Its not Star Trek yet.... But we ARE in space! I use the ISS HD Live App to keep an eye on whats going on aboard the International space station. I record small clips from time to time. Last week i saw this thing : So i started to record some clips and made a video of the Orbital ATK’s Cygnus resupply ship that completed its rendezvous at the International Space Station (ISS). November 13 - 2017 Thanks to @Santaman for the music. I think it worked nicely with this event. Music: Epic Pinball Andriod (original) Robert A. Allen, Joshua Jensen.
Cool, yeah, the music is quite futuristic so fits the clip, also shooting capsules towards space stations is almost like a pinball game at an epic scale.
Hehe it is pretty amazing what humans do.. :-) and i didnt think of it like that before so the music theme is even more appropriate now =)
The music used really should have been this. Cygnus will eventually be found orbiting a black hole, inexplicably defying our understanding of the universe. The crew become zombies, and the captain eventually becomes fused with his giant robot pal in a Dante-esque interpretation of Hell. 'Cuz that's Cygnus for you. Mark
Somewhat strange SF movie.. saw it a few times when I was young, Maximilian is still a rather sinister design for a robot.
Never saw that movie but yea the music is familiar,( i was thinking a Bond film...) and absolutely fitting for sci fi. Kool=)
Well, the composer of this piece also composed the music for eleven Bond films, including the iconic main bond theme, so... Back to (this) Cygnus, it's funny how they use Canadarm to capture this as well as the Dragon and Japanese HTV supply ships. I've always wondered if it was in the original Canadarm spec to be able to do this. Aside from being really cool to watch, it allows the supply ships to simplify the machinery needed to perform docking maneuvers, saving precious weight for actual cargo. Mark
It was part of the Canadarm 2 spec and it could even assist the shuttle as well as moving modules around the station. Not sure about the original Canadarm - it could only handle relatively light payloads up to 335 kg. The yet to be deployed Canadarm 3 will have similar capabilities to Canadarm 2 but be smaller. Not sure if it'll happen if the deep space gateway is not commissioned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm
Every time Cygnus docks it looks like ISS ordered a giant beer keg. Do we know that they haven't? Has anyone checked the manifest?
The big beer-in-space problem: "In a weightless environment, bubbles of carbon dioxide ("carbonation") aren't buoyant, so they remain randomly distributed in the fluid" Suds in space Maby they have solved the problem now and the Cygnus IS just a giant beer keg? Aha...! "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" John Barry, The original man before the propellerheads=) Very exciting to build in the lunar vicinity and also on the lunar surface... looks like NASA are looking for partners... So its still alive, hopefully we will have launchpads etc on the moon within the next decade!
Deep Space Gateway does look interesting. ISS won't last forever and DSG would allow for commercial resupply and perhaps commercial crew flights while giving a station that finally works as a meaningful waystation. ISS could never fit that bill because of its orbital inclination. (I'm not slagging that, in the end without Russian involvement it never would have happened and we certainly wouldn't be doing anything now). I really do wish they that'd reconsider a centrifuge module, if not on the gateway than at least on some future LEO station. We have lots of information on life in micro-gravity but virtually none on partial-g.
What I meant to ask is if C2 was specifically designed with the capture of resupply ships by being the active element instead of letting the target vehicle do all the work lining up and pushing into a docking port. Unmanned resupply is nothing new, but the Dragon/Cygnus/HTV ships were all designed and launched AFTER the main ISS design was completed, (probably?) when they figured only the shuttle and Soyuz/Progress would be doing the visiting, and all THOSE guys were the active partners in docking and separation. That said, the original Canadarm was designed to be able to pluck satellites out of space to berth in the space shuttle's cargo bay, so it's really no extension (sic) of the existing ability to do the same to a larger spacecraft. Quite genius really. Mark
It was actually. HTV was always designed to be berthed to the CBM as opposed to docking via the canadarm. The commercial resupply craft had not been on the horizon at the time, but their mass is similar. It all works out, and using the berthing method instead of having to develop an autonomous docking system like ATV saved a lot of time and money. I believe that the cargo version of Dreamchaser will also be berthed via Canadarm2, as opposed to the crewed version which would have docked via NDS on Node 2
Really, a module with the correct manipulation point is just that provided the relative speed has been reduced to a tolerable value and the object is within the arm's limit for mass. No one wanted another loss-of-control Progress-type collision with the ISS as happened with Mir in 1997.