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#80 by notsorandom on 05 Sep, 2013 00:00
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There was a Future In Space Operations (FISO) presentation given by Brand Griffin on 3/17/13 that talk about this very concept. It can be found in the archive list here: http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/archivelist.htmSo they took an ET barrel section and turned it into a hab demonstrator?
Cool
I dont think it is just a demonstrator, perhaps they want to use SLS tank sections as hab modules themselves? Remember, Skylab used S-IVB tanks for the habitat volume, why not use SLS infrastructure to do the same for a large hab module? -
#81 by RocketmanUS on 05 Sep, 2013 00:26
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spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Griffin_3-27-13/Griffin_3-27-13.pdf
There was a Future In Space Operations (FISO) presentation given by Brand Griffin on 3/17/13 that talk about this very concept. It can be found in the archive list here: http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/archivelist.htmSo they took an ET barrel section and turned it into a hab demonstrator?
Cool
I dont think it is just a demonstrator, perhaps they want to use SLS tank sections as hab modules themselves? Remember, Skylab used S-IVB tanks for the habitat volume, why not use SLS infrastructure to do the same for a large hab module?
Is their a better way to make the body of the deep space hab than from the SLS tanks? Our does this method meet all the safety requirements?So they took an ET barrel section and turned it into a hab demonstrator?
Cool
I dont think it is just a demonstrator, perhaps they want to use SLS tank sections as hab modules themselves? Remember, Skylab used S-IVB tanks for the habitat volume, why not use SLS infrastructure to do the same for a large hab module?
Could they have larger docking ports at the ends to connect two or more of these together. Plus for larger items to bring into the station later on? -
#82 by newpylong on 05 Sep, 2013 00:37
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Very cool. Jeez that tank barrel is big.
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#83 by Lars_J on 05 Sep, 2013 01:42
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I wonder why they would layout an SLS-tank based hab like that. It seems to me that it would be easier from a loads perspective to put the tank upright and put in floors that way. As a bonus there would less wasted space.
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#84 by RocketmanUS on 05 Sep, 2013 01:46
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I wonder why they would layout an SLS-tank based hab like that. It seems to me that it would be easier from a loads perspective to put the tank upright and put in floors that way. As a bonus there would less wasted space.
Docking might be connected to the center deck.
Could possible separate the lower and upper decks from the center deck when EVA's or docking takes place, ECT. -
#85 by Lars_J on 05 Sep, 2013 02:50
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I wonder why they would layout an SLS-tank based hab like that. It seems to me that it would be easier from a loads perspective to put the tank upright and put in floors that way. As a bonus there would less wasted space.
Docking might be connected to the center deck.
Could possible separate the lower and upper decks from the center deck when EVA's or docking takes place, ECT.
How does that make a difference with regards to how the floors are aligned? The entire inside of the 8 m diameter section would likely be a single pressurized volume, so putting the location of the airlock/docking port in the middle would be just as inefficient for both layouts.
I'm merely suggesting that an interior deck arrangement like Skylab is more efficient and practical, (see image 1) whereas the SLS hab concept wants to lay the floors out lengthwise, like the Bigelow BA 2100 concept (see image 2). I much prefer the Skylab layout.
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#86 by RocketmanUS on 05 Sep, 2013 05:27
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With that layout I could still separate areas. Don't like one big area. If there is a leak then best to have an area foe crew to go that is not leaking till it can be fixed or crew can be evacuated. Better to be safe.I wonder why they would layout an SLS-tank based hab like that. It seems to me that it would be easier from a loads perspective to put the tank upright and put in floors that way. As a bonus there would less wasted space.
Docking might be connected to the center deck.
Could possible separate the lower and upper decks from the center deck when EVA's or docking takes place, ECT.
How does that make a difference with regards to how the floors are aligned? The entire inside of the 8 m diameter section would likely be a single pressurized volume, so putting the location of the airlock/docking port in the middle would be just as inefficient for both layouts.
I'm merely suggesting that an interior deck arrangement like Skylab is more efficient and practical, (see image 1) whereas the SLS hab concept wants to lay the floors out lengthwise, like the Bigelow BA 2100 concept (see image 2). I much prefer the Skylab layout.
If you want and have the time draw out a floor plan and see what one will have better use of floor space and head room. It's worth looking into. -
#87 by Lars_J on 05 Sep, 2013 05:38
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You are missing my point... There would be one area no matter what. The floors and walls wouldn't be pressure/air-tight walls - that would be very heavy.
If you absolutely wanted to build in a 'central' airlock, I suppose you could do it... But the floor alignment wouldn't make a difference. And you would never want to use the entire habitat volume as an airlock.
But maybe I just understand what you mean. -
#88 by RocketmanUS on 05 Sep, 2013 05:53
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You are missing my point... There would be one area no matter what. The floors and walls wouldn't be pressure/air-tight walls - that would be very heavy.
It's not the whole area as an airlock.
If you absolutely wanted to build in a 'central' airlock, I suppose you could do it... But the floor alignment wouldn't make a difference. And you would never want to use the entire habitat volume as an airlock.
But maybe I just understand what you mean.
At each docking port and at the airlock ( for EVA's ) there is a chance that the seals might not take.
If we split it into three sections your way then the bottom could have one docking port on the bottom, two on the side and an EVA. That section could be isolated from the other two upper section. That would not add to much mass ( about the mass of the bottom or upper dome plus hatch between decks ). So that could work. And have a docking port on the top deck ( that could be the large docking port to add two modules together ).
We still would need to know what the better floor plan would be for their intended use of the module. -
#89 by newpylong on 05 Sep, 2013 14:06
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Perhaps since this is intended for deep space we can assume crew duration will be that of an ISS tour or longer and they do wish to provide privacy and dedicated work / living space as opposed to one big space ala Skylab which only saw an 84 day mission. Just thinking out loud.
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#90 by Lars_J on 05 Sep, 2013 16:42
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Perhaps since this is intended for deep space we can assume crew duration will be that of an ISS tour or longer and they do wish to provide privacy and dedicated work / living space as opposed to one big space ala Skylab which only saw an 84 day mission. Just thinking out loud.
I only used the Skylab as an example of how the floors could be aligned - not that there should be a massive open space. -
#91 by darkenfast on 05 Sep, 2013 19:46
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Newpylong, Skylab had two decks in the main section: the big open lab area and the lower deck, which had private cabins for each astronaut, wardroom and a waste control/hygene area.
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#92 by newpylong on 05 Sep, 2013 19:53
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thank you I did not know that. I thought the sleeping berths were along the outer wall in the main area.
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#93 by pathfinder_01 on 05 Sep, 2013 22:52
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How does that make a difference with regards to how the floors are aligned? The entire inside of the 8 m diameter section would likely be a single pressurized volume, so putting the location of the airlock/docking port in the middle would be just as inefficient for both layouts.
I'm merely suggesting that an interior deck arrangement like Skylab is more efficient and practical, (see image 1) whereas the SLS hab concept wants to lay the floors out lengthwise, like the Bigelow BA 2100 concept (see image 2). I much prefer the Skylab layout.
Skylab’s layout had problems. The wide open space made space sickness worse and it made it easy for the crew to become stranded mid space unable to reach a wall. It also made it hard for sound to be conducted through the station. Hence why the ISS tends towards narrower modules and a single “floor”. i.e. Corridor like. -
#94 by Lars_J on 06 Sep, 2013 05:20
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Sigh. How many times do I need to point out that I used Skylab purely as an example of floor orientation, not that it's rather large open space should be replicated. No matter what I say, I'm sure several more posts will be done with that assumption.
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#95 by spectre9 on 06 Sep, 2013 10:32
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Skylab was more fun.
We've all seen the videos of the flying about.
Astronauts had fun trying to fly from one side to the other without touching the walls. -
#96 by Herb Schaltegger on 06 Sep, 2013 19:26
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How does that make a difference with regards to how the floors are aligned? The entire inside of the 8 m diameter section would likely be a single pressurized volume, so putting the location of the airlock/docking port in the middle would be just as inefficient for both layouts.
I'm merely suggesting that an interior deck arrangement like Skylab is more efficient and practical, (see image 1) whereas the SLS hab concept wants to lay the floors out lengthwise, like the Bigelow BA 2100 concept (see image 2). I much prefer the Skylab layout.
Skylab’s layout had problems. The wide open space made space sickness worse and it made it easy for the crew to become stranded mid space unable to reach a wall. It also made it hard for sound to be conducted through the station. Hence why the ISS tends towards narrower modules and a single “floor”. i.e. Corridor like.
Not to argue your points re Skylab, but the reason the ISS tends to narrower modules stems from the Shuttle-launched nature of the U.S./European and Japanese modules. They were all volume- and mass-constrained. The layouts have "floors" only by convention; racks were laid out according to a defined pattern in the original "racetrack" module configurations simply to help prevent possible issues with the crew becoming confused about orientation while working and moving from one place to another.
The Russian segments have their own reasons for diameter, not the least of which is payload launch and integration limits of their own. -
#97 by Khadgars on 06 Sep, 2013 19:46
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Skylab 2 seems like an excellent choice moving forward. Good to see some trade studies and work being done on this. Any early cost estimates?
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#98 by Robotbeat on 06 Sep, 2013 20:50
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Shuttle payload capabilities aren't the only reason for diameter limits. It turns out there aren't a lot of facilities for handling larger payloads. You have to make bigger doors, larger vehicles, higher roofs, bigger shake table, bigger thermal vacuum chamber (most relevant for testing fairings, the current one we use for this stuff can handle Skylab), and to transport the payloads means we need to reroute around bridges, need to move power lines, put on a customized aircraft (these are very rare for bigger than 5m, the one we used for Skylab I don't think is available any longer, and Skylab was just 6.6m).
How does that make a difference with regards to how the floors are aligned? The entire inside of the 8 m diameter section would likely be a single pressurized volume, so putting the location of the airlock/docking port in the middle would be just as inefficient for both layouts.
I'm merely suggesting that an interior deck arrangement like Skylab is more efficient and practical, (see image 1) whereas the SLS hab concept wants to lay the floors out lengthwise, like the Bigelow BA 2100 concept (see image 2). I much prefer the Skylab layout.
Skylab’s layout had problems. The wide open space made space sickness worse and it made it easy for the crew to become stranded mid space unable to reach a wall. It also made it hard for sound to be conducted through the station. Hence why the ISS tends towards narrower modules and a single “floor”. i.e. Corridor like.
Not to argue your points re Skylab, but the reason the ISS tends to narrower modules stems from the Shuttle-launched nature of the U.S./European and Japanese modules. They were all volume- and mass-constrained. The layouts have "floors" only by convention; racks were laid out according to a defined pattern in the original "racetrack" module configurations simply to help prevent possible issues with the crew becoming confused about orientation while working and moving from one place to another.
The Russian segments have their own reasons for diameter, not the least of which is payload launch and integration limits of their own.
It is true we might make them a little bigger than 4.5m outer diameter if we built them for launch on EELV or Titan IV or some HLV, but not much bigger. The optimal is not usually all the way over to as big as is possible.
And while it may make sense for a LEO station or maybe even a gateway to use large modules, for a Deep space exploration hab, you want it small and very lightweight because you're pushing it through a lot of delta-v, and it causes the propulsion system to have to be bigger.
A good concept may be to use even smaller modules... A node surrounded by small modules, the number of modules depending on crew size and mission duration. For short missions, no modules. For long missions, use 1, 2, 3, or 4 Advanced Cygnuses docked around the Node (don't know if berthing would work or not... what's the minimum arm size to make berthing work?). The Advanced Cygnuses have 27m^3 of pressurized volume each (7.5m^3 more than Orion), compared to around 75m^3 pressurized for Node 4, so 3 of them would more than triple the DSH's pressurized volume. Advanced Cygnus launches next year, and with 4 of them combined (again, hand-waving the difficulty of tying the buses together), would produce enough power for the DSH to not need any solar arrays of its own, further cutting costs. And we know how expensive these guys are (not very, we're throwing away two of them every year just for unmanned logistics, so less than $250m including launch), and they're already produced en masse for ISS CRS. They'd need more MMOD shielding, but that's not a huge expense. But we could build them only as needed. And the big advantage is economies of scale: We are likely to only produce one or maybe two of these DSH for decades at a time (assuming we're reusing them), while we could produce a dozen or so of these vehicles for both living area and logistics, and we're already making 9 of them (including the regular Cygnuses, including the COTS Demo 2), so we'd already be benefiting from economies of scale vs starting from scratch with a big module.
The advantage of using ISS heritage is: cost, cost, cost. And speed. Could build it ASAP. Could maybe even afford it, even in tight budgetary times, while I'm not sure we could afford building a new Space Station essentially from scratch (that used non-standard and thus much more expensive ground infrastructure) while paying for both SLS and Orion. ISS heritage is the way to go, IMHO. We've got a decade or more of experience, the development is paid for, we even have spare parts which could save a significant amount of money in fabrication, let alone the time advantage. For wherever possible, ISS heritage makes a ton of sense. -
#99 by Lurker Steve on 06 Sep, 2013 21:24
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Obviously, a 8.4M module is a challenge. But the core of it gets built sea-side at MAF anyway on the same tooling used for SLS tanks. it has to be launched by SLS under that huge 10 meter fairing.
How much would one of these modules weigh anyway ? Is it possible to launch the module more or less completely outfitted, or would there be an on-orbit construction process to add equipment to the interior ?
How large of a "node" module would you use to connect the DSH to the prop, and logistics modules ?
This thing is going to be expensive obviously. But, if they continue with this prototyping and don't need any major contracts until after JWST launches, I see it could attract the eye of Congress and the next President as a necessary tool to implement NASA's goal of BEO exploration. Just don't ask for more than 1. I can't imagine multiple BEO missions at the same time anyway with current NASA budget levels.
