Clunking to Mars - Are the needed parts already up there?

idiom · 2004-04-21 00:11:20

Gidday,

Imagine if Mir had been welded to the underside of the ISS. Next you grab as much aluminium framing and as many solar panels as you "reappropriate" to build a big bubble around the whole thing. Pressurise the bubble and you have a massive, redundant area for whatever neat stuff you can think up.

The hard part is getting the 400 tonne mess out of earth orbit...

Perhaps if you launched boosters. Anyway if you put some really dead solar panels (like actually dead) on the front a few layers deep, then you find yourself with a massive aerobrake. If you had secured an rtg or two then occupied or not, crash landing the thing next to a site of interest on mars would provide a handy dandy scrap yard for colonists/explorers full of all sorts of plumbing and electronics. This mostly lends itself to the sort of engineers who rejiggered their toasters to tune into sputnik but it could work.

C M Edwards · 2004-04-21 08:30:51

An excellent idea!

The Beagle probe did not reach Mars in operational condition, but satellite photos of the landing site indicate that it did not disintegrate, either. Its components could conceivably be reclaimed at a later date. Likewise, if automated precursors to a Mars Mission (like an ERV or probe) fail upon reaching Mars, all the equipment isn't necessarily lost.

Mundaka · 2004-04-24 04:23:55

idiom · 2004-04-24 05:01:01

Most plans tend to be to high tech. Worrying about minimising launch weights etc. We should be developing techniques to make on orbit welding common place.

I just seems... if you spend $5 Billion on a space craft it doesn't have to look like $5 billion on the inside, or even on the outside.

We need EVA's that don't have every finger movement published in a "manual" three years ahead of schedule. Nasa treats its astronauts like highly mobile rovers.

If we were more prepared to just tack stuff together, in happy go lucky ways, more money could be spent on quantity of hardware. When a station gets really big it gets harder to actually "kill". A meteor goes flying through the middle of the station, so you seal it off fast and work around it.

The Russians have a really good grasp of this but not enough money to keep launch stuff. There was a fire aboard Mir, right. They didn't shut down space exploration for five years while they figured out who to fire from the RSA so that fires would never occur again.

Hardware needs to be survivable not "perfect". I needs to be able to totally fail, to explode, to crash land, and still work.

This sounds a lot like pencils vs. space pens but it really is important. If the ISS loses another gyro (or two) it could be in real trouble. If Nasa really intends to kill the Shuttle, there is no back up. And Australia gets a donation of 200 tonnes of flaming wreckage.

Its odd that they can't borrow a gyro from another spacecraft and hotwire it. Flog one from a satellite or Soyuz...

Perhaps they should let the airforce design it. The Army overengineers everything. Is a wonderful asset when you rely on the hardware to get actual stuff done. </rant>

Rxke · 2004-04-24 10:32:01

idiom's idea of strapping together a pile of 'space-junk' with a primitive heatshield and crashing it on Mars got me going: 'grreat!' (i love to build things out of junked stuff, so, that might be why... )

But then i though: why crash-land it on Mars? Why not on Phobos?

Imagine MIR (or in some future scenario) ISS fitted with an ion engine, going slowly, slowly... to Mars, and into orbit... Then match orbit with Phobos (or Demios) and gently get it down, not that difficult, with the low gravity. Granted, it could/would take years, and the life-support systems etc. will be dead and so on, but chances are, when a manned mission goes up to Phobos, they might find a *battered* station, but not a *scattered* one... Add some jury rigged repairs, by off-duty McGyvers and you might find yourself with a first-class toolshed, probably pressurisable etc to boot! You could make a great workshop then, when other assorted pieces of 'scrap-metal' come floating in from Earth LEO-GEO...

A refurbished obsolete telecom-sat, capable to 'serve' some thousand connections would be a great addition for the few robots-people on the ground, and the rest might be a good source of raw, but very pure materials to build other stuff with, later on.

Rxke · 2004-04-24 10:43:01

If the ISS loses another gyro (or two) it could be in real trouble.

MIR lost it's gyro's repeatedly, towards the end of it's lifetime, sometimes stupid SNAFUs like erroneously disconnecting a wrong cable from the main computer (Bzzzzt.... Reboot...)

Things got rough there, in the end, loss of power, rising temp/huidity, etc etc...

But did they abandon ship? Heck no!

Heroes or crazy guys? I'd vote for stubborn knowledgable heroic crazy guys, heh... With a real hands-on jury-rig or bust mentality.

It will be interesting to see what happens when a similar scenario develops on ISS... (Hmmm... it did happen already, once, or was that just a comm. breakdown, i forgot...)

bolbuyk · 2004-04-24 12:53:03

I think all the modifications that will take place with eg the ISS before it is possible to fly with it to Mars, advancing life-support, I think, structural modifications, it must withstand forces for delta-v, beside that the safety of ISS is yet also guaranteed by adding a soyuz to it so that flight is immediately possible. This possibility can't be considered when going to Mars.

All said, it's better to launch a new module of about 40 ton.

idiom · 2004-04-24 15:27:03

All the strains would be placed on module interconnects. A much greater super structure would have to be weld on around it.

Skylab was awesome simply because it was so BIG in one piece. Before you went to large modules again we would be a lot better of with a really heavy lift Booster.

With the soyuz, or perhaps six new modules bundled together, they could actually seperate right before attempting to land individually.

The big plus of a conglomerate of independent modules is that if something explode (ala. Apollo 13) or a given unit begins thrusting out of control, then it can be cut loose, or just manhandled by the rest of the craft.

C M Edwards · 2004-04-24 18:06:08

How much fuel will it take to move the ISS?

Does anyone have a mass estimate for ISS hardware currently in orbit?

Rxke · 2004-04-24 18:27:31

a lot. it is still well within the upper layers of the atmosphere, needing occasional soyuz/progress boosts to maintain altitude... so i tink a 'light' ion thruster would have a hard time getting it out of leo.

Hazer · 2004-04-24 18:52:46

Tacking space junk together? I love it. Now if only we can get some zero-gravity manufacturing processes worked out. (Like how does a lathe behave in zero-G)

What about welding techniques? If we could get them to work in zero-gr, without the grace of an atmosphere, things would be golden. (You just need enough solar panels to power an arc-welder) You could even have remotely operated vehicles do all the welds you wanted.

idiom · 2004-04-24 20:27:53

If you modified it substantialy then you need to re-estimate where the center of mass is. To have something worth moving it would need at least 100t of additions which brings it all into the 300-400 tonne range. So you would have to hoist a truly massive booster up there. Perhaps the shuttle could lift two 60 tonne pre-fueled engines...

The ISS has or will have a walloping great truss, and a lot of "structure" that lends itself to being tacked on to.

What if the space shuttles all took their last flights one way to the Station!!!! Each with 60 tonnes of supplies or what not after the booters had been attached to the truss.

Next with all the shuttles attached, the whole jallopy could head off to mars... The hulk could be crash landed with the shuttles coming in one at a time after, for the mother of all sequential controlled crashes. If you picked somewhere really flat and rovers left the hulk to set up as radio beacons to guide the shuttles in... that would be ~15+ air locks and huge amounts of pressurisable living areas. Also thats a lot of rockets engines and spares. Like 12 SSME's a bunch of oms's.

Now if those extra boosters had been methane combatible, and one of the had survied then it would be entirley possible to return after say, four years leaving behind a significant installation (especially if ISS modules had been buried by the crew).

Its better than sending the shuttles out for recycling... Or becoming garden sheds in houston...

Rxke · 2004-04-26 14:25:07

What about welding techniques? If we could get them to work in zero-gr, without the grace of an atmosphere, things would be golden. (You just need enough solar panels to power an arc-welder) You could even have remotely operated vehicles do all the welds you wanted.

Has been proven to be doable. There's even pictures of Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya doing welding experiments during an EVA...

http://www.aws.org/about/time_by5.html] … e_by5.html

quasar777 · 2004-05-16 13:37:32

there`s an excellent system for all this salvage. the mobile parts hospital(google search). if this could be taken into outer space, salvage could be much easier. this system was born from 3d stereo lithography, heretofore only for use in mfg plastics.

Rxke · 2004-05-16 13:48:32

Interesting: "The current RMS prototype consists of two twenty-foot International Standards Organization (ISO) containers, each housing one primary piece of fabricating equipment. Each of these modules meets the size and weight requirements for C 130 aircraft transport and can be moved overland on Army trucks"
How does that calculate to tonnes to LEO? (Or GEO)

http://www.mobilepartshospital.com/welc … php]Mobile parts hospital

quasar777 · 2004-05-18 14:23:11

there must be a chart somewhere for this. atm i`m 2 lazy 2 lookitup. i think by the time we`re ready to put this up it will be downsized to an economy model. 3d stereo lithography went through several evolutions.

C M Edwards · 2004-07-19 14:14:00

Questions, to satisfy my curiosity:

How long can the ISS soak in space without maintenance? What are the critical components that demand human maintenance, and could they be restarted if shut down for several months?

Also,

What defunct space probes can still be contacted by radio? The Venus probe Magellan was one of the few shut down while still fully functional, so I know better than to expect full function from every defunct probe. But what about only re-establishing radio communications? For example, were the Viking landers on Mars ultimately lost, or were they just shut down? What's broken, but still has a working radio?

Hmm...

Algol · 2004-07-20 04:54:33

Imagine theyd discovered the problems with Columbia before it came down, and theyd been forced to abandon it in leo.

How incredible would it be if they just decided to refuel, fire it up and send it of to mars........ sigh.

Maybe when they're retired, we should start a petition to send one to mars!

SpaceNut · 2004-07-22 14:18:48

Great Idea for reuse of the shuttle only need a smooth landing strip at the end of the flight to Mars.

SpaceNut · 2004-07-23 07:11:29

As far as reusing the ISS at the L1 or L2 or even in lunar orbit. It makes more sense to break it apart and move pieces rather than the whole station at one time. Rockets then used to change and to reposition it to any of those point then would be smaller.

comstar03 · 2004-07-23 07:29:05

ISS is a toy space station , I wouldn't move it, I would have a expiry date worked out for the end of ISS and look beyond for a permanent habitat platform. Its good for a first try at long term space living, but for large scale long term space development the ISS is not useful ( probably useful as a experiment site only )

To house and maintain 2000+ people ( by 2045 ) working in space or working on the moon or transferring to a mars settlement its not the place to do that.

The main goal is to bring humanity to the stars , not go on a picnic and return home. From the outset we should be designing a method for permanent settlement on Mars from day one or long term duration teams of 10+ personnel with crew rotation.

SpaceNut · 2004-07-23 08:26:12

I agree that settlement is preferable more so than to exploration by a select few. You are also right about size does matter when it comes to a colony of people.
The problem with size is that it will require heavy lift capability if it is done in a one shot mode rather than in small pieces that are later assembled.

comstar03 · 2004-07-24 01:09:20

Spacenut,

yes, heay lift vehicles are required, but they always required to build a large scale infrstructure. I think the issue is that we have the current technology to do the job, but you first need to take ideas from other areas and add them to space related activities.

Secondly, recycle everything you do, including all space vehicles, components and personnel from one launch to the next.

Thirdly, design a series of space modular vehicles that can be used in small, medium and large life capacities. Thus realizing saved development costs.

Next set a goal for permanent mars settlement and permanent travel , commerce between earth and mars. Not just get there, but get there and back many times, for civilians from earth or moon.

When we meet that goal then we are going somewhere.

Rxke · 2004-07-24 05:12:18

Sounds a lot like the new initiative... Except for the truly heavy launchers, of course.

comstar03 · 2004-07-24 19:04:23

Don't think that I am against the work NASA and other government or private enterprise has done. But I think its time to remodel / redesign the way we are going to build our space industry.

The process needs to looked at for sustainability, not from single goals like landing on the moon or mars. It should be how to get humanity to the stars and live in space.

Mars will be the first major permanent settlement on another Planet. We need to do it right from day one. and we need the facilities for humanity to be there. Build outposts on the orbiting moons ( remote or manned ) and global communication facilities.

It comes down to planning not for a picnic to Mars but a serious endeavour to build a settlement through to a human city on mars within the next fifty - seventy years. ( city = 15,000 people )

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Re: Clunking to Mars - Are the needed parts already up there?

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#29 2004-04-24 05:01:01

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#30 2004-04-24 10:32:01

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#31 2004-04-24 10:43:01

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