The CSI/Loral COTS proposal has at its heart the SS/L 1300 model spacecraft
bus.

The proximity ops components are taken from Orbital Express,

snidely wrote:
As long as maintenance spacewalks are still being scheduled, taking a
garbage bag out with you isn't that big a deal from that side of the
safety dice

"Taking the garbage out" requires those parts are small enough to fit
through the airlock hatches. If those hatches aren't bigger than the
hatches into progress/ATV, then it gives you no additional garbage
disposal facility.

To get rid of spare racks, you'd need to load then into the kibo
logistics module, then use the arm to unberth the logistics module, EVA,
open the equalisation valve in the detached kibo module, then open the
cbm hatch, take the rack out, close the hatch, bring and duck tape the
rack to progress. And one back in, you re-berth kibo and repressurise it.

Jeff Findley wrote:

The CSI/Loral COTS proposal has at its heart the SS/L 1300 model
spacecraft
bus.

The proximity ops components are taken from Orbital Express,

And of course, those will integrate nicely without any problems, and
whatever hardware needed at the station end will appear on the station
magically, and all COTS contenders will use fully compatible virtual
berthing (aka station keep within reach of SSRMS) with fully compatible
hardware on the station to guide the incoming ship.

It won't be *that* easy, but it certainly won't be as terrible as ATV
development, which suffered a bit due to the "vision" that the design be
upgradeable in the future for other manned missions.

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:54:46 -0700 (PDT), bob haller safety advocate
hallerb@aol.com> wrote:

they can always get stuff out of airlock and give it a shove in the
right direction.

wonder if garbage large item could be tethered to progress and sent on
its way? probably too dangerous

You just need some really strong duct tape......

As long as maintenance spacewalks are still being scheduled, taking a
garbage bag out with you isn't that big a deal from that side of the
safety dice

On Mar 12, 5:00 pm, fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Mike <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:54:46 -0700 (PDT), bob haller safety advocate
hall...@aol.com> wrote:

they can always get stuff out of airlock and give it a shove in the
right direction.

wonder if garbage large item could be tethered to progress and sent on
its way? probably too dangerous

You just need some really strong duct tape......

And a risky spacewalk - which just goes to show Bbo know jack ____
about safety.


As long as maintenance spacewalks are still being scheduled, taking a
garbage bag out with you isn't that big a deal from that side of the
safety dice (coins usually don't have enough sides to fully evaluate
this). The issues that remain include at least the "strong enough
duct tape" to prevent the garbage from choosing it's own orbit
prematurely and how to hang things on Progress without disturbing the
GNC when deorbit time arrives.

On Mar 11, 12:05 pm, fairwa...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:


No matter how you spin it charlie, the fact is that engineers have
routinely gone to great lengths as I said. In space they went another
route, not because they wanted to but because they had no choice.
When offered a chance space engineers however choose not to rely on
telemetry, but examine the actual hardware.


So what is different , they still have no choice. That is the
point. Nothing will be lost when the shuttle is retired,

The engineers at Harris had a pretty good idea why it didn't deploy. NASA
and JPL did a lot of naughty things with *their* antenna design long
before it was launched.

The Skylab solar wing deploy had absolutely no gotchas when they went to
deploy it.

That was a failure of the MMOD/thermal shield during launch. The lesson
learned here is to keep your spacecraft under a payload fairing during
launch (just like all of the current comsat designs).

The fact is people DID complain and would have loved to get their hands
on things.

The fact is that it's a desire, not a need for these sorts of missions.
They accept the increased programatic risk of not getting their hands on
the hardware after the fact because it currently costs too damn much to
bring back large objects.

NASA is showing no desire to retain this capability with Orion. In fact,
Orion is going the Apollo route of sticking a lot of hardware in an
expendable service module.

I do a lot remote datacenter work and make a LOT of effort to be able to
do as much as I can remotely but sometimes there's no substitute for the
good old Mark I eyeball and pair of hands.

No doubt, but in today's world, sometimes you're trying to help someone
debug a computer problem when they're on the opposite side of the globe.
Why? Because management says you're saving money operating this way. It
certainly doesn't make it easy on the worker bees doing the grunt work,
but that's today's world, isn't it?

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

"Jeff Findley" <jeff.findley@ugs.nojunk.com> wrote in message
news:f2582$47d68607$927a2cda$31718@FUSE.NET...

The fact is people DID complain and would have loved to get their hands
on things.

The fact is that it's a desire, not a need for these sorts of missions.
They accept the increased programatic risk of not getting their hands on
the hardware after the fact because it currently costs too damn much to
bring back large objects.

Exactly. I think this comes close to the point I (and I believe Derek) were
trying to make. That it's a definite desire, and lack of the ability raises
risks. There is a loss here.

Jeff Findley wrote:

It won't be *that* easy, but it certainly won't be as terrible as ATV
development, which suffered a bit due to the "vision" that the design be
upgradeable in the future for other manned missions.


Do you seriously think that the station onwers will let some newbie
space vehicle get anywhere near with a wallmart guidance and "docking"
system based on microsoft windows ? (with docking being defined as
getting to its destination near the station, whatever it might be).

Some COTS folks will have to develop the same type of safety and
redundancy as ATV and HTV and this means spending years in developping
and testing.

You can't just use some off the shelf guidance system designed to get a
satellite to its assigned spot in a geosynchronous orbit to get it
within half a metre of the space station.

And since that delivery vehicle will never have the same mass (with mass
possibly changing at the last minute when they load freshly baked pizzas
just before launch) the vehicle can't be "hardcoded" like satellites can.

In the end, because the space station is a manned vehicle, any vehicle
that is to be allowed to get close to it has to be to much higher
standards.

And if it berths to a CBM, it needs to not only have the CBM mechanism,
but also the shielding, and ventilation/heating/cooling etc. Remember
that the crews needs to be safely able to ingress this module to take
stuff out and put stuff in. It won't need to support human life during
transit, but it will need to support it while berthed/docked to the
station.

And if NASA isn't confortable leaving an MLPM on the station for a few
months, I doubt they'll be willing to leave a wallmart-special module
attached to the station for long.

"Jeff Findley" <jeff.findley@ugs.nojunk.com> wrote in message
news:f2582$47d68607$927a2cda$31718@FUSE.NET...

The engineers at Harris had a pretty good idea why it didn't deploy.
NASA and JPL did a lot of naughty things with *their* antenna design long
before it was launched.


Had a pretty good idea isn't the exact same as knowing. And my
understanding is that they know how it failed to deploy (i.e. the shape,
etc.) but still not 100% sure the actual mechanism. Yes, I'd buy they're
probably 95% right, but knowing that last 5% can be useful.

Mike <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 05:54:46 -0700 (PDT), bob haller safety advocate
hallerb@aol.com> wrote:

they can always get stuff out of airlock and give it a shove in the
right direction.

wonder if garbage large item could be tethered to progress and sent on
its way? probably too dangerous

You just need some really strong duct tape......

And a risky spacewalk - which just goes to show Bbo know jack ____
about safety.