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#11
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Working Hand In Glove
Mike Rhino wrote:
"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. Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on orbit assembly. Assembling stuff in a vacuum is hard when you have cucumber fingers. -- Hop David http://clowder.net/hop/index.html |
#12
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Working Hand In Glove
Hop David wrote in message ...
Mike Rhino wrote: "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. Better space suits would be nice, but they have nothing to do with on orbit assembly. 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. Telerobots will do most of the routine, "outside" work. Small, manned, maneuverable, support vehicles may be an important adjunct. 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. IMO, the size of what is assembled is restricted more by the uncontrolled reentry hazard, than any other factor. Best regards, Len (Cormier) PanAero, Inc. (change x to len) http://www.tour2space.com |
#14
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Working Hand In Glove
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. -- Hop David http://clowder.net/hop/index.html |
#15
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Working Hand In Glove
(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. 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. 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. 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. 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? Best regards, Len (Cormier) PanAero, Inc. (change x to len) http://www.tour2space.com |
#16
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Working Hand In Glove
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 19:35:55 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Len) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: 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. Why do we have to choose? We need both, and the former can be achieved much more cheaply than the latter. I do think that a million-dollar purse would do the job. |
#17
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Working Hand In Glove
(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. 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? 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? 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. 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. 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...." |
#18
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Working Hand In Glove
(Bill Bogen) wrote in message . com...
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. Which brings to mind: for a G-Prize competition, what should the task(s) or goal be? Type the most characters on a keyboard in X minutes? Thread a dozen needles in a minute? If the major goal is to reduce fatigue in the user, do we depend on a subjective judge as to which glove entry is least fatigueing? But the glove must also be judged on dexterity as well. |
#19
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Working Hand In Glove
In article , Bill Bogen wrote:
Which brings to mind: for a G-Prize competition, what should the task(s) or goal be? Type the most characters on a keyboard in X minutes? Thread a dozen needles in a minute? For some reason, this reminded me of the old Heinlein quote. [googles] "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." 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. If the major goal is to reduce fatigue in the user, do we depend on a subjective judge as to which glove entry is least fatigueing? But the glove must also be judged on dexterity as well. 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. Disclaimer: I know nothing about gloves. 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. -- -Andrew Gray |
#20
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Working Hand In Glove
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. RAH as a former serving officer should have known that you conn a ship, yet you con a mark. 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. |
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