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Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

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Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#91

Post by Retric »

rtkwe wrote: post #86
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISS cost ~200 billion, saying we can't do the same research for less is kind of a high hurdle when it's close enough for minimal lag, nobody tried, and people need a lot of ridiculously expensive consumables.

The lag isn't the hurdle it's making the robotics on the satellite to run the experiment. The closest analog is probably the robot that's used to service the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy [0]. With a station for some types of failures with experiments an astronaut can work around or heavily reconfigure the equipment to still get good data. Without a person up there every experiment launch would have…

No, the ITER robot needs to deal with heavy loads, micro G means even small forces add up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Servicing_System did not need to be that strong. http://iss.jaxa.jp/en/kibo/about/kibo/rms/ was also relatively weak. Also, don't forget without people they could send 3x the science payloads. So, scrapping things and trying again really is viable.

Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, but we could have sent 3 of them up for less money.

As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.

PS: Some of the most interesting recent experiments have been flame studies in micro gravity. But many of these can be done with 20 seconds of vomit comet zero g time or just a simple drop test like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZTl7oi05dQ

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#92

Post by rakoo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #89
leojg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so... anyways I find stupid the need to differentiate the "space worker(?)" by country of origin. They all do the same awesome thing.

The Russians invented the job, yet us Americans decided to go with Astronaut rather than Cosmonaut.

And we French people wanted to go with our American friends but didn't want to anger the Russian giant... so we went with our own "spationaute"

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#93

Post by mikeash »

avar wrote: post #19
jcoffland wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My statements above were neutral but yes I do think that the US and the western world in general are falling behind. What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Privatization of the US space industry is interesting but has yet to prove itself. No private institution has achieved manned orbit.

> What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Isn't it literally the case that if the US wanted to send people into space on their own hardware they could do it with months of lead time with the Falcon 9, Delta IV etc.? Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets? I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper…

If there were some extremely urgent problem, like if aliens showed up in orbit tomorrow and demanded we send an emissary, then no doubt it could be done pretty quickly.

The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#94

Post by kfihihc »

xeroaura wrote: post #81
Nokinside wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taikonaut is the word sometimes used for Chinese astronauts in English language journals and Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's mix of Mandarin and Greek (naut = sailor in Greek). Chinese call their astronauts hang tian yuan.Indian astronauts will be vyomanauts. Astronaut is still valid name for crew member of a spacecraft in any nation.

Is taiko short for tai kong (太空) = space in Mandarin in this case?

Yes.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#95

Post by rtkwe »

Retric wrote: post #91
rtkwe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lag isn't the hurdle it's making the robotics on the satellite to run the experiment. The closest analog is probably the robot that's used to service the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy [0]. With a station for some types of failures with experiments an astronaut can work around or heavily reconfigure the equipment to still get good data. Without a person up there every experiment launch would have…

No, the ITER robot needs to deal with heavy loads, micro G means even small forces add up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Servicing_System did not need to be that strong. http://iss.jaxa.jp/en/kibo/about/kibo/rms/ was also relatively weak. Also, don't forget without people they could send 3x the science payloads. So, scrapping things and trying again really is viable. Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, bu…

> Consider, fixing Hubble was a big thing, but we could have sent 3 of them up for less money.

Not even close. It cost ~900M for the repair mission and the cost to build Hubble was ~2.5B.

>No, the ITER robot needs to deal with heavy loads, micro G means even small forces add up. Don't forget without people they could send 3x the science payloads. So, scrapping things and trying again really is viable.

Less forces only means that the motors can be weaker but it doesn't lower the overall complexity required, you still have to have X degrees of freedom to get an arm that can barely replace a human in limited circumstances. Telerobotics just isn't there or cheap enough to make it make sense.

> As to micro G, we could send a mars mission with simulated gravity. Which is something we really should be testing instead of simply yet another long stay in micro G.

We /could/ do simulated gravity but there's a lot of engineering issues with that that make it a Gen 2+ solution for a Mars trip or for a more long term solution like a Mars cycler. Just the size required for a spinning torus to be comfortable and provide enough gravity to be worth it would make it much larger than the ISS [0] [1]. There are other problems like dealing with communication equipment and docking which would want a stationary center which brings in more complexity with the seals between the stationary section and the ring. There's other options like a bolas but they're also pretty complex. Until then we'll need to deal with space travel as it comes to us which is without gravity. In short to test and build them we'll need either a large decrease in launch costs or a truly massive pile of money.

[0] http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/artificial_gravity_and_th...

[1] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1308/why-are-there-...

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#96

Post by jcoffland »

mikeash wrote: post #93
avar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Isn't it literally the case that if the US wanted to send people into space on their own hardware they could do it with months of lead time with the Falcon 9, Delta IV etc.? Those rockets aren't "human rated", but are they (particularly the Delta IV) any less safe then the Soyuz or Chinese rockets? I.e. this seems more of a "we have some rockets, but it's cheaper…

If there were some extremely urgent problem, like if aliens showed up in orbit tomorrow and demanded we send an emissary, then no doubt it could be done pretty quickly. The current commercial crew program is aiming for manned flight in August of next year. I'd give extremely good odds for that to slip, but 2018 is probably a pretty safe bet right now. And that's without a big sense of urgency driving things.

Manned flight meaning LEO.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#97

Post by jcoffland »

exDM69 wrote: post #32
ChoHag wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point: we may not know until we have days or hours remaining to achieve them.

As far as I know, there's no party on earth who could execute a space mission on one month notice. And such a mission would have very little capabilities due to poor preparation time. Whatever doomsday scenario you are concerned about, it's not a realistic goal.

Either Russia or China could if properly motivated.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#98

Post by jcoffland »

stickfigure wrote: post #5
jcoffland wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My statements above were neutral but yes I do think that the US and the western world in general are falling behind. What happens if US and Russian relations break down? Privatization of the US space industry is interesting but has yet to prove itself. No private institution has achieved manned orbit.

No private institution has achieved manned orbit. That's because manned orbit is motivated by prestige, not rational economic behavior.

That's one way to look at it. The other is that a commercial enterprise will not do something in the name of science if it does not make a buck.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#99

Post by jcoffland »

manarth wrote: post #54
ballooney wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, there are commercial agreements in place between both SpaceX and Boeing, and Nasa, as part of its Commercial Crew Programme. The current estimates are that they will not launch until 2018, three years behind the original schedule: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/09/01/nasa-oig-report-delay... I also have customers who have been sold slots for their satellites on Falcon Heavy which is now 4 years behind s…

Whilst it's frustrating for the customers whose launches are delayed, I'm sure they're accepting the delay for rational economic reasons, otherwise they would switch to an alternative supplier.

Well the reason could be that they haven't gotten their money back.

Re: Astronauts enter China's space station [video]

#100

Post by jcoffland »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15
yitchelle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With so much at stake, is it possible for all nations to play together and strive for the better good when it comes to space exploration?

Only in movies. A lot of people (including poliicians deciding about treaties and budgets) do not believe there's really anything at stake, and instead think of space exploration as a very expensive nerd hobby with some possible military applications.

And ironically those same people believe their silly little political games on earth are what's really important.
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