As per my source: launch - November 13, berthing - November 15, unberthing and splashdown - December 15.
Are you sure this is a conflict?
Quote from: deltaV on 05/25/2013 04:46 pmAre you sure this is a conflict?There is a conflict, although it is nothing to do with the actual launches.The conflict would come from having two vehicles in free-flight simultaneously, which both need to use TDRSS assets and thus will place a strain on the system, and in addition they would require additional staff inside Mission Control to oversee the two vehicles.Secondly, you cannot just berth two vehicles to different ports (Node 2 Nadir and Node 2 Zenith) on ISS, since the SSRMS cannot reach to directly install a vehicle to Node 2 Zenith. Instead, one vehicle must first be berthed to Node 2 Nadir, and then after an SSRMS base change from the Node 2 PDGF to an MBS PDGF, be relocated from Node 2 Nadir to Node 2 Zenith. Then, after an SSRMS base change back to Node 2, the second vehicle could be berthed to Node 2 Nadir, although it would have to leave before the first vehicle in order for the first vehicle to be relocated back to Node 2 Nadir prior to its own release.And in addition to that, having two vehicles at ISS simultaneously places increased demand on the ISS power system, additional demand on crew time since they have to unpack two vehicles, and also creates stowage issues due to a large volume of cargo all arriving at once.
was thinking about the berthing issue when I posted this. Think Jim is thinking of a backup?
Photos of the OPALS payload arriving at KSC:http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=225
I see a rather heavy grey plate, probably Aluminum, 4 to 5 inches thick, on a gold plate, possibly Alodyned Aluminum, around 2" thick, on a white, wheeled transport frame. Does all of the mass of those two plates accompany the experiment on the ride to the ISS?A legacy of the massive carrying capacity of the Shuttle, mounting and interface adapters for the ISS payloads are unusually massive for flight hardware.
SpaceX apparently designed the attachment hardware for the trunk payload on CRS-2, so we'll have to wait and see. But this does look significantly more massive.
Quote from: Lars_J on 07/17/2013 09:47 pmSpaceX apparently designed the attachment hardware for the trunk payload on CRS-2, so we'll have to wait and see. But this does look significantly more massive. Massive and looks expensive. Hope NASA has the insight to put this on the SPX-4 and take a less expensive load up on a new launcher.
Massive and looks expensive. Hope NASA has the insight to put this on the SPX-4 and take a less expensive load up on a new launcher.
Quote from: Prober on 07/18/2013 04:29 pmQuote from: Lars_J on 07/17/2013 09:47 pmSpaceX apparently designed the attachment hardware for the trunk payload on CRS-2, so we'll have to wait and see. But this does look significantly more massive. Massive and looks expensive. Hope NASA has the insight to put this on the SPX-4 and take a less expensive load up on a new launcher. "looks expensive"?... You know that this launch won't be the first v1.1 launch, right?
FRAMs come in many different sizes, so the particular FRAM used for OPAL would be the smallest that could handle the loads. Even if SpaceX built their own attachment system, it would not be that different in size from this FRAM.
