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Working Hand In Glove



 
 
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  #11  
Old February 24th 04, 01:40 AM
Hop David
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Default 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  
Old February 24th 04, 03:22 PM
Len
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Default 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

  #13  
Old February 24th 04, 08:49 PM
Bill Bogen
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Default Working Hand In Glove

(Len) wrote in message . com...
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.


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.

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.

Small, manned,
maneuverable, support vehicles may be an important adjunct.


Sounds like a rigid suit. Still need gloves/manipulators of some
sort.

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.

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.

  #14  
Old February 25th 04, 01:28 AM
Hop David
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Default 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  
Old February 25th 04, 04:35 AM
Len
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Default 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

  #17  
Old February 25th 04, 10:11 PM
Bill Bogen
external usenet poster
 
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Default 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  
Old February 25th 04, 10:14 PM
Bill Bogen
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Default 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  
Old February 25th 04, 11:15 PM
Andrew Gray
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Default 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  
Old February 26th 04, 12:35 AM
Derek Lyons
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Default 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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