Space Station Stuff

XCV330 · Feb 26, 2022

StarCruiser said:
The Russian people are NOT the issue. It's purely the jackasses in charge that are the problem...

Some expect that the Cosmonauts will just try to carry on as normal as best as they can since they are, after all, professionals.

I don't see any future desire or need for collaboration with them after the current planned missions are over.

StarCruiser · Feb 26, 2022

That depends on what happens next. There are protests in Russia now - and Putin's no where near a popular as he would like everyone to believe. Some suspect this whole idiotic (and bloody) mess is sort of a last gasp attempt to hold on to power in Russia itself...

Putin won't live forever, and he may not live much longer if he's not careful.

Marc · Feb 27, 2022

not quite space station but still.

Kennedy Space Centre is offering some new tours that will into areas not normally open to the public.

Kennedy Space Center Is Giving Behind-the-scenes Tours of These Restricted Areas for the First Time Ever (msn.com)

Cape Canaveral’s Rise to Space Tour | Kennedy Space Center

Cape Canaveral Early Space Tour | Kennedy Space Center

publiusr · Feb 27, 2022

All very sad.

XCV330 · Feb 27, 2022

Russia is threatening to deorbit the ISS. Fuck them. SpaceX has already volunteered to keep it aloft. Between them and NGIS it can be done. I say detach Everything from Zarya on and let their two cosmonauts make a go of it alone. This is a farce, now.

publiusr · Feb 28, 2022

XCV330 · Feb 28, 2022

publiusr said:
On top of all that, I lost a co-worker to domestic violence. February is the cruelest month.

I am sorry to hear that.

Mark de Vries · Feb 28, 2022

StarCruiser said:
Some expect that the Cosmonauts will just try to carry on as normal as best as they can since they are, after all, professionals.

The cosmonauts may be, but they're not up there forever (in fact, Shkaplerov and Dubrov are coming home at the end of March - together with NASA's Mark Vande Hei, which could be an issue in itself: an American astronaut flying on a Russian spacecraft, extracted by a Russian ground crew).

And I wonder how much the crew is in control of the station when it comes to things like orbital changes (I assume that's done with ground commands to the Progress engines). I suppose Dragon could take over from Progress and Soyuz, but the internation section of the ISS doesn't have any engines to change and maintain orbit and orientation (although it does have gyroscopes...). Only Zvezda does.

XCV330 · Feb 28, 2022

Mark de Vries said:
The cosmonauts may be, but they're not up there forever (in fact, Shkaplerov and Dubrov are coming home at the end of March - together with NASA's Mark Vande Hei, which could be an issue in itself: an American astronaut flying on a Russian spacecraft, extracted by a Russian ground crew).

And I wonder how much the crew is in control of the station when it comes to things like orbital changes (I assume that's done with ground commands to the Progress engines). I suppose Dragon could take over from Progress and Soyuz, but the international section of the ISS doesn't have any engines to change and maintain orbit and orientation (although it does have gyroscopes...). Only Zvezda does.

There was a module built for the purpose in case Zvezda had further delays, about 20 years ago, the Interim Control Module. As far as anyone knows it is still mothballed, but the problem becomes that it is over 20 years old. Also it was not designed for refueling. but if it could be readied it might give another year or two of emergency life to ISS.

Cygnus could provide some of those chores, but the problem, again is that Cygnus launches on Antares rockets, part of which is built in Ukrane and which uses Russian engines so we may not see many more of those. Cygnus can and has flown on Atlas (which is being phased out because of those same Russian engines), but those are being phased out in place of Vulcan, which isn't flying yet, and Cygnus has not been readied for flights on Vulcan, yet. Vulcan relies on Blue Origin for its engines, and like everything else Blue Origin does, it is years behind schedule.

Dragon can provide some but not as much boost.

Any large satellite bus, ah, for the type of truly large satellite that is found in low earth polar orbits would make a better control module, but again, this would have to be readied rapidly.

At some point the decision will have to be made, if the Russians detach their side of the station, how to deorbit the rest carefully, if they cannot get past these problems. It can't just be left to fall anywhere, like Skylab did.

If the Russians do decide to detach, they will have to do so without Zarya. It is American property. And it might not be possible to detatch it anymore, anyway.

valkyrie013 · Feb 28, 2022

Whole lot of boosters use the Russian engines. Atlas has all there engines till the end of there run.
As said blue origin .. Sucks.. There engine is years and years behind.
Don't they land in khsakastan? Not Russia? I'd get Elon to send up a crew dragon for my butt before I go down in a Soyuz.

Mark de Vries · Mar 1, 2022

Any Russian detachment from the ISS would be Zvezda, Poisk Nauka, and Prichal. Rassvet is docked to Zarya, and as XCV330 mentioned above, that is American property. And I have my doubts if Zvezda would have much life lived in her anyway.

valkyrie013 said:
Don't they land in khsakastan? Not Russia?

They do, but recovery operates from Baikonur, which is in Kazakhstan, but leased and staffed by Russia.

Soyuz seats have personalised seat liners and cosmonauts wear personal launch and entry suits. Not sure of the same is true for Dragon. If not, they can just send up a new suit for Vande Hei and install an extra seat (Dragon can fit 7 crew members, but ISS crew launches have only used 4 at the same time so far). I wonder if they can do so on short notice though. Vande Hei's mission has already been doubled to accomodate a visit by Japanese space tourist, so let's hope he can come home this month.

Still, they're saying joint ISS operations are still nominal.

valkyrie013 · Mar 1, 2022

Read that if he can't Soyuz his way home, he may bump one of the others going home in the next dragon and wear a suit they send up in a resupply.

Mark de Vries · Mar 1, 2022

Scott Manley covers many of the things mentioned here, starting at 10:28:
Interesting that the latest Cygnus cargo craft which just arrived at the ISS will be used to test that ship's use in reboosting the station.

XCV330 · Mar 1, 2022

It's a pity there are no more ESA ATV's but they are busy with the Orion.

XCV330 · Mar 29, 2022

Starliner flight test 2 is the next ULA flight.

Mark de Vries · Mar 29, 2022

ISS command just switched from Anton Shkaplerov to Thomas Marshburn. In the change of command ceremony, Shkaplerov briefly referred to the tensions, saying "People have problems on Earth. On orbit we are... one crew."

E-DUB · Mar 30, 2022

XCV330 said:
I've seen some interesting designs from single-tank to one rotating wheel-of-tanks for artificial gravity. I recall that NASA looked into it at one point and found that one of the problems was if the tanks had been left in space too long, the foam insulation would have "popcorned" and caused a potential hazard. I don't know about the early tanks but the later lithium-aluminum super lightweight tanks probably lacked adequate micrometeorite protection, so blankets would have had to have been brought up and fitted. Then the interior space would still need to be contstructed.

None of this was non-doable, but I think the main thing was that the shuttle could only put a tank in orbit if it had no other cargo, which never happened, unless STS-1 counts. Columbia could lift less than the rest of the fleet, so it could not have done it, either.

Shuttle-C, the wingless cargo-only variant might have been able to do so even while hauling payload, if it had been built. I am kind of a fan of Shuttle-C. It would have given the US a nearly-saturn-v like capability and allowed all sorts of things we're still waiting on, in the early 90's (including the Shuttle derived launcher we ARE finally going to get, SLS). The First Bush administration was all in on both Space Station Freedom/Alpha as well as moon and mars missions. But the SEI program that came out of all that talk cost over half a trillion dollars. Congress was not amused. Dan Quayle, who was involved, well you couldn't make Quayle more akward than he was. Richard Truly was fired, which was a pity, he was a great astronaut and in many other ways. Mars, moon, heavy lift, etc was all shelved for decades. We would have even lost the space station (keeping this on topic!) if it had not been for Clinton using the idea to bring the Russians on board as a slightly naive swords-into-ploughshares thing (they can make both, actually).

And so we have ISS.

but no shuttle-c

I actually built a model of that sucker using one of the Revell kits for the Shuttle.

XCV330 · Mar 30, 2022

E-DUB said:
I actually built a model of that sucker using one of the Revell kits for the Shuttle.

That’s amazing. Must have been huge

E-DUB · Mar 30, 2022

Oh, no. The 1/288 scale, not the 1/144.

E-DUB · Mar 30, 2022

Yes. But I have no way to share as my photobucket account went pfft and I haven't set up anything anywhere else.

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