an ATV is
launched with full propellant tanks, those figures would suggest that
there's plenty of room left for extra food, water, and hardware. With a
target launch date of about a year from now, ISTM that ATV will be very
useful in getting the station back on track.

--Chris

John Duh a écrit dans le message :
...
Chris Bennetts wrote:
These figures are very interesting. The propellant capacity of the ATV
is
almost 3/4 of the total capacity of Zarya's tanks. Even if an ATV is
launched with full propellant tanks, those figures would suggest that
there's plenty of room left for extra food, water, and hardware. With a
target launch date of about a year from now, ISTM that ATV will be very
useful in getting the station back on track.

But isn't ESA on the hook for only about 8 or 9 of these modules/launches
?
Was the original plan to have a continuous ATV presence on station with 2
launches per year for about 4 years ? Or was it to be stretched over a
longer
period ?

AFAIK, the total planned for currently is 8 ATV, from 2004 to 2014, with the
possibility for more if the need/budget appear.


In the event of a shutle still grounded, would ATV provide enough uplift
to
support 3 cremembers, or would the shuttle-less station still have to
remain
at 2 ?

ATV cargo capacity is 7.5t and includes a refueling and reboosting
capability, as well as water and gaz delivery.

IMO, ATV has the technical capability to support the ISS, provided crew
transportation and rescue is available ( 2 Soyouz on post permanently? ).
However, I doubt the currently foreseen schedule on one ATV every 18 month
is enough. There should be the possibility to build them more quickly,
provided docking systems can be bought from Russia ( I believe this would be
the bottleneck ), but, AFAIK, the political and financial will is currently
lacking.


And are the Russians expected to stop Progress launches as soon as ATV is
fully operational, or will there be dual Progress/ATV launches throughout
the
life of the station ?

AT least at first, there will be dual use. I'm not sure about later years. I
think the current oblications of the Russian space agency end in 2006 but I
could be wrong and I don't know what is planned for later.

Hallerb a écrit dans le message :
...
The reality
is that NASA management would really like to keep ISS permanently
manned.

Jeff
--

Just WHY, fear unmanned control might be permanetely lost? Once unmanned
it
might be easier to close the program?

I wonder why their insistence on keeping it manned and pushing the
shuttles
return to flight to accomplish this...


Just had a funny idea.

Does the Sea Laws apply to Space?

In sea law any ship found without anyone on board is considered a wreak
eoave in french; I'm not sure of the proper word in English ) and the
property of whoever rescues it.

If the same applies in Space, the ISS is unmanned and the Chinese dock with
a Shenzou....

Does the Sea Laws apply to Space?

Short answer is "no", although there are plenty of cases in which
space law is simply unclear, and it is hard to know how a court would
rule in various hypothetical situations.

In sea law any ship found without anyone on board is considered a
wreak eoave in french; I'm not sure of the proper word in English )
and the property of whoever rescues it.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is pretty clear on this one, I believe.
A satellite remains the property (and responsibility) of the nation
which launched it in perpetuity.

There have been space stations which have been intermittently crewed -
Salyut 7 and Mir spring to mind although I doubt that is a complete
list.

jeff findley wrote:
This is exactly the kind of schedule pressure you don't want. If
shuttle safety is more important than keeping ISS permanently manned,
this date should be meaningless to the shuttle program.


You have to view it in a different way. The *station* management have to look
at the possibility of the shuttle not coming back for 2-3 years.

A temporary increase in Progress frequency is easy to do if you decide that
when shuttle returns, you will skip one progress launch, maintaining your
overall total number of Progress vehicles.

A temporary insuficiency in supplies can be handled for a certain period if
your authorize the slow use of spare consumables, but eventually, your
inventory of spares drops below safe levels. And consider that when you have
spares with expiry dates, you not only have to keep on supplying station
occupants, but also replace those spares.

So the question remains:
Can Russia maintain a Progress launch rate that allows for full supply of
goods to the station with even a bit of spare capacity to replace/replenish
spare consumables ?

Is there a sufficient confidence that ATV will launch on time that station
planners are already counting on ATV filling some gap Progress can't fill ?
Or is ATV still considered not reliable and station planners cannot yet count
on it to supply the station ?

The easiest way to allow for a third crewmember at present is to close the
loop on the life support system so that the watter needs can be reduced.
Why don't they do that?

How about the ability to get the equiptement to the station

:
And are the Russians expected to stop Progress launches as soon as ATV
is fully operational, or will there be dual Progress/ATV launches
throughout the life of the station ?

Even though the ATV has 3x the capacity of Progress, it is currently
planned to fly 3x less often. Keeping Progress operational provides more
flexibility in terms of timing. Things break up all the time on the
station and you cannot wait for 18 months until a transport vehicle can be
flown.

What if TODAY the station had a failure that there were no in orbit spare
parts?

Would we have to abandon it because theres no way to get things to orbit fast
and another progress isnt ready to go for months?

Yeah build a giga billion station and risk it all for the lack of fast parts to
orbit

This also could apply to a shuttle that say made it to orbit but couldnt
deorbit or dock with the station....

(Hallerb) writes:

What if TODAY the station had a failure that there were no in orbit spare
parts?

There is enough redundancy that this would not likely cause a serious,
immediate problem. With two crewmembers, and some spare parts, on
board, repairs can still be made and additional replacement parts can
be placed on the next Progress.

Would we have to abandon it because theres no way to get things to orbit fast
and another progress isnt ready to go for months?

As I said, there is redundancy in ISS, both from a parts point of view
and a systems point of view. Having the US and Russian segments gives
ISS systems that are different enough that common failure modes would
not likely take out the other half of the station.

Yeah build a giga billion station and risk it all for the lack of
fast parts to orbit

This also could apply to a shuttle that say made it to orbit but couldnt
deorbit or dock with the station....

You know, on PBS there was a show last night about late 1920's
aviation. Specifically, the show was about the Ford Air Tours. Death
was fairly common, hardware failures were very common, and this tour
was meant to demonstrate the reliability of early aircraft. The show
used lots of silent film footage of the tours to augment the
"commentary", which was mostly quotes from people and newspapers of
the time. Because of this, the presentation was very pure and gave
you a good feel about how the public felt about the birth of the
aviation industry. This is something I've read about in books, and
seen hardware in museums, but not seen very much in the way of film.

Here is a web site about the national air tours:
http://www.nationalairtour.org/

One of the important things to note was the public knew this was a
risky endeavor and accepted that risk. They knew people were risking
their lives in those early aircraft.

The one thing that separated public perception about spaceflight today
and the aircraft industry back then was the involvement of the
government. The public today thinks that space is "hard" and that
NASA is the only agency capable of manned spaceflight. But because
it's funded with taxpayer dollars, the public is far, far more risk
averse than in the early days of aviation.

As a government agency, NASA works hard to uphold its image as the
best and brightest in aerospace engineering. Without this public
perception, political support for the "NASA unique" requirement of
manned spaceflight would disappear.

Jeff
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