rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) (12/12/88)
I was just sitting around the other day, beeing generally depressed that
it would take 10-15 years to get a space station up, when we had a perfectly
good one (better than anything the ruskies had up at the time) with Skylab,
and got to thinking...Is there any way to load the shuttle up with a lab
module and more stores than usual and have it sit up there for 90 days or so?
Maybe even have a docking port in the bay as well and dock onto a supply
of food shot up with an expendable? That way we could get some good experiance
in long (sort of) duration space flight and do some good experimental work,
so that when Freedom finally gets here, we will at least have some experiance.
Any reasons this would[n't] work?
Robert Johnson
..!texsun!killer!rcj
rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.USsheppard@caen.engin.umich.edu (Kenneth Charles Sheppardson) (12/13/88)
rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) writes: > > I was just sitting around the other day, beeing generally depressed that > it would take 10-15 years to get a space station up,...Is there any way to > load the shuttle up with a lab module and more stores than usual and have > it sit up there for 90 days or so? Isn't that basically what Phase A is going to be ? ( Once you add solar arrays, a docking port, apu's, the necessary shielding, etc )
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (12/15/88)
In article <6394@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> rcj@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Robert Johnson) writes: >...Is there any way to load the shuttle up with a lab >module and more stores than usual and have it sit up there for 90 days or so? It's possible in principle. The existing orbiters are limited to about ten days. The long-duration modifications to Columbia that are in the works will stretch its stay time to a maximum of something like a month, as I recall (although its early long-duration flights won't be that long). Three months would require more work but ought to be possible. >Maybe even have a docking port in the bay as well and dock onto a supply >of food shot up with an expendable? That way we could get some good experiance >in long (sort of) duration space flight... Ought to be workable, although again it means building more hardware. It would probably cost a billion dollars by the time NASA got through with it, sigh... -- SunOSish, adj: requiring | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 32-bit bug numbers. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu