what is the white circle with black center?
Why we do not use each supply ship that is sent as an extra section, so it gets bigger & bigger
Got a question I moved from the SpaceX Dragon thread to here:Were the CBM on the ISS nodes designed for a specific number of total Berth/Unbearth actions ? IE is there a upper limit on their total uses ? (Waranty number)Just asking as it's my understanding that Dragon, and Cygnus will be using the CBM's to deliver cargo (20 times in total ?).Thanks a bunch!Duane
I have a question about the orbital mechanics of the ISS. I understand that the ISS orbital plane "precesses" around the Earth by about 5 degrees per day, which results in the shuttle launch windows advancing by about 20 minutes per day. This is due to the non-spherical shape of the Earth, per an answer to an earlier question I posted.
Does this then mean that ISS overflight viewing conditions (i.e. lighting) should recur periodically? That is, since it advances 5 degrees / 20 minute per day, then it should take about 72 days to come full circle (ha!) and repeat the pattern.
Which leads to a related question. Is there any seasonal pattern to viewability? Is it generally better in the fall for the northern hemisphere, just to make an example?
Are estimates of the ISS mass required for reboosts. If yes, how do they keep track with all the coming and going?
Abandon ship.
Quote from: rdale on 03/31/2009 09:35 pmAbandon ship. How do you abandon ship if you can't pass through Node 1?
Quote from: nomadd22 on 03/31/2009 09:57 pmQuote from: rdale on 03/31/2009 09:35 pmAbandon ship. How do you abandon ship if you can't pass through Node 1?Are all the places a Soyuz can dock on the Russian segment?
Quote from: Jorge on 03/22/2009 05:49 pmQuote from: ChrisC on 03/22/2009 05:37 pmDuring last week's post launch news conference, there was some Q+A about expedition handover, overlap, crew changeout, etc. One of the guys (Gerst or Suffredini) was talking about "direct handover" vs "indirect handover". I didn't quite follow what he was talking about. I think it was in the context of making sure that the expedition crews had a full 7-10 days of overlap in order to do a good transition, without the distraction of also having a shuttle mission docked, but I didn't fully understand the jargon. Can someone explain?erioladastra is probably the one to answer this, but my understanding is that direct handover means the new Soyuz docks before the old one leaves, allowing the new crewmembers to take the handover directly from the departing crewmembers, while indirect handover means the old Soyuz leaves first, so the handover is performed by the three "holdover" crewmembers. (Obviously only applies with a 6-person crew; an indirect handover with a 3-person crew leaves ISS temporarily uninhabited.)The reason why this might be necessary is shortage of Soyuz/Progress/ATV docking ports. There are currently only three, and a direct handover will require all three (two for the old Soyuzes and one for the new one). That means that the Soyuz rotation schedule will be tightly coupled with the Progress/ATV schedule. Indirect handover frees up a port so that the Progress/ATV schedule can be kept independent (to some extent) from the Soyuz schedule.While that is true that is not usually what we mean by direct or indirect (but I guess some might use those terms). Normally it means this: Direct we schedule N hours of timne for the crew to go over a handover book or specific topic (e.g., emergency response). Indirect is where we do handover by showing - for example robotics where the new person gets to feel the thing while the old person is there to guide and show features.
Quote from: ChrisC on 03/22/2009 05:37 pmDuring last week's post launch news conference, there was some Q+A about expedition handover, overlap, crew changeout, etc. One of the guys (Gerst or Suffredini) was talking about "direct handover" vs "indirect handover". I didn't quite follow what he was talking about. I think it was in the context of making sure that the expedition crews had a full 7-10 days of overlap in order to do a good transition, without the distraction of also having a shuttle mission docked, but I didn't fully understand the jargon. Can someone explain?erioladastra is probably the one to answer this, but my understanding is that direct handover means the new Soyuz docks before the old one leaves, allowing the new crewmembers to take the handover directly from the departing crewmembers, while indirect handover means the old Soyuz leaves first, so the handover is performed by the three "holdover" crewmembers. (Obviously only applies with a 6-person crew; an indirect handover with a 3-person crew leaves ISS temporarily uninhabited.)The reason why this might be necessary is shortage of Soyuz/Progress/ATV docking ports. There are currently only three, and a direct handover will require all three (two for the old Soyuzes and one for the new one). That means that the Soyuz rotation schedule will be tightly coupled with the Progress/ATV schedule. Indirect handover frees up a port so that the Progress/ATV schedule can be kept independent (to some extent) from the Soyuz schedule.
During last week's post launch news conference, there was some Q+A about expedition handover, overlap, crew changeout, etc. One of the guys (Gerst or Suffredini) was talking about "direct handover" vs "indirect handover". I didn't quite follow what he was talking about. I think it was in the context of making sure that the expedition crews had a full 7-10 days of overlap in order to do a good transition, without the distraction of also having a shuttle mission docked, but I didn't fully understand the jargon. Can someone explain?