What ever happened to on-orbit assembly?

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.

Using the ISS,I would go for an 'Asteroid Explorer' build on orbit.

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.

Al Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Using the ISS,I would go for an 'Asteroid Explorer' build on orbit.

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.

The ISS is in a completely wrong orbit for on-orbit assembly or anything
beyond LEO. Sad but true.

"Ruediger Klaehn" wrote in message
...
Al Jackson wrote:

[snip]

Using the ISS,I would go for an 'Asteroid Explorer' build on orbit.

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.

shrug Von Braun was an engineer, not a budget manager. Hauling stuff
uphill is still so ridiculously expensive that it's a lot easier to build a
smaller spacecraft on the ground and launch it direct than to spend billions
of dollars just getting all the tooling and infrastructure into orbit and
*then* lofting the components.

Short answer: we're not there yet and never will be as long as we rely on
chemical rockets.

The ISS is in a completely wrong orbit for on-orbit assembly or anything
beyond LEO. Sad but true.

....and has neither the workshop facilities nor the power capacity to handle
construction. It's just a laboratory, nothing more.

--
Terrell Miller


"Very often, a 'free' feestock will still lead to a very expensive system.
One that is quite likely noncompetitive"
- Don Lancaster

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 10:05:43 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Terrell
Miller" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

Short answer: we're not there yet and never will be as long as we rely on
chemical rockets.

There's nothing wrong with chemical rockets. You obviously don't
understand why launch costs are high.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

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.
If you choose to use construction robots you will pay as much, or more, for
them as you payed for the item you are trying to build!!
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.
^
//^\\
~~~ near space elevator ~~~~
~~~members.aol.com/beanstalkr/~~~

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.

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 ,
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. And the high cost of launch has meant that it generally
looks better to do most of the detail work on the ground, with work in
orbit limited to, at most, plugging things together. And the way manned
spaceflight is controlled by the bureaucratic empire at JSC has not
helped, because anyone who's interested in using orbital assembly takes
one look at the ISS mess and decides that he doesn't want *those* people
getting anywhere near *his* project.

But the big reason why you don't see orbital assembly of spaceships is:
how many spaceships do you see being assembled *anywhere*?

Orbital assembly, at least in the more modest sense of plugging major
subassemblies together, makes a whole lot of sense when you want to do
something ambitious in space. It's marginally practical to do early
phases with everything launched from the ground in one piece, as witness
Apollo, but as soon as your ambitions grow a little, even the big
launchers aren't big enough any more.

But nobody's doing anything ambitious in space.

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.

For orbital assembly, we badly need cheaper launch, and we could certainly
use better spacesuits, but the main requirement is that we have to be doing
something that's big enough to see major benefits.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Partly, as others have noted, the crude state of spacesuit technology has
been a roadblock.

What can be done about this? I know that the Russians run their suits
at a lower pressure than Americans do; this probably makes them easier
to work in, though it requires a longer prebreathing time prior to EVA.
Is there anything else that would help, in the design of the suit itself?

Would a rigid suit, similar to those used for deep-sea diving, make it
easier to work in? Or do we have to imagine some sort of powered
exoskeleton, where every joint has an actuator that helps you bend it?

But the big reason why you don't see orbital assembly of spaceships is:
how many spaceships do you see being assembled *anywhere*?

Well, yes, that's a good point too.

Thanks,
- Joe

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| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
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On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:50:00 -0600, Joe Strout wrote:

Would a rigid suit, similar to those used for deep-sea diving, make it
easier to work in? Or do we have to imagine some sort of powered
exoskeleton, where every joint has an actuator that helps you bend it?

One word - SKINTIGHTS! :-)