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A new use for the ISS
Stu
post Jul 13 2008, 07:20 AM
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Minor technical details all... tongue.gif

C'mon guys, think outside the box....

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TheChemist
post Jul 13 2008, 07:25 AM
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Excuse the late night sarcasm, I am sure most can resonate with the visionary part.
But in the same article, I see that NASA " ...hasn't always been particularly welcoming to outside ideas."
That line kind of killed the romance for me ...
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Tesheiner
post Jul 13 2008, 09:32 AM
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QUOTE (Stu @ Jul 13 2008, 12:25 AM) *
I know there's about as much chance of this happening as there is of Keira Knightley ringing me up and asking me to show her the stars on the next clear night, but what a wonderful, wonderful idea...

I think the chances of her asking you to see the stars, clear night or not, are higher … but still infinitesimal. laugh.gif
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djellison
post Jul 13 2008, 10:17 AM
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OK - so several orders of magnitude out smile.gif Infact, just about an order of magnitudes worth of orders of magnitude.

But still no in the realms of feasable.

A space station in orbit around the moon is a great idea ( although a romantic one - I can't actually imagine any usefull purpose for it - if you change your perspective, we're all just in a high lunar orbit right now smile.gif ) - but the ISS has never, is not nor will ever be the right tool for any other job than the one it is doing.

Doug
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dvandorn
post Jul 13 2008, 04:28 PM
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Yeah -- there are great challenges to getting ISS out of LEO, and while it could be made feasible with a huge amount of money, it will never be cost-effectively so.

Now, Skylab -- *that* would have been far more suited to lunar orbital use. Remove the ATM, use the EREP to study the lunar surface instead of the Earth's surface... that would have been useful. And far, far easier overall to get out of LEO.

-the other Doug


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AndyG
post Jul 14 2008, 10:54 AM
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QUOTE (Stu @ Jul 13 2008, 08:20 AM) *
C'mon guys, think outside the box....


Ok. Since the article seemed to suggest that there's nothing more to study about weightlessness, and the ISS is modular - just like Lego - can I suggest the following re-engineering -



blink.gif

Andy

(Having seemingly awoken the spirit of Kenneth Gatland)
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Stu
post Jul 14 2008, 11:30 AM
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Oooh, I like that! smile.gif

I can almost hear "The Blue Danube" looking at that pic... laugh.gif


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tanjent
post Jul 14 2008, 01:15 PM
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If you are going to start imagining different configurations into which to rearrange the ISS modules, you could also spin off one or two and send them to orbit the moon. I don't know exactly what the point would be, but it would establish a permanent base out there a lot sooner than we could build one on the surface. It would also facilitate the colonization of the surface. Then the space shuttle fleet, no longer safe for taking off and landing, could be boosted to orbit one last time, stripped of their no-longer-neeeded wings, and put to work shuttling back and forth between the ISS and the lunar station. I suspect the shuttles would be much easier to convert into long-distance craft than the ISS itself. The objective isn't really to save money, because these ideas presuppose a major scaleup in the whole space program. If that were to happen (for some still hard-to-imagine reason), then we might as well redeploy our existing resources before fabricating new ones. I wouldn't have put all the effort into the shuttle and ISS programs in the first place if I could have magically reallocated those resources to UMSF activities, but now it's a sunk cost and we should make darn sure not to throw these assets away. Right?
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AndyG
post Jul 14 2008, 01:47 PM
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QUOTE (Stu @ Jul 14 2008, 12:30 PM) *
I can almost hear "The Blue Danube" looking at that pic... laugh.gif

...and the real anorak will note that, with the radius defined by the array lengths, and a spin rate of 3rpm (i.e. the highest possible before the cusp of nausea) the onboard artificial gravity will be...

(sounds of scribbled calculations on the back of a golden envelope)

..."Martian".

rolleyes.gif

Andy
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Guest_PhilCo126_*
post Jul 24 2008, 12:13 PM
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Guests






Talking about the ISS:
Astronauts onboard the ISS dumped the 600 Kg Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) over board and the heavy payload is now visible as a star. Quiet bright but not as bright as the ISS itself. The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) was set over board because the remaining number of shuttle flights didn't foresee the return of the 600 Kg servicer. It will be visible the next week before it burns up in the atmosphere...
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imipak
post Jul 24 2008, 08:41 PM
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There's a good piece on heavens Above on the EAS, with ground observation video and observing tips. As it's an uncontrolled re-entry it could come down anywhere along the ISS' orbit track... with luck it'll happened during local night, near a well-populated area, with enough advance warning for the TV news or weather* to mention it - "And finally, if you pop outside about 10pm, you'll see a great fireworks show!"

* our local TV weather presenter often works in a mention of interesting night sky sights (meteor showers, aurorae, oppositions and the like.) (Heh! When I googled "BBC West weather astronomy" the first result was: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/weather/sky_a..._atkinson.shtml ]


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Stu
post Jul 24 2008, 09:25 PM
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ohmy.gif ohmy.gif ohmy.gif The horror! That's DONKEYS' years old!!! I'll have to get them to update that... wacko.gif


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