Why can't we use the surviving shuttles

[USS Triumphant]

as Crew Return Vehicles for the I.S.S.? Or, just send them up, dock them, and leave 'em up as extra space for the station?

I'm sure there's a reason, so I'm hoping some of the aerospace types here can enlighten me.

(And yes, I know that Endeavor and Discovery are currently in pieces getting made into museum pieces. By the question above, I mean if we had planned it before their final launches.)

 

[RobertVA]

Electrical power would be one issue. The shuttles utilize fuel cells to generate electricity, thus are dependent on cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen supplies. After the suppy of those boil off all the electrical and electronic systems would be inoperable.

Soyuz uses a combination of batteries and solar panels, as would MPCV/Orion. I'm not sure if anything beyond batteries is planned for the manned version of Dragon.

 

[sojourner]

Not designed for the job basically. They weren't designed for longterm standby mode.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Okay, so those explain why they can't be used as CRVs, but, what about just extra space?

 

[JustAFriend]

Fuels corrode, seals leak, batteries discharge, they need constant power for cooling.

They're not built to operate for more than a couple of weeks MAXIMUM.

You cant just let one sit there.

 

[Saturn0660]

What fuel? ISS has a "Station to Shuttle" power transfer. Dock, dump all your fuel/cyro's and bam more space to put crap.

Never/ever happen.. but the idea is sound.

 

[MLJames]

As far as extra space goes, the shuttles don't really have as much as you might think. Unless you stick habitation modules into it, the cargo section is useless for that purpose, and that just leaves you the decks in the nose section forward of the bay. Think of all the pictures you've seen of shuttle missions. The astronauts were pretty crowded in there.

 

[Saturn0660]

As far as extra space goes, the shuttles don't really have as much as you might think. Unless you stick habitation modules into it, the cargo section is useless for that purpose, and that just leaves you the decks in the nose section forward of the bay. Think of all the pictures you've seen of shuttle missions. The astronauts were pretty crowded in there.

Oh, it's small indeed.. My understanding would be that it would have a module in the bay for holding extra stuff.

 

[RobertVA]

Would you waste an important historical artifact for a few hundred cubic feet of storage space? There are already contracts for regular visits by unmanned supply ships from Russia, Japan, the European Union and the United states (the cargo version of SpaceX's Dragon). There's already sufficient space to unload those spacecraft as soon as they arrive and start using them as storage for waste like food packaging, compacted crew byproducts and clothes that are no longer fresh enough to wear (no zero G laundry equipment developed yet).

Once the cryogenic materials were used or bleed off a shuttle would have no means of operating its electrical equipment, including air circulation equipment, after detaching any umbilicals linking it to the station. It would no longer have the capability to make a controlled reentry and landing at a facility like the runways at the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. When the station is eventually destructively deorbited any attached shuttle would have to be destroyed with it.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

as Crew Return Vehicles for the I.S.S.? Or, just send them up, dock them, and leave 'em up as extra space for the station?

You can do all these things with enough effort, but why?

If want an emergency return vessel that always available, it would probably take less time and effort to permanently dock an Orion capsule or a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Not sure if these things can be permanently docked to the station by design, but it would certainly be easier to modify them for that than the shuttle. Also Soyuz can stay for six months up there. If you want additional space, it's easier to make a new module than to turn the shuttle into one.

A shuttle docked up there wouldn't do anything up there without massive modifications. It just sits there, eats power, leaks oxygen, and adds more mass during orbital corrections. The best you can do with it is to dock it, shut it down, close the hatch, depressurize the cabin and leave the spacecraft as an unused dead ornament to the station.

Now what you can do is turn those into a museum together with the station. How? The plan right now is to deorbit the station in a decade or so. I'd much more prefer if someone found a way to move the station to orbit that wouldn't decay in centuries and doesn't have much space debris. Send it there, depressurize it and leave it for the future space archaeologists to turn into a museum. Now, before changing the orbit, you can also launch and dock a shuttle there...

 

[Saturn0660]

Once the cryogenic materials were used or bleed off a shuttle would have no means of operating its electrical equipment, including air circulation equipment, after detaching any umbilicals linking it to the station. It would no longer have the capability to make a controlled reentry and landing at a facility like the runways at the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. When the station is eventually destructively deorbited any attached shuttle would have to be destroyed with it.

And?? As long as it stays hooked to the ISS i would be fine. I'm not saying it's the thing to do. But it would work.

 

[Marc]

You would also need to have some-one onboard the ISS with pilot rating for the shuttle becasue it's a more complex vehicle to re-enter earth's atmosphere with.

 

[Marc]

Once the cryogenic materials were used or bleed off a shuttle would have no means of operating its electrical equipment, including air circulation equipment, after detaching any umbilicals linking it to the station. It would no longer have the capability to make a controlled reentry and landing at a facility like the runways at the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. When the station is eventually destructively deorbited any attached shuttle would have to be destroyed with it.

And?? As long as it stays hooked to the ISS i would be fine. I'm not saying it's the thing to do. But it would work.

no it won't - it's going to take a chunk of the ISS's generated power to keep it operation and what about maintanence? You leave the equipment shutdown and you could run into problems.

Read up on the issues faced by the Apollo 13 crew sometime irt shutdown equipment which while an extreme situation and where there was a shortage of power still highlights the headaches that would be faced.

 

[CaptainStoner]

I wouldn't be too psyched to fly home in a shuttle that's been docked there for years. It's a hell of a lot easier to look her over and perform repairs on Earth than in space.
I think retiring the shuttles is the right thing to do, I just wish Constellation hadn't been nixed.

 

[sojourner]

^You should be happy Constellation was nixed. It was a pig of a program.

 

[Saturn0660]

Once the cryogenic materials were used or bleed off a shuttle would have no means of operating its electrical equipment, including air circulation equipment, after detaching any umbilicals linking it to the station. It would no longer have the capability to make a controlled reentry and landing at a facility like the runways at the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. When the station is eventually destructively deorbited any attached shuttle would have to be destroyed with it.

And?? As long as it stays hooked to the ISS i would be fine. I'm not saying it's the thing to do. But it would work.

no it won't - it's going to take a chunk of the ISS's generated power to keep it operation and what about maintanence? You leave the equipment shutdown and you could run into problems.

Read up on the issues faced by the Apollo 13 crew sometime irt shutdown equipment which while an extreme situation and where there was a shortage of power still highlights the headaches that would be faced.

no no no you miss understand what he's asking.. I think he means just leave the thing up there.. As extra space for storage. Never bring it back/let it burn-up when ISS comes down.

 

[Shatnertage]

But why would you want to leave it up there? As has been said upthread, there are plenty more economical way of adding storage to the ISS.

You can't leave it as an emergency escape pod, you can't use it to add to the habitat, and it's not much use as a storage shed. Sounds like the best plan is to put it into a museum.

 

[Tau Ceti III]

The best plan was to keep them flying until we had a replacement vehicle, but oh well.....

 

[Robert Maxwell]

As others have indicated, it's a much better idea to add purpose-built modules to the ISS rather than space shuttles. The shuttles are expensive enough without trying to retrofit them for a purpose for which they were never intended.