Shuttle program extension?

On Sep 16, 11:14�pm, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:01:33 -0400, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"

wrote:
Remember, most Titantic boats didn't even carry a full complement of
passengers. �So having even more lifeboats wouldn't have helped all that
much.

It would have helped enormously. Many hundreds died on deck for lack
of lifeboats. Yes, a few lifeboats were launched half full, but that
was made up for later by overloading the remaining boats after it was
clear that seas were calm enough to safely do so and that the
Carpathia (and the mystery ship which turned out to be the
Californian) was only hours away. Even more could have been saved if
all of the lifeboats had been overloaded, but the Titanic crew was
slow to that realization.

Brian

there are those space balls to rescue crew stuck in difficult
situations.

Brian Thorn wrote:

Last I checked, dry-land facilities don't require lifeboats, no matter
how remote. Ships universally do.

The word can also be used figuratively ...

On Sep 17, 8:43*am, bob haller safety advocate
wrote:


there are those space balls to rescue crew stuck in difficult
situations.

They were never developed

On Sep 16, 11:31*pm, John Doe wrote:


Perhaps the last shuttle flight to the station should install a modified
PMA device on node2 which would allow a soyuz to dock (even if
manually). This way, rescues would become possible once the shuttle is
retired and the USA has nothing to replace it.


No, that is where Orion docks

On Sep 16, 11:16*pm, John Doe wrote:


1. Consider that PMA2 can possibly be used as an airlock. *If you have some
primitive pressure suits stored in node2, then the stranded crewmembers
could ingress PMA2, close the hatch to the station, then depressurise
(equalise with the ship on other side which happens to be "vacuum" :-)
and open hatch to outside and then move towards a waiting Soyuz ship and
ingress through its airlock. (attach line to PMA2, then propell yourself
towards the nearby soyuz, if you fail to latch on to the soyuz, you pull
yourself back to station and try again).

2. If NODE2 has no spare suits, then someone in the soyuz would have to EVA
*with spare suits, place them in an already depressurised PMA2, close
the hatch, let the crew then repressurise it, put the suits on and then
egress.

3. If a crewmember went from 14.7 to 5psi with only O2 pre-breathe for a
few minutes+ whatevcer time it takes for a PMA2 to equalise to vaccum,
how long before "the bends" symtoms would appear ? Could they go for say
30 minute at 5psi in pure O2 and then repressurise in the soyuz and be
relatively OK ?

1. Not viable. The crew can't just "jump" to the Soyuz.

2. Not viable, it would take at least 2 Soyuz crew members and so
where is the room for the 'rescued" crew

3. immediately.

None of your ideas are viable

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:39:27 GMT, in a place far, far away, Brian
Thorn made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:04:01 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone.

But we don't insist that they be able to deliver ship's complement all
the way back to Southampton. NASA demands a lot more than a
"lifeboat."

They have to. The sea lanes are relatively crowded, while LEO has
exactly one human-capable "ship". The Titanic's lifeboats were only
needed to await the next ship to come along. ISS's lifeboats don't
have that luxury.

Titanic had many ships within hours' travel of rescue The Californian
was within sight (her radioman had gone to sleep and distress rockets
were ignored by her captain, another change after Titanic was that all
large ships have their radios manned 24 hours a day) and the Carpathia
arrived on scene just after sunrise. ISS cannot expect to have other
ships available to rescue the crew within a reasonable amount of time.

Being able to "deliver all the way back to Southampton" is a lot
cheaper for NASA than having a Carpathia on standby for launch 24/7.

There are other alternatives. Such as having a Carpathia already in a
co-orbit...

wrote in message
...
On Sep 16, 11:31 pm, John Doe wrote:


Perhaps the last shuttle flight to the station should install a modified
PMA device on node2 which would allow a soyuz to dock (even if
manually). This way, rescues would become possible once the shuttle is
retired and the USA has nothing to replace it.


No, that is where Orion docks


It does? Really, when was the last Orion docking?

When is the next?

Oh, that's right. That's where "Orion will dock if actually flies."

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:08:38 -0400, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


Last I checked, dry-land facilities don't require lifeboats, no matter
how remote. Ships universally do.

Really? Can you find a diagram of Los Angeles class submarines and tell me
where the lifeboats are?

They're inflatables. I'm sure Derek has all the details.

Brian

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


Jeff Findley wrote:

ISS currently had many redundant systems and modules. With the US and
Russian segments, you have completely separate systems for life support.
Even if something catastrophic happened, it's not very likely to take out
both sets of life support systems.


Unless they close airtight hatches as they move from one module to the
next, one meter hit that blew a foot-wide hole in the thing is going to
vacuumate it in short order.

In a situation like that, Soyuz isn't likely to save you anyway. The
discussion is about the lunacy of requiring a "lifeboat" which takes the ISS
astronauts all the way back to "port" on the ground as opposed to a
"lifeboat" which would allow the astronauts to survive until rescued by a
shuttle.

Even if you were in a sealed-off module, it had better have spacesuits in
it if you want to get to the escape Soyuz.
Even a rescue Shuttle EVA would be a real problem...you'd have to
repressurize the station before you opened the door to the module they
were trapped in, or detach the module with them in it and return it to
Earth.

If a safe haven were a politically acceptable option, it would be relatively
inexpensive to provide suits (or maybe a couple of suits and several of the
old rescue balls) inside the safe haven module to handle this sort of
evacuation once the shuttle arrives. Developing what amounts to a US Soyuz
is extremely expensive by comparison.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:53:06 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

So did the Titanic. Now we have lifeboats for everyone.

Tell that to the guys at the South Pole research station. Where's their
lifeboats?

Last I checked, dry-land facilities don't require lifeboats, no matter
how remote. Ships universally do.

Why do you think ISS is closer to a ship like the Titanic than it is to
something like the South Pole research station?

On top of that, evac from there in the middle of the winter is
extremely dangerous at best.

But not impossible. It has been done. Without a lifeboat on ISS,
you're dead when the O2, the scrubbers, or the power die.

True. My point is that evac from ISS using the shuttle is similar to evac
from the South Pole during the middle of winter. It certainly woudln't be
easy, but NASA already has plans in place for rescuing a stranded shuttle
crew for the Hubble repair mission.

At some point, your station grows so big you
simply can't supply lifeboats for everyone.

That's ridiculous. Why not?

Common sense. A truly big LEO space station is far more like a remote
research station than an ocean liner.

What do you do for a Mars mission?

We have to accept a greater risk for deep space exploration. That's a
given. Without warp drive, you can't get back to Earth in a reasonable
amount of time or expect a rescue ship in a reasonable amount of time.
ISS has no such excuse. There are no fundamental physics that prevent
a lifeboat for all ISS crew, it is simply a matter of cost. If an ISS
crew dies because they have no lifeboat, the press, critics, and the
crew's survivors will universally, and loudly, proclaim that the crew
died because the government was too cheap to pay for a lifeboat when
the technology was essentially off-the-shelf. And the government knows
this, which is why, as I said, it is a political non-starter.

So a Mars mission is "special", but a LEO station with a thousand people on
it would need to have "lifeboats" to return everyone to earth in case of an
emergency? That's just silly.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein