Working Hand In Glove

That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

I agree with you about the importance of designing a better spacesuit
glove and that a competition (the 'G-Prize'?) would be a great way to
do it. But a small quibble: there's no need to build a vacuum box to
test the glove, just seal the sleeve pretty well around the user's arm
and run an air line and regulator to the glove to keep it pressurized
to 1/2 atmosphere. This would allow more flexibility in the choice of
test tasks.

Rand Simberg wrote:
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html


Excellent column, Rand!

In addition to better suits, I think better remote controlled robotic
hands would be useful. Remote controlled robotic hands presently exist
but it's my understanding they're not nearly as dextrous as real hands.

It seems to me better robotic hands is an attainable goal. I should
think these would be useful in many non-space industrial applications.

They would be helpful to space exploration beyond orbital construction
also. For example, it would be good for the occupants of a lunar hab to
be able to do outside maintenance without opening and closing air locks.


I also believe something like an X-prize awarded to first people to
repair something complicated in a vacuum is a good idea.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

Rand, I remember a book with a 1962 copyright that
itemized six ways of getting to the moon. Only the
sixth way involved heavy lift--and the author considered
that approach not worth further discussion.

I wish I could give you a reference, but I evidently
loaned the book and didn't get it back.

As for risk, I never saw the "logic" behind the belief
that building a Saturn V on a tight schedule was less
risky than building a lot of proven Saturn I's and going
for assembly in low Earth orbit.

As a side bet to the Saturn I, I wanted us to try
to develop a fully reusable space transport. This
would have avoided the obvious (from a 1962 perspective)
dead-end nature of the chosen approach.

Best regards

Len (Cormier)
PanAero, Inc.
(change x to len)
http://www.tour2space.com

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

The glove-prize does seem like a good idea. Especially in terms of
the "can be won in a garage" part. I'm not sure whether I'd pick the
first contestant to achieve the task, or have a panel of judges pick
the best design (I'm sure there are plenty of designs which would win
the prize but have problems working in a real spacesuit, for example),
or what. But the contest would be cheap enough to run, that there
isn't much to lose.

Now, exactly how much assembly I'd do via EVA, and how via docking,
refueling (a la Progress), and the like is also an open question. The
ISS approach is EVA-intensive (and if you think that's bad, you should
see earlier incarnations of Freedom/Fred/etc), and it is far from
clear to me that there are big gains from doing it this way.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

Consider also that our goal then was
not to open up space in any sustainable way,
but to simply beat the Russians to the moon.

On what do you base that statement? Many people had many goals. Many
people had the goal of opening up space in a sustainable way. Politicians
form coalitions. Why would labor union workers and gays be members of the
same party?

Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on orbit
assembly. Linking up a lunar lander with a command module is essentially a
docking task (unless you're talking about lots of little parts). Who do you
envision doing the assembly -- people on a space station, or the people who
want to go to the moon?

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html


Hasn't anyone thought of using some sort of pressurization control
(preferably mechanic, as electronic is failure prone) to enable the suit to
automatically adjust to joint motion?

In-orbit assembly does have its share of problems, though. What are you
gonna do if one launch fails and you have a partly assembled spaceship in
orbit? How are you gonna keep it there? Do we need to build everything in
doubles to compensate for a launch failure? How much manual assembly (i.e.
by humans) are you going to require or is it all going to be click-n-snap?

"Mike Rhino" wrote:
Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on orbit
assembly.

Other than the well known and long standing problems existing suits
have caused workers on orbit and in vacuum, no, there's no connection.

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.

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Mike Rhino" wrote:
Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on
orbit
assembly.

Other than the well known and long standing problems existing suits
have caused workers on orbit and in vacuum, no, there's no connection.

What's the proposed assembly plan? Are you talking about docking two ships
together or putting 20 pieces together? If you are talking about people
putting things together, which people -- people heading to the moon or
people in a space station?

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 00:43:52 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
"Mike Rhino" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
.. .
That's not the title of my latest Fox Column, but it should have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111821,00.html

Consider also that our goal then was
not to open up space in any sustainable way,
but to simply beat the Russians to the moon.

On what do you base that statement?

History and reality.

Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on orbit
assembly.

Really?