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Future Robotic Shuttles?
A thought occurred to me today, catching up on the status of the ISS EVAs to replace the broken ammonia pump (sorry I know it's old
news, but I've been busy) that without the shuttle large pieces of broken hardware might collect around the station over time unless missions are tasked to de-orbit them. And a destructive de-orbit of broken hardware will take the mysteries of their failure with them. Again, over time, the inability to return large objects via the shuttle will have an impact. Something to consider. Maybe the old robotic Buran will see a comeback? Dave |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
Buran is long dead and buried. The more likely option is that a more capable
successor to the likes of Dragon might have the down-mass capability to return failed ORUs from the ISS US segment. But that's dependent on the overall lifetime of the ISS from now: is it going to be retired after 2020, or get extended beyond? If it's retired as early as 2020 then there would likely be no incentive to redevelop the sort of return capability the Shuttle allowed, because the operational lifetime of such a new spacecraft would be too short to justify the investment. Eddie Lyons Portsmouth, UK "David Spain" wrote in message ... A thought occurred to me today, catching up on the status of the ISS EVAs to replace the broken ammonia pump (sorry I know it's old news, but I've been busy) that without the shuttle large pieces of broken hardware might collect around the station over time unless missions are tasked to de-orbit them. And a destructive de-orbit of broken hardware will take the mysteries of their failure with them. Again, over time, the inability to return large objects via the shuttle will have an impact. Something to consider. Maybe the old robotic Buran will see a comeback? Dave |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
On Sep 11, 10:10*am, "Eddie Lyons" wrote:
Buran is long dead and buried. The more likely option is that a more capable successor to the likes of Dragon might have the down-mass capability to return failed ORUs from the ISS US segment. But that's dependent on the overall lifetime of the ISS from now: is it going to be retired after 2020, or get extended beyond? If it's retired as early as 2020 then there would likely be no incentive to redevelop the sort of return capability the Shuttle allowed, because the operational lifetime of such a new spacecraft would be too short to justify the investment. Eddie Lyons Portsmouth, UK "David Spain" wrote in message ... A thought occurred to me today, catching up on the status of the ISS EVAs to replace the broken ammonia pump (sorry I know it's old news, but I've been busy) that without the shuttle large pieces of broken hardware might collect around the station over time unless missions are tasked to de-orbit them. And a destructive de-orbit of broken hardware will take the mysteries of their failure with them. Again, over time, the inability to return large objects via the shuttle will have an impact. Something to consider. Maybe the old robotic Buran will see a comeback? Dave- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - a obvious solution would of been converting the shuttle to unmaned or minimal manned and continue flying. this could of retained the jobs and capabilities. |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
On Sep 12, 3:19*am, "Brian Gaff" wrote:
The way consumer electronics has gone, maybe we should give the Shuttle to the Chinese, let them make and launch them cheap and buy back the required capacity. *It would annoy the heck out of the electorate though! Funny how we are all happy to buy Chinese made cheap stuff, and yet we seem oblivious to what its doing for jobs. Brian boy is that the truth. without manufacturing our economy will never recover.......... |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
"JF Mezei" wrote in message ... The Shuttle and ISS are great tools in the evolution of space travel. They may not be enough to get us to Mars, but they are a step in the right direction. But the problem is that the American (government) way of doing manned spaceflight is not evolutionary -- the existing capability is thrown away to be replaced by something new. Look at the Shuttle -- the most capable spacecraft ever developed is being scrapped so it can be replaced by Apollo 2.0 (if Congress gets its way). Yes, the Shuttle should be replaced -- by the right vehicle, not a replay of 1967-75. It should be replaced by a worthy successor, which Orion clearly is not. Of course, it's too late now to develop a genuine Shuttle replacement. So the only option is to continue the usual American stop-start method of "developing" manned spaceflight. The only bright spark at present is the hope that the commercial options (especially SpaceX) at least can develop a taxi service for ISS crews (or at least for the American half). That is unless Congress succeeds in killing that initiative because of misplaced vested interests. Eddie Lyons Portsmouth, UK |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
"JF Mezei" wrote in message ... The Shuttle and ISS are great tools in the evolution of space travel. They may not be enough to get us to Mars, but they are a step in the right direction. But the problem is that the American (government) way of doing manned spaceflight is not evolutionary -- the existing capability is thrown away to be replaced by something new. Look at the Shuttle -- the most capable spacecraft ever developed is being scrapped so it can be replaced by Apollo 2.0 (if Congress gets its way). Yes, the Shuttle should be replaced -- by the right vehicle, not a replay of 1967-75. It should be replaced by a worthy successor, which Orion clearly is not. Of course, it's too late now to develop a genuine Shuttle replacement. So the only option is to continue the usual American stop-start method of "developing" manned spaceflight. The only bright spark at present is the hope that the commercial options (especially SpaceX) at least can develop a taxi service for ISS crews (or at least for the American half). That is unless Congress succeeds in killing that initiative because of misplaced vested interests. Eddie Lyons Portsmouth, UK |
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
"JF Mezei" wrote in message ... The Shuttle and ISS are great tools in the evolution of space travel. They may not be enough to get us to Mars, but they are a step in the right direction. But the problem is that the American (government) way of doing manned spaceflight is not evolutionary -- the existing capability is thrown away to be replaced by something new. Look at the Shuttle -- the most capable spacecraft ever developed is being scrapped so it can be replaced by Apollo 2.0 (if Congress gets its way). Yes, the Shuttle should be replaced -- by the right vehicle, not a replay of 1967-75. It should be replaced by a worthy successor, which Orion clearly is not. Of course, it's too late now to develop a genuine Shuttle replacement. So the only option is to continue the usual American stop-start method of "developing" manned spaceflight. The only bright spark at present is the hope that the commercial options (especially SpaceX) at least can develop a taxi service for ISS crews (or at least for the American half). That is unless Congress succeeds in killing that initiative because of misplaced vested interests. Eddie Lyons Portsmouth, UK |
#9
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
In article , nospam@
127.0.0.1 says... A thought occurred to me today, catching up on the status of the ISS EVAs to replace the broken ammonia pump (sorry I know it's old news, but I've been busy) that without the shuttle large pieces of broken hardware might collect around the station over time unless missions are tasked to de-orbit them. And a destructive de-orbit of broken hardware will take the mysteries of their failure with them. Again, over time, the inability to return large objects via the shuttle will have an impact. Something to consider. Maybe the old robotic Buran will see a comeback? No. Too expensive to resurect. Jeff -- The only decision you'll have to make is Who goes in after the snake in the morning? |
#10
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Future Robotic Shuttles?
On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:07:16 -0400, JF Mezei
wrote: At the end of the day, aren't all options for space travel "too expensive" What NASA should have done in the mid 1990s is to get funding to build a new and improved shuttle. An evolution. Instead, it has tried many times for the "revolution" with totally new designs and each time, those projects were cancelled because of cost overruns and uncertaintly in the project's success. They did have various "evolutionary" Shuttle Mk.II proposals, starting in 1985 and really gaining steam after Challenger. Shuttle II studies (most of which looked like a Shuttle External Tank with wings and a bulbous payload bay) kept going for quite a while, as a fallback / partner to X-30, and seems to have died around the time of the Space Exploration Initiative fiasco, along with ALS/NLS. NASA should have had funding to build one new orbiter every 5-8 years with more improvements as it retires the oldest remaining one. This would hace reduced costs over time as improvements were made. Rockwell offered two updated Orbiters after Challenger. NASA said no, because the new-builds (OV-2xx)) would not be compatible with the Columbia-class Orbiters (OV-1xx) and operations cost would have gone through the roof. Boeing made the same offer after Columbia, but by then anything with wings was considered eeeeeevvvvviiiiiilllll. The cost of building a new and improved orbiter would have been offset by the savings of not having to do the heavy maintenance on the oldest orbiter being replaced. But the added costs of now having to maintain two different families of space vehicles was prohibitive, especially along side the added costs of designing, qualifying, and building the updated model. The budget for it was never there, especially in the Space Station design/development era. Even the relatively cheap ASRM was unaffordable. This applies also to the Orbiter Update program, with things like Liquid Flyback Booster (RFS) all-electric APU, and non-toxic OMS/RCS, all of which were in development for implementation on the current fleet between the collapse of X-33 circa 2000 and the loss of Columbia in 2003. Yes, there would have been incompatibilities, but in the long term, costs woudl have gone down. NASA was able to live with part of its fleet having upgraded glass cockpits, They had no choice: they couldn't get spare parts for the original anymore, and they had to operate both a lot longer than planned because of Station and Shuttle delays (Endeavour didn't get its glass cockpit until after Columbia was lost.) and part having the ODS/airlock while one was left with the airlock in the crew compartment. Same airlock. Just outside instead of inside. Not a huge problem. NASA was able to upgrade SSMEs and apply the upgraded engines to the fleet progessively. But they didn't co-exist for long... a couple of flights of a new turbopump, and then fleetwide replacement. Then a couple of flights of the other turbopump, and ditto. It would have been years before the last of the Columbia-class was replaced. So it seems that NASA was quite able to live with disparate fleet of orbiters. Not nearly to the degree an updated Orbiter would have inflicted. Brian |
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