Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: achtung on October 12, 2010, 06:16:15 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11304559
/me crosses fingers
Please let this happen. It'll make the ISS worth something.
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That would be wonderful, both from a scientific and a political perspective.
/me crosses his fingers too.
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This, for all technical purposes, should be entirely doable right now as well. Hell, we did this in the late 60's, damnit!
The only real problem is getting the funding...
And actually, the far more interesting concept is the actual deployment and implementation of the vehicle itself. This project, if it gets the go-ahead, could possilby make for the first purpose built, non-orbital, manned spacecraft to be assembled... in space. Essentially, if the idea is research, then enough space to do research and deploy any possible test systems is essential. Rather than send up a single large space vehicle, which itself will be limited in volume due to launch vehicle power and size constraints, we might consider an approach similar to the building of the ISS and Mir themselves - we send up multiple space vessels with moduar components - then we assemble those components at the ISS.
When we're done, we lauch the vessel. When the vessel is finished with its mission, it returns to the ISS. And when we need it once more, we send it out on another mission.
:cool:
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This is the approach that's always seemed most sensible for a manned Mars mission - LEO assembly piecewise.
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Work, dammit...
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Hey, it worked in Armageddon, right?
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For missions away from the Earth it makes a lot more sense to to have "space only" ships that will never enter the Earth's atmosphere than what we have been planning. This way the ship can go faster, be bigger, etc since it wont have any of the limitations that an atomospheric capable craft would have......
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i sure as hell wouldnt mind them using the iss as a shipyard in space. we would also need fuel depots (ion thruster propellant doesnt use up that much space), junkyards (stop throwing your perfectly good used space ship and satellite hulls into the atmosphere!), warehouses, and all that stuff. we could capture apophis and use it as a space station, and space mining testbed. theres lots of things we should and could be doing, but were not. we also need to stop making disposable space ships. once a ship is used up its fuel (or gets close to it), that ship needs to be put into a parking orbit where it can be serviced. when a future mission comes along, that needs it, re repair and refuel the ship and use it for the mission.
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But if we make the ISS bigger, and bigger, won't it increase the chances of it being hit by an asteroid and breaking up in the lower athmossphere?
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If there's an asteroid big enough to knock it out of orbit then we've probably got bigger problems.
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Also, in a catastrophic breakdown like that, it's far more likely that the pieces will burn up on reentry, not to mention that it'll take a while (The ISS orbit isn't stable IIRC, it requires control burns every now and then).
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If there's an asteroid big enough to knock it out of orbit then we've probably got bigger problems.
A mere "handful" of asteroid would blow the ISS to kingdom come .... if it goes just fast enough.
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The ISS is at risk of getting taken out by a meteor or orbital debris all the time. Indeed there have already been numerous instances of them having to make an evasive maneuver due to orbital debris that got too close for comfort.
Increasing the size of the ISS only means it's just slightly harder to avoid the risk that is always there to begin with, since you have to move a more massive object.
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but it's not like it has missed those collisions by a few feet, it is after all called space because there is a lot of it. if the ISS was increased by a factor of 10 it wouldn't make it any more or less of a target so long as the weight to thrust ratio was kept the same.
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Yes, please do...
Also, like Bob said, they take a margin of a couple kilometers at least if they know something big is passing by. Whether the station itself is 100 or 200 metres long wouldn't really matter.
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at the scale of space, compairing a car to an aircraft carrier is like compairing an electron with a proton, or a grain of sand with a fleck of dust. its a tiny target regardless. the only reason we have to concern about them is that space is full of more junk than we think it is.
i still think we should leave every scrap of space debrits we can in an orbital junk yard, and thus bring the art of kludge into the final frontier. soon we will be flying space ships held together by duct tape and bailing wire.
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:wtf: :confused:
We aren't Orks.
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i still think we should leave every scrap of space debrits we can in an orbital junk yard, and thus bring the art of kludge into the final frontier. soon we will be flying space ships held together by duct tape and bailing wire.
Didn't you learn anything from Mackie? That's no way to fly a ship. :p
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i still think we should leave every scrap of space debrits we can in an orbital junk yard, and thus bring the art of kludge into the final frontier. soon we will be flying space ships held together by duct tape and bailing wire.
Didn't you learn anything from Mackie? That's no way to fly a ship. :p
seriously! think about it. its like mad max in space!
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i've kludged on a fusion reactor, but i think spacecraft is where i'm going to have to draw the line.
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Bah, you're going about it all wrong. You don't piece together space junk to build ships, you just need an orbital foundry to reduce all the junk to component metals and then builds new stuff.
Alternate: wrap all the space junk into a giant ball, decelerate it and drop it back to Earth (preferably into a desert or something) then you can reclaim it!
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Molten alloys in zero gee. Wonderful.
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Well, not necessarily. Just smelt them on a rotating refinery. ;)
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Molten alloys in zero gee. Wonderful.
Casting in zero-gee should actually produce a stronger material.
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How so?
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Structure. Material is more evenly spaced throughout the cast item, resulting in fewer flaws or weaknesses.
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Well, if we want endo steel for our BattleMechs so we can fight off the impending Clan invasion Steven Colbert has warned us about, I suppose we do need orbital foundries. Oh, and some of those Clan double heatsinks rscaper found on Google.
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Structure. Material is more evenly spaced throughout the cast item, resulting in fewer flaws or weaknesses.
Indeed, because the moon and space has little and no gravity respectively that creates a unique research and manufacturing environment for biotech and materials sciences.
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Indeed, because the moon and space has little and no gravity respectively that creates a unique research and manufacturing environment for biotech and materials sciences.
You fail physics forever. :p
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i've kludged on a fusion reactor, but i think spacecraft is where i'm going to have to draw the line.
lies
(http://mm04.nasaimages.org/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size3/NVA2-4-NA/5508/ducttape_apollo17.jpg&userid=1&username=admin&resolution=3&servertype=JVA&cid=4&iid=NVA2&vcid=NA&usergroup=NASA_Astronomy_Picture_of_the_Day_Collecti-4-Admin&profileid=16)
(http://thereifixedit.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/8690.jpg)
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg/694px-Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg)
Even better...
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Indeed, because the moon and space has little and no gravity respectively that creates a unique research and manufacturing environment for biotech and materials sciences.
You fail physics forever. :p
The Earth's gravity is 1g, the moon's is 1/6g, space is 0g. How is that a fail?
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Saying there's no gravity in space is, although a commonly accepted colloquialism, technically incorrect.
Zero g refers to zero gravitational acceleration, a situation that occurs when everything experiences locally identical acceleration due to gravity field; this happens in free fall situation such as parabolic trajectory or space flight when no acceleration is produced by ship's thrusters. It's also known as microgravity.
Gravity itself (thankfully) exists in space just as it does on planet surface - it's the reference frame that makes us either notice the gravitation or not.
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I suppose the best way to imagine it is still the famous 'rubber sheet', even when the sheet is not 'stretched' near a large mass, it still exists?
Edit: I suppose that does show the difference between 'Zero G' which is simply everything at the same ROA and 'No Gravity', which is something else.
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg/694px-Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_13_LM_with_Mailbox_retouched.jpg)
Even better...
:yes:
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Saying there's no gravity in space is, although a commonly accepted colloquialism, technically incorrect.
It was intended as a colloquialism. :P My point is still valid.
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gravity is just a theory
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so are magnets.
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All we're saying is that you should teach the controversy. :lol: