What ever happened to on-orbit assembly?

pamsuX (Allen Meece) wrote in
:

If ET's were taken to orbit, they could be adapted to be orbital
pressurized
hangars where smaller items could be assembled in a shirt sleeve
environment. But because nasa is blockading space, they won't put any
ET's into orbit. They lie and say they will but the conditions they
make are so expensive that they know that no one can comply.

OK, I'll bite...

Exactly what are those conditions, and why are they unreasonable?

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
There has been experimental work on "hard suits", in which all joints are
rotating joints (doing this for elbows etc. is tricky but possible, with
multiple joints at an angle to the arm axis) and there is no change in
volume with joint motion. This eliminates the single biggest problem, the
balloon effect. The hard suits are mostly okay, although not yet fully
developed, but have two big problems: the gloves are not okay, in fact
they're reportedly awful, and the suits are very heavy.

Assuming that someone thought maybe they could figure a way around
the problems of suit weight and mobility, what would be the minimum
demonstration of hardware that would prove the concept? Is it
necesarily a full body suit?

Would a single glove pressurized to 15 psi guage be sufficient to prove a
concept beyond reasonable doubt? Or is a vacuum box required with the
glove at 1 atm?

MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

In article ,
Derek Lyons wrote:
But von Braun and crew seem to have thought that was a good way to go.

Certainly von Braun *thought* it the way to go, but he not only
utterly lacked practical experience, he utterly lacked the basic
information needed to make a rational judgement on the issue.

In fairness, the idea was not unreasonable, if you assumed (a) dirt-cheap
Earth-to-LEO transport with high flight rates but relatively small
payloads, and (b) spacesuits not much more troublesome than arctic gear.

Even at the time, (a) was a sizable assumption, although tempting if you
made a strong (perhaps too strong) analogy to aviation. And almost
everyone assumed (b) until it became unmistakable that reality wasn't
cooperating.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

In article ,
johnhare wrote:
...The hard suits are mostly okay, although not yet fully
developed, but have two big problems: the gloves are not okay, in fact
they're reportedly awful, and the suits are very heavy.

Assuming that someone thought maybe they could figure a way around
the problems of suit weight and mobility, what would be the minimum
demonstration of hardware that would prove the concept? Is it
necesarily a full body suit?

The definitive proof is a full-body suit, simply because you have to
demonstrate adequate mobility in several tricky joints. There have been
full-body experimental hard suits already, in fact. But since they
actually work tolerably well, it's only well-functioning gloves you really
have to demonstrate.

The weight is not that big an issue in orbit, although it would be a grave
problem for planetary operations. (Even the shuttle suits are too heavy
for Mars.)

Would a single glove pressurized to 15 psi guage be sufficient to prove a
concept beyond reasonable doubt? Or is a vacuum box required with the
glove at 1 atm?

I think you'd want to use the latter, if only because it permits easy lab
work with it -- when it's time to test, you pump the box down to vacuum
and just insert your hand into the glove.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

In article ,
Andrew Gray wrote:
Plug-together orbital assembly actually was seriously considered for
launching Cassini. But the project was small enough that a one-piece
launch was possible, and orbital assembly was too costly to be competitive
despite offering some advantages.

Galileo was considered for orbital assembly, too, wasn't it

Not seriously, not that I know of. When it looked like it was too heavy
for available upper stages for a while, the answer was to split it into
two spacecraft, an orbiter and a probe carrier. And then when the problem
came back after Shuttle-Centaur's cancellation, with Galileo already built,
the answer was the multiple-gravity-assist trajectory. I don't *think*
they seriously considered orbital assembly either time.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Al Jackson wrote:
The years of March 2002 to April 2004 are the 50th anniversary of the
great Colliers Series on Space flight. (The von Braun, Ley, Whipple,
Bonestell, et al...... team.)
Looking at these magazines and books again,... the Moon Mission and
Mars Missions described, had the Moon Landers and the Orbit to Orbit
supply ships assembled in Earth Orbit. (Even, in part, the Mars
Landers.)

Now , due to orbit debris hazards, this might be more risky now.
Long EVAs are now risky.
Maybe that is a problem that could be solved.

What ever happened to 'on orbit assembly' of a space ship as a method?
Has it been looked at again?
One of the missions of the von Braun 'wheel' space station was to
serve as an assembly point for the Moon and Mars ships.
Now, one , these days would not have to build a '900 lb gorilla' fleet
as von Braun wanted, maybe just a single ship.

Not as easy as on the moon. Even the small amount of gravity and the
fact that you can easily pressurize underground hangars and such means
that you can do major fabrication and work instead of just assembly.
Orbit might as well be halfway to Mars it is so inhospitable. On
the moon, it's a lot easier.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Al Jackson wrote:
What ever happened to 'on orbit assembly' of a space ship as a method?

Partly, as others have noted, the crude state of spacesuit technology has
been a roadblock.
Hm. The art of designing products for robotic assembly is widely practiced
principle in industrial automation.
You know, you supply the trays with electronic components, casings, buttons
etc, and robots put them cellular phones together in three seconds. MBTF on
mature production lines can sometimes be measured in weeks. Why wouldnt that
work in space ?

-kert

(Derek Lyons) wrote in message ...
(Al Jackson) wrote:

I don't know maybe the economics of it is not so good?
But von Braun and crew seem to have thought that was a good way to go.

Certainly von Braun *thought* it the way to go, but he not only
utterly lacked practical experience, he utterly lacked the basic
information needed to make a rational judgement on the issue.

D.

Seems strange to say von Braun lacked practical experience! Since he
and has his
(rather large group of engineers and scientists) were about the only
organization in the late 40's and early 50's with first had 'big time'
experience in astronautics!
As for lack basic practical information, much of which von Braun and
crew developed at Huntsville later, yeah that is true.
Even tho a good space suit was developed for the Collier's series,
knowing how the thing would actually work and the problems raised
would not be know until almost 10 years later.

pamsuX (Allen Meece) wrote in message ...
But von Braun and crew seem to have thought that [in-orbit assembly[ was a
good way to go.
People don't realize how hard it is to work in a space suit. About twenty
times as hard as manual labor is on the ground. The suit is not a ballet
costume, it is a stiff and hard straight jacket. Every movement is a big
physical strain.

~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

Yes I should of thought of the problems of the space suit , it still
takes a lot of training , right now, for each of the ISS assembly
missions.

You know the whole idea of 'orbital assembly' must have been thought
up for Das Marsprojekt study between 1948 and 1952. And that was not
just von Braun, but also Krafft Ehricke, Dr. Hans Friedrich, Dr. Josef
Jenissen, Dr. Joachim Mühlner, Dr. Adolf Thiel and Dr. Carl Wagner ,
plus I would guess dozens of other 'Peenemünde-ers' consulted by von
Braun. I will have to check my copy of The Mars Project , tho I can
not remember if von Braun said anything about it in about orbit
assembly, or not!

Funny, the suit in the Collier's series appears in the article by
Heinz Haber, but did he design it?

Sttrange, if you look at the Chesley Bonestell paintings for the
series , there seems to be a different suit! ...While the Fred Freemam
and Rolf Klep drawings and paintings use the 'Haber suit'!

In article ,
Kaido Kert wrote:
Partly, as others have noted, the crude state of spacesuit technology has
been a roadblock.

Hm. The art of designing products for robotic assembly is widely practiced
principle in industrial automation... Why wouldnt that work in space ?

It would, if we were building spaceships in the kind of numbers needed to
make it worthwhile. (You need to debug such processes, so they rarely
save you any effort for a very short production run.)

Arguably, a lesser form of that is practiced already, in designing modules
to be docked together automatically or semi-automatically.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |