"We have a very strong incentive to send a crew as quickly as we can safely do so."
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The first commercial space station, Haven-1, is now undergoing assembly for launch
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Haven-1 has only one docking port so it's consumables are limited to what was on board when it launched and what can be brought up in the crew Dragon. You could leave the crew on board Haven while their Dragon undocks and a cargo Dragon docks but that would insanely risky.
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Do we know for sure that bits would be left behind? When I said that earlier it was pretty much uninformed speculation.
But if the docking ring had gotten to a state where it couldn’t undock, I’m not sure I’d want to try again, even if the emergency separation system is designed to leave the adapter in a usable state.
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IIRC, there has already been at least one "zero gee" porn film. It was filmed using the Russian equivalent of the vomit comet and padded out with standard film faking methods.
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You have met upper management, right? As long as it isn't "insanely risky" to them, then the risks are acceptable.
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Anton Longshot
Ars Praetorian
While it's probably in vain I keep hoping I'll live to see a rotating space station, preferably a WHEEL.
H*** that would likely scratch my space itch as much as another manned moon landing!
*cries
H*** that would likely scratch my space itch as much as another manned moon landing!
*cries
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I thought Arthur C Clarke's idea for a large disk space hotel, with different "floors" having different gravity levels was interesting. That, and the swimming pool on the outermost floor with a curved water surface.
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With respect to zero-G manufacturing the ISS is where you could find out if it was possible.
But it is NOT where you could perform zero-G manufacturing at any sort of an industrial scale.
For that you will need some future orbital station/platform customized for whatever you wish to manufacture.
But it is NOT where you could perform zero-G manufacturing at any sort of an industrial scale.
For that you will need some future orbital station/platform customized for whatever you wish to manufacture.
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The Falcon 9 development was seeded by NASA funds. Would you say it is currently operating on corporate welfare and public dollars?
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Did you even look at how NASA works? NASA contracts out to private companies for pretty much everything. The difference is what is being contracted and who controls the final product.
@meta.x.gdb
Before replying, consider that "contract to SpaceX for crew dragon flights to ISS" is NOT "... public dollars diverted to private corporations". It's a contract for services that the government regularly employs to get stuff done - just like contracts for building maintenance and janitorial services.
For it to be close to a diverted fund, it would have to be something along the lines of ULA contract where the government was paying a private corporation to keep the company doors open even though they did not have a contract for goods or services.
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I doubt any sexual partners of their preferred age bracket will be old enough to go up there.
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Bill Swallow
Ars Centurion
... You know this is in microgravity, right? Equipment racks won't need to be "supported" so much as "secured".
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This was kind of the original Axiom plan. They were going to send up modules to connect to the ISS, and then go independent when the ISS was retired. That is no longer their plan, though.
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A quick search doesn't turn up specific documentation but I recall seeing specific statements that it uses an explosive mechanism and that it leaves the port unusable afterwards. It was in context of the ISS jettisoning a dead spacecraft, so permanent damage to the passive port was a given, but I can't see how it would be different from the active side. There are twelve latches around the perimeter and three latches on the soft-capture system and any one of them failing to release would prevent undocking. It might be possible to force the ring latches without leaving chunks in the opposing slots, but severing the capture ring would leave it firmly attached to the other port. The worst case scenario is finding yourself stuck in a half-docked position where you can neither complete the hard-dock nor release the soft-dock. The Soviets nearly lost Soyuz 10 that way.
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They need to support their equipment during launch and they need to provide secure hand and foot holds for working astronauts. To provide that support they must be equally supported themselves.
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If the soft capture ring wasn’t disengaging, that’s accessible from inside the docking tunnel, so you could hit that with a hammer, then close hatches and release the hard capture hooks. You could probably even do it in such a way that only your soft capture ring takes any damage.
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Just spitballing here, but there may be an upside to killing off all of the fungi & bacteria that have colonized and evolved on the station for several decades.
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Bill Swallow
Ars Centurion
"I must keel eet before eet develops language skills!" -- Ambassador Londo Mollari
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I've heard that some politicians with skin in the game were angling for an ISS extension, despite its age and condition. The comments from Vast are the first time I've heard that come up on the outside. If I were a commercial operator, that'd be the kiss of death for me... that would tell me that at the end of the day, Congress, and NASA are going to pull the rug out from under the commercial stations to keep the ISS jobs program running... and that's a bad thing.
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Funny, Trump's mantra is drill, baby drill. He turned us from a net importer to a net exporter of petroleum products. Biden reversed that. Now, Trump is trying to turn it around again. Be interesting to see what happens if the Democrats win in '28.
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Haven-1 is really only a test bed for Haven-2. Haven-2 is where the profits, if any, will come in.
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Funny - only the first statement is true.
We became a net exporter under Obama, not Trump.
We continued to be a net exporter under Biden.
And none of the leases that Trump has had the government offer are all that attractive considering that the price of oil has stabilized somewhere near $75/bbl; it will need to get up to $100/bbl before there is much new drilling as the current leases are more than sufficient to meet demand.
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I guess if you require the crew to wear space suits the entire time, then it's less of an issue (although if they survived the immediate issue they may still be stuck in space with no ride home and only hours of oxygen).
I know the depiction of the 'imperfect lock' from Interstellar is likely not exactly how it works, but something catastrophic happening after dock is complete and astronauts have entered the station while the Dragon is docked and taken off their helmets is what I would be worried about. Some kind of unknown issue that occurs only after being docked for a period of time.
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The station's hull will have passed structural and pressure testing before launch and will be pressure tested again once in orbit. The docking seals will also be tested on the ground before flight and again before the hatches are opened. SpaceX engineers will be doing their own design review and NASA is probably involved as well. A crewed mission will not happen until the people who know what they are doing are fully satisfied that it will be safe. There is no 'go fever' here. If it still bothers you, go outside, take a nice easy walk, and breathe. It will be fine.
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I'm not worried about go fever or lack of testing on the ground, no need to be condescending. I still think an unmanned test would be safer for an entirely new build, because we certainly can't say we've never experienced unexpected or problematic behavior during missions before.
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If we look at the history of maiden dockings to stations to US ports, the breakdown is as follows.
- Skylab - first docking was by the crewed Skylab 2
- Mir Kristall - first docking was by the crewed Soyuz TM-16 (yes, this port was intended for Buran, but this was a test run for the Shuttle)
- Mir docking module - module was berthed to the shuttle with the Canadarm, Shuttle then undocked from the module after docking the module to Kristall.
- PMA-2 - similar to previous, Unity was berthed to the Shuttle, Shuttle then undocked after docking Unity to Zarya.
- PMA-3 - first docking by the Shuttle.
- IDA-2 - first docking by uncrewed Dragon Demo-2
- IDA-3 - first docking by uncrewed CRS-21.
So we get 3 where first docking was with a crew, and 2 with no crew. And then 2 weird ones with undocking after berthing (but subsequent first dockings) done with crews.
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I apologize, that was uncalled for.
Let me ask you this: What would an uncrewed Dragon mission be able to test? What value would it add?
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It should be noted that both uncrewed dockings were acceptance tests of the vehicle rather than testing anything on the station.
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While a rotating station would make it easier to walk around, use a toilet or shower like a normal person, it would be extreme difficult to work outside of it, as the centrifugal forces would tend to throw the astronauts away. And you would need a non-rotating portion of the station to do any kind of space or ground observation since your orientation does a 360 every four minutes (or is it one-fourth of a minute).
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Bill Swallow
Ars Centurion
Heinlein's short story, "Ordeal in Space" (1948), covers this quite well. And while the need for a non-rotating section greatly complicates matters, there are conceptually multiple ways to deal with the problem. '2001: A Space Odyssey' and 'Babylon 5' show two approaches.
Alas, it's going to be a while before our engineering catches up with our imagination.
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Yeah, sort of like, oh, linemen, bridge, high iron (skyscraper), and heck even roofers face every day. We know how to work in fall environments already. Bonus: if you were to fall off said giant hamster wheel, I would like to think we’d have an emergency retrieval boat to go fetch you, unlike on Earth where you just probably die.
EDIT: typo
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You have met upper management, haven't you?
The way things are going right now, they would probably say something about how it was a tragedy that nobody could have foreseen, but there was no rescue craft attached to the station for reasons of safety and cost-consciousness. While also pointing out that workmen's comp doesn't cover injuries or deaths that happen in space as seen in Section 3, paragraph 1, sub-paragraph 4, footnote 1, reference 5 of the contract that the person signed before joining the workcrew. And would the news stations please stop doing live broadcasts of the worker's pleas for rescue as that it very disrupting to the rest of the crew and has been having a negative effect on the company's valuation.
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I would think a simple tether would work here, addressing concerns over both safety and cost-consciousness.
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Tethers cost money and require special additions to the structure and need training. Nope, that's not in the budget. /S
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You know what linemen, bridge workers and skyscraper window-washers have in common? A place to put their feet. Working on a rotating space station would require a platform hanging down the sides (or under the bottom of the rotating hull, or people hanging from tethers. I'm not saying it's not possible but it does complicate matters. And likewise how do you connect the immense solar cells which would want a fix orientation to the sun, to a rotating station? In a vacuum? For twenty years?
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People work on the underside of a bridge by putting a platform there. Even when the platform itself is suspended from the bridge it is normally installed from below.
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Speaking seriously, tethers are a hazard in space because they can become tangled and astronauts have limited dexterity to fix the problem. There is a reason that space walks are often done on the end of a robot arm.
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