orbiters added to ISS

With the shuttles being retired in the future, could the orbiters be
added to the iss? Why not just leave them in space, using the cargo
bay to contain space for living quarters, labs etc. They could be
launched into space, with the crews leaving via Soyuz. With five
shuttles all docked together, it would create a large space station on
it own. One could be serviced as an emergency escape system. It just
seems stupid to retire them to museums when their real place is in
space.

"matt" wrote in
oups.com:

With the shuttles being retired in the future, could the orbiters be
added to the iss? Why not just leave them in space, using the cargo
bay to contain space for living quarters, labs etc. They could be
launched into space, with the crews leaving via Soyuz. With five
shuttles all docked together, it would create a large space station on
it own. One could be serviced as an emergency escape system. It just
seems stupid to retire them to museums when their real place is in
space.

The orbiters are not designed for extended durations in space. Their
systems are optimized around short-duration flight, so they'd either
require extensive mods prior to being launched for the permanent flights,
or they'd require a ruinous amount of inflight maintenance.

The orbiter thermal control system in particular will be troublesome. At
certain sun angles, it is impossible to satisfy shuttle thermal, station
thermal, and station solar power constraints simultaneously. The shuttle
program gets around that problem now by creating launch window cutouts
during periods where the sun angle would be bad during docked ops. If the
orbiter is up there permanently, there's no way around the limitation short
of redesigning the thermal control system. This would be greatly
exacerbated by having more than one orbiter docked to the station at a time
(but see below...).

The orbiter cabin is less shielded from orbital debris than the station,
and would carry a higher risk of critical penetration. The pressure hull
also has a higher leak rate over long durations than is acceptable for the
station. Its atmosphere would have to be constantly replenished.

The station isn't big enough for its shuttle docking ports to accommodate
more than one orbiter at a time. The orbiter would complicate station
attitude control by putting a huge inert mass at one end.

The orbiter would not be useful as an escape vehicle for long. If you power
it down completely, the propellant lines will eventually freeze. If you
keep the orbiter powered up just enough to keep everything healthy, it
becomes a power drain on the station. Eventually, its tires will deflate
and it will be useless as an escape vehicle.

In short, the orbiter isn't designed for the job, redesigning it for the
job would be an expensive pain, and a permanently-attached orbiter would
eventually become a burden on the station rather than an asset.

--
JRF

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

"matt" wrote in message
oups.com...
With the shuttles being retired in the future, could the orbiters be
added to the iss? Why not just leave them in space, using the cargo
bay to contain space for living quarters, labs etc. They could be
launched into space, with the crews leaving via Soyuz. With five
shuttles all docked together


Five?

"El Rey de los Chingones" wrote in message
k.net...

"matt" wrote in message
oups.com...
With the shuttles being retired in the future, could the orbiters be
added to the iss? Why not just leave them in space, using the cargo
bay to contain space for living quarters, labs etc. They could be
launched into space, with the crews leaving via Soyuz. With five
shuttles all docked together


Five?

Yes, that includes the super secret ones.

On Sat, 14 May 2005 22:09:51 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:

With the shuttles being retired in the future, could the orbiters be
added to the iss? Why not just leave them in space, using the cargo
bay to contain space for living quarters, labs etc. They could be
launched into space, with the crews leaving via Soyuz. With five
shuttles all docked together

Five?

Yes, that includes the super secret ones.

You've been watching too much "West Wing".

Brian