Author Topic: Altius Space Machines Thread  (Read 326130 times)

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #40 on: 12/11/2010 07:47 pm »
No, but it's enough to get from LLO to the surface. If you use a Star 24 (or so) to capture into a dirty orbit, you could then clean it up with the lander before descent.

Well, if you had another stage to do part of the deceleration from lunar orbit (about half of it), then yeah this could work as is.  dV from LLO to the lunar surface is on the order of ~1.8-2.0km/s.  It should be pretty readily scalable though, so we could easily do a bigger tank if the situation merited it.  I'm mostly using this to prove out the general manufacturing technique.

But yeah, it could be part of a GLXP solution.

Would this have the T/W to land at 1/6th G?

Not as is.  Could I design something that had the mass ratio and T/W required for lunar landing?  Sure.  It's just that the requirements for a nanosat maneuvering unit and a lunar landing stage are different enough that you'd want to do something at least semi-custom.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #41 on: 12/11/2010 07:59 pm »
On an unrelated note, I just wanted to remind people that I'll be on the Space Show on Monday from 2-3:30pm PST (we're on ST, right?).  Their site is down right now due to a snafu with their hosting service, so in case they aren't back up by then, the show can be reached on http://www.live365.com/stations/dlivingston?site=pro

I'll be talking more about ASM and its recent contracts, including our recent SBIR award, and what the heck this may mean for our company (this is one of the most scary-cool opportunities I've ever found myself involved in).

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #42 on: 12/13/2010 08:20 pm »
On an unrelated note, I just wanted to remind people that I'll be on the Space Show on Monday from 2-3:30pm PST (we're on ST, right?).  Their site is down right now due to a snafu with their hosting service, so in case they aren't back up by then, the show can be reached on http://www.live365.com/stations/dlivingston?site=pro

I'll be talking more about ASM and its recent contracts, including our recent SBIR award, and what the heck this may mean for our company (this is one of the most scary-cool opportunities I've ever found myself involved in).

~Jon

Is it immature attention seeking to bump your own thread to try and get people to listen to your radio show appearance?

~Jon

Offline Lars_J

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #43 on: 12/13/2010 08:23 pm »
Nope! Thanks for the reminder...

Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #44 on: 12/13/2010 08:36 pm »
On an unrelated note, I just wanted to remind people that I'll be on the Space Show on Monday from 2-3:30pm PST (we're on ST, right?).  Their site is down right now due to a snafu with their hosting service, so in case they aren't back up by then, the show can be reached on http://www.live365.com/stations/dlivingston?site=pro

I'll be talking more about ASM and its recent contracts, including our recent SBIR award, and what the heck this may mean for our company (this is one of the most scary-cool opportunities I've ever found myself involved in).

~Jon

Is it immature attention seeking to bump your own thread to try and get people to listen to your radio show appearance?

~Jon

I'm looking forward to listening!
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Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #45 on: 12/13/2010 09:06 pm »
On an unrelated note, I just wanted to remind people that I'll be on the Space Show on Monday from 2-3:30pm PST (we're on ST, right?).  Their site is down right now due to a snafu with their hosting service, so in case they aren't back up by then, the show can be reached on http://www.live365.com/stations/dlivingston?site=pro

I'll be talking more about ASM and its recent contracts, including our recent SBIR award, and what the heck this may mean for our company (this is one of the most scary-cool opportunities I've ever found myself involved in).

~Jon

Is it immature attention seeking to bump your own thread to try and get people to listen to your radio show appearance?

~Jon

I'm looking forward to listening!

Show starting now. David Livingston mentioned that with their web host's current difficulties, questions can be emailed in to dmlivings -at yahoo, or dlivings -at- davidlivingston.com. There was also a phone number, but I didn't catch it.
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Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #46 on: 12/13/2010 09:24 pm »
On the Space Show jongoff's currently discussing the electroweak "sticky boom" project. For reference, here's the abstract for that:

http://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/10/sbir/phase1/SBIR-10-1-S5.04-9001.html?solicitationId=SBIR_10_P1
Quote
The Electroadhesive "Sticky Boom", an innovative method for rendezvous and docking, is proposed for the Orbiting Sample Capture (OSC) portion of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This technology carries the advantages of greatly reducing the probability of accidental colisions, high inherent reliability from mechanical and guidance simplicity, lower propellant consumption, avoidance of plume impingement, high tolerance for relative spacecraft misalignment, very low mass and volume requirements, and reliable non-mechanical contact and proximity detection. The system consists of an electrically activated electroadhesive pad used for spacecraft capture, mounted flexibly on the end of a low volume/weight retractable boom. The research proposed in phase 1 aims to design a system optimized for MSR mission and demonstrate the reliable functionality of the system in simulated space environments raising the TRL from a 2 to a 3. This effort ends with a system design for a flight testbed for testing during Phase 2, thus further elevating the TRL to 5-6. Also covered are numerous other applications of the technology, which allows for docking with spacecraft not design for docking as well as capture of uncooperative targets and debris. Interest in application of this technology has been show by industry entities such as ULA.

There's also a nice list of potential NASA and non-NASA applications at the link.
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Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #47 on: 12/13/2010 09:31 pm »
Apparently the Space Show's live365 service is nearing overload for the show with Jon Goff, and since the Space Show's website has just now gone back up, apparently the fast-serv link on this page should work if people experience connection issues:

http://www.thespaceshow.com/live.htm
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #48 on: 12/13/2010 11:05 pm »
On the Space Show jongoff's currently discussing the electroweak "sticky boom" project. For reference, here's the abstract for that:

http://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/10/sbir/phase1/SBIR-10-1-S5.04-9001.html?solicitationId=SBIR_10_P1
Quote
The Electroadhesive "Sticky Boom", an innovative method for rendezvous and docking, is proposed for the Orbiting Sample Capture (OSC) portion of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This technology carries the advantages of greatly reducing the probability of accidental colisions, high inherent reliability from mechanical and guidance simplicity, lower propellant consumption, avoidance of plume impingement, high tolerance for relative spacecraft misalignment, very low mass and volume requirements, and reliable non-mechanical contact and proximity detection. The system consists of an electrically activated electroadhesive pad used for spacecraft capture, mounted flexibly on the end of a low volume/weight retractable boom. The research proposed in phase 1 aims to design a system optimized for MSR mission and demonstrate the reliable functionality of the system in simulated space environments raising the TRL from a 2 to a 3. This effort ends with a system design for a flight testbed for testing during Phase 2, thus further elevating the TRL to 5-6. Also covered are numerous other applications of the technology, which allows for docking with spacecraft not design for docking as well as capture of uncooperative targets and debris. Interest in application of this technology has been show by industry entities such as ULA.

There's also a nice list of potential NASA and non-NASA applications at the link.

I'll be putting up some more details about the technology on my blog soon.  We're working with SRI on putting together some IP protection.  Once that's in place I'll give more details...

...oh, and not to nitpick, but it's electrostatic, not electroweak--if I know how to control the electroweak force this easy, I wouldn't be working on rockets.  :-)

Thanks for posting a link though.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #49 on: 12/13/2010 11:07 pm »
Thoughts?  Comments?  Flames?

Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #50 on: 12/13/2010 11:18 pm »
...oh, and not to nitpick, but it's electrostatic, not electroweak--if I know how to control the electroweak force this easy, I wouldn't be working on rockets.  :-)

Haha, oh man, I can't believe I typed that. ;)
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #51 on: 12/13/2010 11:21 pm »
...oh, and not to nitpick, but it's electrostatic, not electroweak--if I know how to control the electroweak force this easy, I wouldn't be working on rockets.  :-)

Haha, oh man, I can't believe I typed that. ;)

No worries, I was the one who had a typo in his proposal title.  That's a bit more embarrassing.

~Jon

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #52 on: 12/13/2010 11:34 pm »
Thoughts?  Comments?  Flames?
Really nice to hear you talk. It was interesting  to hear your thoughts on hydrogen handling on-orbit and how a lot of things that make handling hydrogen difficult on the ground go away or become simpler on-orbit.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #53 on: 12/13/2010 11:50 pm »
Thoughts?  Comments?  Flames?
Really nice to hear you talk. It was interesting  to hear your thoughts on hydrogen handling on-orbit and how a lot of things that make handling hydrogen difficult on the ground go away or become simpler on-orbit.

Yeah.  It's hard trying to cram that much content into that short of a time, but it's a useful point to make.  There are challenges, but a lot of the perceived challenges are overblown (not that there aren't plenty of tricky engineering problems).

~Jon

Offline rklaehn

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #54 on: 12/14/2010 08:49 am »
I was not able to listen to the end because of the time difference to europe. But it was a good show. You have a good voice for radio interviews. Also not many instances where you used filler words.

The sticky boom stuff sounds fascinating. I immediately thought of space debris.

I guess you need some flat area to stick to a heavy object such as a tumbling satellite. You could try to use the solar cells or radiators...

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #55 on: 12/14/2010 04:33 pm »
I was not able to listen to the end because of the time difference to europe. But it was a good show. You have a good voice for radio interviews. Also not many instances where you used filler words.

Thanks!  I didn't know how I had done with filler words.  I've been making a conscious effort, but there was too much going on for me to remember how I had done.

FWIW, here's the archive of the show http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1476-BWB-2010-12-13.mp3

Quote
The sticky boom stuff sounds fascinating. I immediately thought of space debris.

I guess you need some flat area to stick to a heavy object such as a tumbling satellite. You could try to use the solar cells or radiators...

Yeah, it's probably one of the coolest ideas I've ever been involved with.  I'm working with SRI on getting a formal relationship set up and to file a joint patent to protect the IP.  I've also found some other, really crazy applications that I want to at least get a provisional patent in place before I talk about them publicly.

There's a huge amount of potential here, if I don't screw things up.

~Jon

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #56 on: 12/14/2010 06:41 pm »
I was not able to listen to the end because of the time difference to europe. But it was a good show. You have a good voice for radio interviews. Also not many instances where you used filler words.

Thanks!  I didn't know how I had done with filler words.  I've been making a conscious effort, but there was too much going on for me to remember how I had done.

FWIW, here's the archive of the show http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1476-BWB-2010-12-13.mp3

Quote
The sticky boom stuff sounds fascinating. I immediately thought of space debris.

I guess you need some flat area to stick to a heavy object such as a tumbling satellite. You could try to use the solar cells or radiators...

Yeah, it's probably one of the coolest ideas I've ever been involved with.  I'm working with SRI on getting a formal relationship set up and to file a joint patent to protect the IP.  I've also found some other, really crazy applications that I want to at least get a provisional patent in place before I talk about them publicly.

There's a huge amount of potential here, if I don't screw things up.

~Jon
I assume you've read this RAND report on "Confronting Space Debris"?
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2010/RAND_MG1042.pdf

It is very high-level, and doesn't spend any time going into detail regarding space debris mitigation/elimination techniques, but it does show how policy makers will view the problem in light of other type of problems (like radon, asbestos, Deepwater Horizon, etc). I like reading RAND reports...
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline Lars_J

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #57 on: 12/14/2010 07:51 pm »
I was finally able to listen to the 2nd half of the show (I had to leave in the middle) - God job, Jon! :)

Is there any more information about the 'sticky boom' concept you discussed - that you can point to? I realize that it may be proprietary, but any small nugget of information would be interesting to read, since this is the first I have heard of it.


Offline neilh

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #58 on: 12/14/2010 08:26 pm »
I was finally able to listen to the 2nd half of the show (I had to leave in the middle) - God job, Jon! :)

Is there any more information about the 'sticky boom' concept you discussed - that you can point to? I realize that it may be proprietary, but any small nugget of information would be interesting to read, since this is the first I have heard of it.

It's not what you're looking for, I'm sure, but here's a neat video about using electroadhesive tech for wall-climbing robots:



Also, a company using them for notice boards:
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #59 on: 12/14/2010 08:35 pm »
I was finally able to listen to the 2nd half of the show (I had to leave in the middle) - Good job, Jon! :)
 

Thanks!  Yeah, the show ended up going about 20min over...just like my other time I was on.  Go figure.

Quote
Is there any more information about the 'sticky boom' concept you discussed - that you can point to? I realize that it may be proprietary, but any small nugget of information would be interesting to read, since this is the first I have heard of it.

Well, there are several posts on boom rendezvous in general both here on NSF and over on Selenian Boondocks.  Kirk Sorensen (a regular here) came up with the idea for boom rendezvous.

SRI has info on their website about electrostatic adhesion. 

I'll be posting more on the ASM blog once we have the IP protection in place.  SRI is working with us on a joint patent (probably a provisional first) for the technology.  Once that's in place I can say more.  I generally prefer being open, but want to honor the needs of our teaming partner on this one.

~Jon

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