Wet stations sound great in theory, but are so impractical.And even if it was plausible, I would think that Centaur - with its A) incredible mass fraction, B) very thin tank skin, and C) thin diameter - would be far from the optimal starting point.
Here's a good article from Evan Ackerman in the IEEE Spectrum: NASA Funds Plan to Turn Used Rocket Fuel Tanks Into Space Habitats. I've attached a few of the relevant pictures from the article to better illustrate the concept.
Mike Johnson: ... The reason that Skylab wasn't build like this is kind of a strange story: [NASA] had fewer Saturn IBs than they had Saturn Vs, so von Braun just decided to use a Saturn V and fly up a "dry" lab, with all of the equipment aboard it already.IEEE Spectrum: So you're saying that NASA didn't go with the idea of reusing a wet Saturn 1B stage for Skylab mostly because they had spare Saturn Vs lying around that could lift an entire dry lab all at once?Mike Johnson: That's correct. They had extra Saturn Vs, leftovers from the Apollo program.
For human habitat a wet habitat may have its limits, but for low cost robotic factory it could be ideal. Nanoracks and SSL are looking at this as basis for in orbit manufacturing. Add Made In Space to equation and lot possibilities open up.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 04/15/2017 03:43 pmFor human habitat a wet habitat may have its limits, but for low cost robotic factory it could be ideal. Nanoracks and SSL are looking at this as basis for in orbit manufacturing. Add Made In Space to equation and lot possibilities open up. Ideal? It's as ideal as setting up a machine shop in an old tanker truck on Earth....
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 04/15/2017 05:41 pmQuote from: TrevorMonty on 04/15/2017 03:43 pmFor human habitat a wet habitat may have its limits, but for low cost robotic factory it could be ideal. Nanoracks and SSL are looking at this as basis for in orbit manufacturing. Add Made In Space to equation and lot possibilities open up. Ideal? It's as ideal as setting up a machine shop in an old tanker truck on Earth....To put the alegory in it's context, it is as ideal as setting up a machine shop in an old tanker truck you got for free, instead of buying a brand-new tanker truck and flying it to space...Still not ideal though
Quote from: dror on 04/15/2017 07:16 pmQuote from: ChrisWilson68 on 04/15/2017 05:41 pmQuote from: TrevorMonty on 04/15/2017 03:43 pmFor human habitat a wet habitat may have its limits, but for low cost robotic factory it could be ideal. Nanoracks and SSL are looking at this as basis for in orbit manufacturing. Add Made In Space to equation and lot possibilities open up. Ideal? It's as ideal as setting up a machine shop in an old tanker truck on Earth....To put the alegory in it's context, it is as ideal as setting up a machine shop in an old tanker truck you got for free, instead of buying a brand-new tanker truck and flying it to space...Still not ideal thoughYou still need to fly all the people and equipment to space to convert the old tank into a factory or whatever. If those people doing the conversion are going to require a lot of time in space and support equipment, the whole conversion process might require a lot more to be launched into space than the alternative of just launching a module that is already designed and built on Earth to be the desired factory (or habitat or whatever).Remember, this conversion has to be done in space. Upper stages don't have airlocks or docking ports or anything like that. Are you going to cut a hole in the space for a docking adapter and weld it in place in vacuum in zero-g? Is the structure of the upper stage even going to be compatible with that kind of a change?It's all far more ambitious than anything that's ever been attempted in space before, and all to avoid a solved problem: just launching something into space that's already exactly the factory or habitat you want.
Would it be easier to turn the upper stage into the storage tanks for a propellant depot?Possibly attached to a space station.
Dry storage space itself is already valuable. Maybe things are easier to relocate if there is no need to store them 3 layers deep.
Dry storage space itself is already valuable. Maybe things are easier to relocate if there is no need to store them 3 layers deep.The big problem with wet workshop is that you just get an empty tank and then have to outfit it.I wonder what happens if the concept gets reversed. Start with a rather simple module including all the MMOD and external connections, strip the internals down, using it as tank during launch and reinstall gear on orbit.