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#21
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Working Hand In Glove
What if one finger stops working properly and the astronaut starts flipping
the bird to everyone. |
#22
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Working Hand In Glove
Andrew Gray wrote:
The reader is invited to suggest how many are appropriate tasks for space-station assembly. The day people start worrying about how to pitch manure and butcher hogs in LEO, the goal may be moot anyway. I'd say that when NASA's original cost estimates for pound to orbit via Shuttle, and number of Shuttle flights per year are taken into account, the pitching manure challenge has been met triumphantly on their part; and with NASA funding going to the study of the evolution of snakes, the hogs have not only been successfully butchered, but well salted and packed in a pork barrel. The effect on dexterity is reasonably easy to design metrics for, at least to compare gloves against each other (draw circles, thread needles, juggle - wait, no...). Testing fatigue is likely more difficult; you'd need a reasonable number of trials by (some) experienced users, which amounts to a lot of time - and if any designs rely on specific ug or hard-vac tricks, a lot of hard-to-simulate time. Well, if we had an international crew test them...and one of this crew were a lesbian from the Netherlands, we could check out the dexterity of the gloves by having the crew take turns sticking their fingers into the dy..... no, we won't go there. Disclaimer: I know nothing about gloves. And all I know about Dutch lesbians is what I read in the Happy Hooker's Penthouse column OTOH, it could be used as an equally interesting robotics-design goal - build an instrumented "hand" to judge the workload of operating the glove, bolt six to a panel, leave outside the airlock for a week. Oh, nothing could go wrong with _that_ idea (image of crazed computer in control of six mechanical hands.... tearing an EVAing astronaut's arms, legs, helmet and gonads off all at once.) No thank you sir! I'll take the Dutch lesbian; if she's good enough for Xaviera, she's Gouda enough for me. Pat Van Der Flan |
#23
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Working Hand In Glove
Derek Lyons wrote:
One suspects you mistyped. RAH as a former serving officer should have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark. Maybe he pulled something on the whole ship's crew.... Pat |
#24
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Working Hand In Glove
Hop David wrote in message ...
Len wrote: iable, (snip) Telerobots will do most of the routine, "outside" work. Small, manned, maneuverable, support vehicles may be an important adjunct. As I mentioned earlier, robotic hands are still a poor, clumsy substitute for real hands. But robotic hands will improve sooner or later (hopefully sooner). Assembling an automobile requires only about 20 man-hours; nearly all the work is done by robots. But a certain amount of manned presence is critical. Repetitive assembly line tasks are comparable to orbital construction? It'd be nice to have the economy of scale where we'd have assembly lines. If so, then the "factory floor" would have to be assembled in space. Our design concept for structures too large to be carried prefabricated is highly modular. The trick is to have robots capable of repositioning themselves to do basically repetitive jobs. The difficulty of getting proper reaction forces is partially offset by the lack of gravitational forces. Best regards, Len (Cormier) PanAero, Inc. (change x to len) http://www.tour2space.com |
#26
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Working Hand In Glove
(Len) wrote:
Our design concept for structures too large to be carried prefabricated is highly modular. The trick is to have robots capable of repositioning themselves to do basically repetitive jobs. That's great for building the *structure*, but does little for filling the structure with stuff. D. -- The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found at the following URLs: Text-Only Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html Enhanced HTML Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html Corrections, comments, and additions should be e-mailed to , as well as posted to sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for discussion. |
#27
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Working Hand In Glove
(Bill Bogen) wrote in message . com...
(Len) wrote in message . com... (Bill Bogen) wrote in message . com... (Len) wrote in message . com... Hop David wrote in message ... ....snip..... Assembling stuff in a vacuum is hard when you have cucumber fingers. The key item required for assembly in space is frequent, reliable, low-cost access. With frequent, reliable, low-cost access, relying on hangars and assembly bays will be more logical than not having them. Sure but you have to assemble the hangars, etc. Also, not all work in the vacuum of space will be in low Earth orbit or in convenient facilities. Some combination of prefab and telerobots should be able to do this job. If you are referring to people on Earth remotely operating robots in orbit, I think you may be underestimating the difficulties introduced by the light-speed time lag, especially if the signal is routed to a geosynch satellite first. If the operator is nearby (in a station/habitat) and the robot has well-designed, dextrous effector 'fingers', well, then put the 'fingers' at the end of a space suit arm and skip the expensive robot. I couldn't agree with you more with respect to the need for local manned presence. I even think that some type of small, maneuverable excursion modules would be desirable, but these would not be "suits." I do not think that robots in space would be relatively expensive. The main cost--even with low-cost space transportation--is likely to be transportation. This is probably compounded by the relative needs for "maintenance supplies" when comparing people with robots. But I do agree that the combination of people plus robots is likely to be a must for a robot-based construction strategy. Telerobots will do most of the routine, "outside" work. Maybe but to be effective they'd have to be operated by someone on site (light speed lag from Earth is troublesome) and if you're going to have someone there anyway, it's cheaper to put a person in a suit than build and maintain a robot. What is your basis for saying that. See above. You weren't planning on sending people into orbit without making spacesuits available to them, were you? Spacesuits are likely to be a necessary adjunct. However, I think the primary construction approach would not rely much on spacesuits. Small, manned, maneuverable, support vehicles may be an important adjunct. Sounds like a rigid suit. Still need gloves/manipulators of some sort. I had in mind something like the excursion modules in 2001--perhaps smaller. Cool. Still need manipulators, don't we? Mais oui. But these do not necessarily need to house human hands. The manipulators may not even be physically connected to the excursion module. But the human "advisor" could observe the manipulator at close hand through appropriate windows and/or sensors. Not that I think that gloved hands would not be very useful. It's just that they are not the only option. I suspect some combination of the two would be best. Assembling an automobile requires only about 20 man-hours; nearly all the work is done by robots. But a certain amount of manned presence is critical. Yep. So we need better gloves. I think better gloves would be very useful. But I think that frequent, reliable, low-cost access is far more important and would open up many new options. The two are separate issues. Investing a million or 10 million in new gloves won't delay CATS. No argument. Plesae understand that I am not against this. However, I do not want to detract from what I view as the main problem: the need for frequent, relliable, low-cost access to space. As Rand suggests, we do not have to make a choice. I would like to see both. IMO, the size of what is assembled is restricted more by the uncontrolled reentry hazard, than any other factor. If that were true, ISS wouldn't be as big as it is, would it? I think cost is the limiter. For the cost of ISS, something perhaps 1000 times more massive would become possible with truly low-cost access; there is a compounding effect with respect to total costs. Moreover, is anyone ready to say that uncontrolled reentry of ISS would not be a serious problem? You're talking $5 or $10 per pound; sounds great but I'm not sure how you'd achieve that; even fuel alone would cost roughly $10/pound of payload, I think. No, I am not talking about $5 or $10 per pound; however, $100 or $200 per pound can easily enable something 1000 times more massive, because of compounding, interacting cost effects. I think that $100 or $200 per pound is quite attainable. What is needed is a sufficient market and sufficient credibilty for a non-traditional company to attract sufficient investors to build a real space transport. Of course an uncontrolled re-entering ISS would be a serious problem but I don't think the designers said, "Hmmm, better not make it any bigger, just in case...." A commercial operator has to think in terms of how much liabliity risk the government will allow a commercial operator to take. Best regards, Len (Cormier) PanAero, Inc. (change x to len) http://www.tour2space.com |
#28
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Working Hand In Glove
In article , Derek Lyons wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." One suspects you mistyped. One thinks you overestimate my enthusiasm. Someone else mistyped, I just pasted. ;-) RAH as a former serving officer should have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark. And, so, we finally learn just *why* Heinlein never liked to talk about how he left the Navy... rich... (Wait, that was Nixon. I really must stop confusing those two.) Attepting to steer this back on topic, what's the accepted term for piloting a spacecraft on-orbit? -- -Andrew Gray |
#29
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Working Hand In Glove
Andrew Gray wrote:
In article , Derek Lyons wrote: RAH as a former serving officer should have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark. And, so, we finally learn just *why* Heinlein never liked to talk about how he left the Navy... rich... (Wait, that was Nixon. I really must stop confusing those two.) Attepting to steer this back on topic, what's the accepted term for piloting a spacecraft on-orbit? I dunno. (In maritime usage 'conning' and 'piloting' are different functions, but the exact differences always eluded me.) The OOD (of a ship) usually has the Deck and the Conn, unless we were maneuvering in or out of restricted waters (read - port), in which case we stationed a Conning Officer, while the OOD retained the Deck. D. -- The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found at the following URLs: Text-Only Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html Enhanced HTML Version: http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html Corrections, comments, and additions should be e-mailed to , as well as posted to sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for discussion. |
#30
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Working Hand In Glove
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