ISS vs Skylab

stork wrote:

I thought the deal with the space station was that it would be LEO
platform that we could assemble larger craft in space with.


That was certainly a major part of what space stations were supposed to
do historically; Tsiolkovsky referred to them as "Cosmodromes in the
Cosmos" IIRC. And of course the space stations as envisioned in the
1950's were supposed to be the place where Moon and Mars ships got
built. The Soviets tried to use their Salyut and Almaz type stations for
both civilian research and military reconnaissance purposes; but without
much success in terms of real results in either arena.
What we should have noted is the Russian lesson that by the time they
got up to a station the size of Mir, the crew was spending most of their
time in station support and maintenance functions rather than doing any
useful work using the station's research equipment. This was known
before we designed the ISS outgrowth of Reagan's Space Station Freedom
financial debacle, and we chose to ignore it.

Like, a
space station was a stepping stone to get back to the moon and to mars.
But what it does now, I do not know.


Serves as a source of income for Russia as they send tourists to it.
In short, we spent a great deal of time and treasure to build Russia a
tourist trap.

Pat

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:

That was never the plan for ISS.


I remember at one point NASA's PAO claimed that it was going to find the
cure for AIDS.
In this case, I think they meant Aerospace Industry Declining Sales. ;-)


Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
What we should have noted is the Russian lesson that by the time they
got up to a station the size of Mir, the crew was spending most of their
time in station support and maintenance functions rather than doing any
useful work using the station's research equipment.

I suspect this is an outgrowth of factors other than sheer size.
(Maintenance, to some degree, does scale with size, but it's not
linear and not 1:1.)

This was known before we designed the ISS outgrowth of Reagan's Space
Station Freedom financial debacle, and we chose to ignore it.

Cite?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Neil Gerace a écrit dans le message :
...
snip
Isn't space supposed to be a DMZ?
What do you think GPS is, if not a DoD system?

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:
What we should have noted is the Russian lesson that by the time they
got up to a station the size of Mir, the crew was spending most of their
time in station support and maintenance functions rather than doing any
useful work using the station's research equipment.

I suspect this is an outgrowth of factors other than sheer size.
(Maintenance, to some degree, does scale with size, but it's not
linear and not 1:1.)

This was known before we designed the ISS outgrowth of Reagan's Space
Station Freedom financial debacle, and we chose to ignore it.

Cite?

D.

One thing worth pointing out re SSF - at the more-or-less equivalent
build milestone to what's in place now, SSF would have had the U.S.
Lab, the U.S.Hab, and two full-equipped Nodes. It also would have a
full-time crew of 4 rather than 3. At completion, rather than
supporting 7 or whatever the plan currently is, it would have had a
crew of 8, plus a second Lab, a second Hab, two more Nodes, a
centrifuge module, airlock, Columbus lab, JEM/Kibo lab, two cupolas,
etc.

In short, a good deal of the maintenance issue can be chalked up to
too small a crew, combined with a vastly stretched-out assembly
sequence which allows things to get older and more worn out during
station assembly rather than following it.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
"Wow! This is like saying when engineers get involved, harmonic
oscillations tear apart bridges."
~Hop David
http://www.angryherb.net

"stork" wrote in message
ups.com...
TJB replied to

Probably the single biggest mistake we made in our entire space
program
was building that damn thing.

I thought the deal with the space station was that it would be LEO
platform that we could assemble larger craft in space with. Like, a
space station was a stepping stone to get back to the moon and to mars.
But what it does now, I do not know.

Neither the ISS nor Skylab were at the proper inclination for this purpose.
Skylab was at a high inclination for earth observation, and ISS is at a high
inclination due to Russian launch restrictions.

The shuttle takes a big payload hit because of the high inclination of ISS.
Anything launched from KSC to ISS takes a payload hit, perhaps not as big as
the shuttle (due to its high dry mass), but a hit nonetheless.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...

One thing worth pointing out re SSF - at the more-or-less equivalent
build milestone to what's in place now, SSF would have had the U.S.
Lab, the U.S.Hab, and two full-equipped Nodes. It also would have a
full-time crew of 4 rather than 3.

Isn't it true, though, that the restriction on ISS's crew size is due to the
Shuttle being grounded? Seems to me that with a US-only station, it would be
unusable (and falling into disrepair) right at the moment.

In article
,
"Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...

One thing worth pointing out re SSF - at the more-or-less equivalent
build milestone to what's in place now, SSF would have had the U.S.
Lab, the U.S.Hab, and two full-equipped Nodes. It also would have a
full-time crew of 4 rather than 3.

Isn't it true, though, that the restriction on ISS's crew size is due to the
Shuttle being grounded? Seems to me that with a US-only station, it would be
unusable (and falling into disrepair) right at the moment.

The restriction of 2 versus 3, yes. Even with the shuttle flying
again, however, ISS is currently only configured to support 3
full-time crew members.

The point I was really trying to address, however, was the concept of
how the size of the station and crew capability intersects with its
maintenance status. Yes, the reduction of ISS to two versus the
nominal three impacts maintenance because there's more maintenance
work to be done per person. However, it seems to me that the biggest
factor is that assembly has been (and continues to be) stretched out -
stuff is literally reaching and exceeding its design lifetime before
replacement or augmentation to system capacities are added to the
configuration.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
"Wow! This is like saying when engineers get involved, harmonic
oscillations tear apart bridges."
~Hop David
http://www.angryherb.net

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:24:54 +0800, "Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...

One thing worth pointing out re SSF - at the more-or-less equivalent
build milestone to what's in place now, SSF would have had the U.S.
Lab, the U.S.Hab, and two full-equipped Nodes. It also would have a
full-time crew of 4 rather than 3.

Isn't it true, though, that the restriction on ISS's crew size is due to the
Shuttle being grounded? Seems to me that with a US-only station, it would be
unusable (and falling into disrepair) right at the moment.

Seems like that isn't too far from the current situation with ISS anyway.

Had it been a US station, a CRV would have been developed out of necessity-
otherwise a shuttle would have ended up being stationed there somehow (not
an easy thing) to serve as a lifeboat. And if the CRV had been built, perhaps it
would have by now been developed further into a CEV (if I'm getting my acronyms
straight , allowing the shuttle to have been either retired by now, or only
needed for new construction- not crew rotation.

That isn't too far from the current situation with ISS now as well.

Dale

"Neil Gerace" wrote in message
...

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...

One thing worth pointing out re SSF - at the more-or-less equivalent
build milestone to what's in place now, SSF would have had the U.S.
Lab, the U.S.Hab, and two full-equipped Nodes. It also would have a
full-time crew of 4 rather than 3.

Isn't it true, though, that the restriction on ISS's crew size is due to
the
Shuttle being grounded? Seems to me that with a US-only station, it would
be
unusable (and falling into disrepair) right at the moment.

Without Soyuz, it couldn't be permanently manned. Without the shuttle, ISS
is having some very severe resupply problems, not to mention the fact that
the bulk of the remaining modules needed for ISS assembly are manifested to
fly on the shuttle.

When the Clinton Administration "saved" the space station program by
bringing in the Russians, they created the ISS program, which has the US and
Russia co-dependant on each other for their manned spaceflight "fix".

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.