NASA and Bigelow Announce New Agreement
NASA To Test Bigelow Expandable Module On Space Station
“NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver announced Wednesday a newly planned addition to the International Space Station that will use the orbiting laboratory to test expandable space habitat technology. NASA has awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which is scheduled to arrive at the space station in 2015 for a two-year technology demonstration.”
Keith’s note: I will be live blogging the press conference at @NASAWatch
Keith’s update: Apparently some news media were given advance copies of a press release and images while others were not. Some of us were given dial-in information for the press event, others were not. If NASA and its commercial partners want the media to pay attention to what it is they are doing, then they need to make it easy – not hard for us to do so. FAIL.
Keith’s update: NASA photos and video can now be found here and here. Still nothing from the folks at Bigelow – they handed out thumb drives with materials at the Las Vegas event.
NASA, Bigelow Officials to Discuss Space Station Expandable Module
“NASA has awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide a new addition to the International Space Station. Lori Garver and Bigelow Aerospace Founder and President Robert Bigelow will discuss the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module program at a media availability at 1:30 p.m. EST (10:30 a.m. PST) Wednesday, Jan. 16, at Bigelow Aerospace facilities located at 1899 W. Brooks Ave. in North Las Vegas.”
Keith’s 8 Jan note: Planning is underway for press conference next Wednesday in Las Vegas where Lori Garver and Bob Bigelow will announce an agreement to work toward putting inflatable modules on the ISS. NASA signed a contract with Bigelow Aerospace in December 2012 focusing on the Bigelow Expanded Aerospace Module (BEAM). I have asked NASA PAO if there will be dial-in media availability for the media event. Awaiting a reply.
NASA Contract to Bigelow Aerospace
“Total Award Value $17,865,903
Description of Work UNDER THIS CONTRACT, THE CONTRACTOR SHALL CONTRACTOR TO PROVIDE AND OPERATE THE BIGELOW EXPANDABLE ACTIVITY MODULE (BEAM) ON-BOARD THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS). THIS EFFORT IS FOR PHASE 2 OF THE BEAM ISS DEMONSTRATION MODULE PROJECT, AND ESTABLISHES THE REQUIREMENTS, PERFORMANCE METRICS, COSTS, AND MANAGEMENT OF THE EFFORT THAT WILL BE USED TO DESIGN, DELIVER, AND OPERATE THE BEAM.“
Pleased about this. Inflatables could be a game changer. And God knows, we’ve waited long enough for them.
I wonder if they will pursue the torus-shaped centrifuge module or something that looks more like a Transhab, or BA330 even.
Good to see this! Congrats to everyone at Bigelow and NASA.
Yes, let’s pay Bigelow to use the technology NASA developed and sold to Bigelow.
Granted, it’s exciting. But it stings a little.
I think that this is how NASA should work. NASA develops a concept and does the initial research. Industry picks from the good ideas and develops them to completion. Similarly, I like the DreamChaser for the very same reason. NASA develops the HL-20 lifting body and Sierra Nevada turns it into a real spacecraft.
Actually NASA lifted the HL20 design (the airframe anyway) from photographs of a Russian test vehicle and then did some more work on it. But the principle is the same…
It’s also similar to the old X-20 Dyna-Soar. So it’s not like it was first time NASA ever saw a lifting body. Infact, the Russian BOR-4 design, a small model which was tested by the Russians, their testing program was almost an exact copy of the US Air Farce ASSET program back in 1963 which tested the heat shield concepts for Dyna-Soar if IIRC. From the all knowing all seeing Wiki.
The Dyna-Soar was a delta-winged vehicle, like the Shuttle and X-37, while the DC, HL-20 and BOR-4 were wingless lifting bodies. Lifting bodies avoid the need for sharp leading edges and permit a wider fuselage but winged vehicles have historically had better crossrange, L/D and performance margin during a gliding final approach and landing.
Okay. Here are some lifting bodies developed by NASA starting in 1963. Enjoy a blast from the past.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers…
I don’t feel stung at all, I’d much rather see Bigelow license and develop the technology than it never see the light of day. There are far worse things for NASA (or the government in general) to do than help commercial spinoffs of innovative technologies that the government decides not to pursue.
Transhab bears some resemblance to the old NACA technology development role. The NACA did some trail-blazing work in aeronautics until it was subsumed by NASA.
NASA still does. The next time you fly, look out at the winglets on the wingtips of your airliner. They were developed by Richard Whitcomb at NASA-Dryden in the 70s, adopted by aerospace firms in the 80s and 90s and have been saving fuel ever since.
Exploratory technology development is something NASA does very well, on pretty short rations. It was even a leader in electronics research once, at the NASA Electronics Research Center, down the street from MIT in Cambridge, MA. They were working on some spectacular stuff in the 1960s, things that would be interesting today. Then the center was closed during the Nixon years, with much of the work lost and the staff scattered.
Good point. NACA was created to support industry, not the other way around. Unless we can make US manufacturing more competitive we won’t have the jobs or tax dollars to support human spaceflight.
NASA had the idea….it was called Transhab. Funding was taken from it around the same time funding was snatched from X-38 and other worthy projects…
I believe that the talking point inside the Beltway was: “American Astronauts are not going to fly around in giant balloons!” A wonderful example of something only politicians can do, which is make genuine technological advances sound like disgraceful national humiliations.
Is there any evidence anyone in Washington actually said that or anything like it? Or are you just speculating?
I don’t know what was said inside the Beltway. All I know is that I knew personally folks who had developed the thing at JSC. (Ahh, those parties at The House of Couches) It was a shame when their project was killed. Now we get to see others thump their chests about it. Sad…
Folks:
Yes, there was a lawmaker in Washington who dissed Transhab as a ‘balloon’. I believe he had connections with Boeing based on my research at the time. No, can’t remember his name. It had nothing to do with the technology, just the usual Washington interference run.
Kudos to the original researchers at Johnson for not only thinking outside the box, but building that un-box and testing it beyond it’s limits. They got good data on the cheap, had it squashed, licensed it to Bigelow (who made it fly for real) and now, full circle, Transhab is gonna be used for what it was designed for; human habitation in space.
tinker
And better now. Because it IS tech in privite sector where it can growwww!! Maybe sometimes things workout for the best. 🙂
Yeah but it’s a wonderful thing that Bigelow took on the idea. Otherwise we might not be seeing anything like those right now. The project isn’t dead and people will know it was originally from NASA.
Outstanding!! Use the next couple years to validate the concept and also ability to use one or more of the nodes from ISS with the Bigelow modules as the building blocks to start an L2 complex. Use the 2017 Orion flight to take the Bigelow assy to L2. If that isn’t do able then plan for a 2018 flight and get CIS-Lunar started. If Orion isn’t ready then certianly either Dragon or Cignus will be available and make this happen in 2016/17.
I’ll believe it when I see a launch date, and not one “3 years from now”. 6 months … that would be interesting.
Keith, I think that you mean this Wednesday (not next Wednesday).
No I mean next Wednesday 16 January 2013.
It’s about time.
Absolutely… Pick a direction and go!
(Long time Canadian lurker finally posting)
Keith and Marc, thank you for all you do here. And i totally enjoy reading all the feedback from a rather knowledgable crowd as well 😉
PS Fix the typo: infltables (not the grammar police, just saying)
I think this is wonderful. I hope I’m right. NASA should be developing stuff and helping commercial get it started.
Reminder. As any good design professor will say. Squares and cubes are much more friendly to humans and their junk than circles and spheres. Remember to square up future generations of your Habs. Especially once we start spinning Habs for gravity.
So my question is where to put this thing. It would be interesting to have it replace PMA-2 on the ‘front’ of the station, which has the highest impact risk. Bigelow routinely talks about BA-330’s protection being better than ISS’s, after all. Depending on its size, though, they might not want to have it that close to where they dock Dragon and HTV, the Harmony nadir port. Tranquillity/PMA-3 seems like the likely place to put it, since the remaining ports are Russian and Robert Bigelow isn’t exactly a fan of working with Russian agencies.
Even now that major ISS construction is complete, the program costs $3 billion a year, which eats up such a large portion of the budget for human spaceflight that it seriously compromises our ability to do any other major human exploration program.
Can Bigelow do anything about this ongoing cost? If not, it’s hard to be too excited about them.
According to NASA budget documents, around half the $3 billion is for crew and cargo transport and half is for “Operations and Management” (the third item, research is less than 10% — yeah, I know). SpaceX, and to a lesser extent other commercial launch businesses, are doing work that could lead to the transportation half becoming significantly less expensive over time. Which leaves “Operations and Management”.
It’s not clear to me how “Operations and Management” of a facility containing no more than six people (half of them managed by Russia anyway) can cost a billion and a half dollars a year. Is the technology just so fragile that very expensive replacement parts have to be manufactured and sent up on a regular basis and that costs most of the $1.5 billion? If so, Bigelow could potentially make it cheaper by providing lower-cost-of-ownership technology — but likely these ongoing hardware costs will be for non-structural components and equipment that would be the same regardless of whether the basic structure is inflatable or not. Or is most of that $1.5 billion wasted on micro-managing every moment of the three astronauts up there that NASA is responsible for? If that’s the case, maybe the answer to making the ISS affordable (and freeing up the dollars for exploration) is to simply stop being so obsessive about details that aren’t critical to safety. Aside from building actual replacement hardware to send up there, it’s hard to imagine how $1.5 billion a year spent planning the actions of three people for a year isn’t an enormous waste.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/632…
I’m not sure that the NASA approach or budget will be a barrier to private Bigelow stations. Bigelow already has contracts with other nations, notably Dubai and the UAE, that would lead to such independent capabilities.
If SpaceX continues to succeed, and continues to drive down launch costs, I’d expect the private sector to take over. There are a lot of nations that would like to be mini-space powers or whose scientists would like to work on orbit, so the market is there if the price is right. I expect SpaceX and Bigelow will work together on this; Bigelow is confident in his technology and says he’s just awaiting a launch capability.
That’s unlikely. The present exercise equipment is, as much as possible, decoupled from the rest of the ISS structure so as to avoid unwanted flexing–as with the solar arrays, for example.
But in a future inflatable free flyer, why not?
I hope they will start growing food in it.That would cut down transportation costs.Maybe do the laundry.Moon gravity would be nice for practice for a Moon base.SpaceX has the contract to launch it,I think.
S13:
Gravity would be not only nice but probably would greatly reduce the health hazards of micro gravity.
To get something like lunar gravity, a dumb bell shaped station would be the quickest to develop. A five or six hundred foot pressurized truss with a Bigelow hab at each with and a docking module in the center. Run an elevator along the truss and shift water from one end to the other to keep the docking port centered.
You could even offset the modules by making one end heavier so that you could have two different gravity gradients in the habs. The closer one to the center could have lunar gravity, the further one Martian gravity.
On the cheap we could start doing health studies on human adaptation to both places long before we commit to going there.
We could call it the Human Adaptation Lab! (HAL: Oh, that’s been kinda taken)
tinker
Cool !! Never thought of off center for two gravities. 🙂
DTARS:
Nice thing about this design is that you don’t need an interface between a non-spinning docking port and the rest of the station. The whole thing spins. Arriving spacecraft would line up with the docking port then initiate a roll to match the stations rotation rate before docking. You could even use a docking probe like the Soyuz for initial capture then spin up the ship by ‘putting the brakes’ to the docking probe until the ship matches the stations rotation, then pull it in for hooks and latches. I like that better. Easier on the fights software and pilots too.
Using water to distribute mass between the two hab modules would allow you to have more than two docking ports along the truss on the stations axis. By shifting water you could change the center point so there could be a row of docking ports on each side of the truss.
I think Bigelow should make on of his first space stations this way so they can market it as “The next best thing to being there” (the Moon and Mars, that is).
tinker
For a first-generation dumbbell design, using water as a counterweight just adds unnecessary complexity. You can have simple bulk masses on rails along the truss and “under” the floor of the modules, moved by simple linear actuators.
(Water is only really an advantage in a wheel/torus station, due to its tendency to naturally counteract mass imbalances without pumping. And the natural radiation shielding, once you get into a structure large enough to justify a full torus.)
“then spin up the ship by ‘putting the brakes’ to the docking probe until the ship matches the stations rotation,”
That sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea.
Also, you mentioned you wanted the dumbbell to be able to change centre of gravity to allow each end to be at a different simulated gravity. That rules out any docking port, since there’s no fixed hub. Or rules out a pressurised truss, if instead the docking node would need to “walk” the truss to maintain its position at the CoG. Which means doing an EVA to get to the end modules…
…Which may be a better idea for a first generation test facility. Keep the station largely unmanned, tended via EVA from a separate (non-rotation) manned station (such as ISS). That eliminates the docking node entirely. You just need an airlock in each end-module, and a way for an EVA-suited astronaut to get from the truss out/down to the end-modules. (Cable, two pulleys, a motor, and a braced “loop” in the cable to stand on.)
Paul:
That’s some good thinking there. Moving mass on rails works for me. The mass could be on rails along a pressurized truss though. Something like this:
tinker
If you have a transport system on the truss (for moving mass as you proposed), could you have a grapple arm that also moves?
Haul it to the center of rotation on the truss and have it capture the incoming vehicle. Then drag the vehicle to the docking port.
Gentlemen,
If you have a reliable electrical power source, you may want to consider using a sliding two-part hub (move the hub instead of added masses). The hub would have an electromagnetically supported air bearing, so that its inner section, which has the docking ports, is stationary with respect to approaching ships. The outer part of the hub rotates with the rest of the station at a rate determined by its position along the “bar” of the dumbbell. Between the inner and outer parts of the hub is a matching ring for moving people/cargo between them. The matching ring starts out stationary with respect to the inner hub to offload a ship; once loaded, the inner locks close and the ring accelerates until it matches velocity with the outer hub; the outer locks open onto the outer hub to move people/cargo into the bar. Movement along the bar can be done one or more of several ways to reach the habs. The reverse procedure is used for outgoing people/cargo. The air bearing is a bit of a tech stretch, admittedly. The matching ring consumes power only when accelerating/decelerating, otherwise it’s mechanically locked. Since the “docking” part is much simplified, you can dock or berth, manually or computer-controlled.
The dumb-bell shaped station is a fine idea. It would allow us to study human physiology in low-g environments, for example, those that might be encountered in interplanetary missions.
This is something we should have begun in the 70s or 80s, and I hope we can launch something like this fairly soon.
On the other hand, the idea has been around for decades, and Congress does not appear to be terribly forward thinking.
Let’s be honest. Understanding the effects of partial gravity is NOT a priority of NASA. If it was, the ISS centrifuge module, which would have taught us a huge amount, would not have been cancelled. That being the case, suppressing the “health hazards” of microgravity in a LEO environment, which offers fairly routine access to terra firma, isn’t of great importance. Also, it has to be said, the “heath hazards” of microgravity, at least as we understand them, are vastly lower than the “health hazards” that astronauts going anywhere are exposed to. One big one is getting shot into space on a rocket.
Again, if you really want to UNDERSTAND the effects of reduced gravity, the centrifuge module would have been the way to do it. If you just remove those effects, with a pricey rotating habitat, you may not run into any eye or brain abnormalities, and may not lose bone calcium, but you sure aren’t going to learn anything about those effects.
Now, wouldn’t it be something if a Bigelow module could host such a centrifuge.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, here’s some info on the centrifuge module.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Folks:
From the Wikipedia article on the Centrifuge Module:
“It is now on display in an outdoor exhibit at the Tsukuba Space Center in Japan.”
Ah, the fate of many a piece of flight ready hardware!
tinker
One would like to believe that, for $17M, at least we’ll get an ISS-ready hab module in the Huntsville Space & Rocketry center, along with the Bigelow scale model hab that is there. I mean, when it needs to be canceled to pay for a few days work on SLS.
I look forward to hearing more details about the plans, and perhaps some way to gauge NASA’s commitment to it.
My understanding is that the BEAM has a 2-year development schedule, and a mass of only about 1 mT which, thank goodness, means that it won’t need a large launcher. I suspect nothing would be in it, such that attached to ISS, it’ll just be a storage module and perhaps a gym for astronauts to bounce around in.
“the ISS centrifuge module”
I believe a mockup of this centrifuge is still in the space station module mockup at Ames visitor center just outside main gate. Speaking of creating gravity, I heard what is portrayed in “2001” would not work unless diameter is very wide. Smaller diameter size your feet will feel more Gs than your head (I don’t really know specifics, maybe that is why centrifuge on ISS is not important?) I think if they still had the centrifuge Ames was developing, then researchers could do some long term work with it. Or maybe a centrifuge where crew can sleep to reduce some of adverse effects of microgravity? At least they can where some of $3B is spent.
The original ISS centrifuge concept was never intended for people. The human factors folks thought they could learn an enormous amount about fractional gravity on living organisms with smaller mammals. Those that you can kill and dissect are of special interest. Perhaps more interesting than those that you can’t. A rat’s feet would feel pretty much the same number of g’s as its head in this module.
Fractional gravity for humans would be enormously expensive. At the least, having a large, massive, rotating section attached to ISS would seriously complicate the attitude control for the station.
I understand that the CAM, which would have housed the centrifuge, was built by JAXA, and the shell is on display near Tokyo.
BTW, I understand that Astrium is bulding a NanoRack-scale centrifuge for ISS. Pretty small, but of use for plant and animal tissue sections.
Helen I am not sure if you are saying that there would be no experimental knowledge to be gained from providing a 1 g environment, or if you are referring only to the lack of knowledge to be gained from providing a full-time 1 g environment. I am pretty sure that you meant the latter if so then I agree.
Part-time 1 g will be an important needed experiment, because we may find that part-time 1 g will be more effective for maintaining health than full-time reduced gravity.
Also there is a psychological benefit if astronauts can spend only part of their travel time in 1 g and the rest of the time in microgravity. This is because all ISS expedition members that I have ever heard in interviews say that living and working in microgravity is one of the things that they enjoyed most about being in space and they never seem to get tired of it. On a long term mission where tedium and isolation are going to be a factor, hopefully we won’t have to take away something that could provide some needed enjoyment.
An added benefit to part-time 1 g is they could actually eat things like crackers in space! Seriously that is one thing that astronauts don’t seem to like about microgravity is eating in that environment because it takes more time and it also prohibits many types of food. Those problems would be solved if they can spend meal periods in 1 g. We may also find that certain types of exercise will be more effective in 1 g than in microgravity or partial gravity.
However we also don’t know if there will be negative health consequences from constantly going back and forth between 1 g and microgravity, it will be important to learn what time interval will be tolerated. For example if it is learned that a minimum of ten hours of 1 g is needed daily, is it better to get that all at once during sleep and pre/post sleep periods, or will they need to stagger it and spend time in 1 g several times throughout the day so that the fluids and vertebrae will stay in place and not move around as much.
We may also find (through partial gravity experiments) that spending long periods of time in reduced gravity such as will be experienced on Mars could have negative consequences and require 1 g “therapy” during the ride home to more quickly restore health and avoid long term health consequences. Of course any partial gravity health effects would be even worse on the Moon for any astronaut spending long periods of time on the lunar surface. If it turns out that astronauts can only safely tolerate a few months of 1/6 gravity at a time then they might have to rotate their time between the surface and an orbiting telerobotics module which is equipped with a 1 g centrifuge.
There is a lot to learn for sure and it is very unfortunate that we are so far behind in learning about this. A centrifuge on a Bigelow module would indeed be a good start.
This business about gravity is somewhat off-topic, but I’ll note that NASA’s interest in the effects of partial gravity has very little to do with the emotional state of the astronauts. Whether they enjoy gravity, or whether they like eating crackers, is borderline irrelevant.
The questions that NASA wants to answer about partial gravity are entirely biological and physiological ones, and can largely, and decidedly economically, be answered using living beings far smaller than a human or tissue samples.
If NASA wanted to learn about the effects of cycling an astronaut from micro gravity to 1g, the easiest way to do it is to send him or her back and forth to ISS.
>> NASA’s interest in the effects of partial gravity has very little to do with the emotional state of the astronauts
Agreed.
>>Whether they enjoy gravity, or whether they like eating crackers, is borderline irrelevant.
Disagree. One of the huge challenges of long duration space missions outside of LEO will be keeping astronauts in good emotional health during years of confinement and isolation, in an environment where their life is in constant danger. If future astronauts are anything like current astronauts, they will be highly motivated, intelligent, very active and very social individuals. These individuals will have to endure being cooped up for years in a spaceship or habitat with only co-workers for companionship. Earth and virtually everything they know will be a distant dot in the sky. Friends and loved ones will only be accessible via e-mail, voicemail and videomail. Certainly as you said there are other big things to worry about in terms of health and safety, but at some point even NASA will realize that they will need to pay a lot of attention to what astronauts tell them about what can make long term space travel more tolerable.
>>If NASA wanted to learn about the effects of cycling an astronaut from micro gravity to 1g, the easiest way to do it is to send him or her back and forth to ISS.
Agreed, as soon as we have daily round trip flights to ISS that will work quite well.
Off topic? Agreed.
The circulatory and respiratory systems of small mammals are sufficiently different from humans, physically and in terms of rates, that their test results would not be valid data for human evaluation. They might be somewhat indicative at best.
Going up a few levels to re-enbiggen the thread…
Steve Whitfield,
“you may want to consider using a sliding two-part hub”
I believe Tinker was trying to avoid having a counter-rotating dock to simplify his design. Having the docking craft spin to match the station isn’t difficult as long as the spin axes are in line.
While my sliding-cradle is complicated to describe, in practice is would be a fairly simple mechanism. Essentially a next generation version of the “Mobile Transporter” track on the ISS truss.
Any mechanism to connect a moving dock to a pressurised truss is going to be insanely complex. The only other way (which I think you meant) is to use the dock/airlock as a kind of elevator capsule, which docks with the end modules. But that severely slows evacuation to a capsule in an emergency.
Agree!
Both Genesis modules are 14.4 feet long by 8.3 feet wide (4.4 by 2.5
meters), with about 406 cubic feet (11.5 cubic m) of pressurized volume.
I assumed big,30’d or so.Great expectations,big disappointment.What is this,just a test?This is small.
S13:
Bigelow was limited by the launch vehicle they could afford, which in this case was a repurposed Russian ICBM launched from an underground silo (really!). So, they orbited something with the volume of a Dragon capsule on a much smaller launch vehicle than Falcon.
Genesis 1 & 2 were materials and deployment testers and as such have done pretty good. As far as I know, both are still up there and communicating.
I don’t think scaling up the design is posing Bigelow any difficulty because they’re continuing with construction of much larger modules.
The obvious choice of launch vehicle would be the Falcon Heavy (I don’t know why there isn’t more cooperation between SpaceX and Bigelow). Falcon Heavy could lift Bigelow’s largest module plus docking and propulsion hardware, creating a ‘ready to use’ space station in one launch. Launch a fully fueled propulsion module of the same mass and you’d have a pretty useful spacecraft too.
tinker
The only factor that has kept inflatable modules from being adopted earlier was concern by Boeing that it would eat into their more expensive hard shelled module approach.
Am I reading this right? The $17.8m contract is for the actual final module, delivered and installed? Even for a passive demo module, by ISS standards that’s petty cash. Bargain. Who pays for the launch?
Does anyone know if the very slight flexibility in the skin of an inflatable module will increase or absorb vibration? Is this something that will (or can) be tested with this BEAM?
Paul:
Seems like a pretty trivial sum if you figure Bigelow wants to have a full fledged usable module on orbit ASAP. So… maybe NASA, doing another end run, has made a ‘Space Act’ type deal with Bigelow Aerospace. Something like; Bigelow gets their module into orbit at their own expense and, like SpaceX, meet the standards NASA sets for approach and docking or berthing. Berth it to Common Berthing hatch, plug in power and ventilation, done! Cost to NASA? Minimal compared to the ‘old way’.
Heck, it’s win, win! Bigelow gets a module up ‘soon’ which helps his business case and speeds up testing in a controlled environment. NASA, at little expense, gets way more station volume while testing a technology which may be important to Beyond Earth Orbit human exploration. Bigelow’s module may become a permanent structure on the space station so NASA would be getting that volume at bargain prices (Bigelow’s been in real estate long enough to know the value of having a model unit on display. He’d be a fool not to ‘give’ it to NASA).
This would be a perfect job for what I call a Dragon Tug. Take a Dragon capsule and fill the pressure vessel with extra fuel tanks up to the cargo limit. Launch the tug into orbit in plane with the station. Launch the Bigelow hab to match orbits with the Tug. Use the Tug to bring the hab to the station and dock it Dragon style. The Dragon Tug could then stand off and wait for the next cargo transfer. The more cargo runs the Tug can make before it needs to return to Earth, the more mass can be launched on the cargo runs.
The economic gains of doing things that way don’t amount to much unless cargo prices to orbit start getting cut throat but… one can only hope.
tinker
“This would be a perfect job for what I call a Dragon Tug. Take a Dragon capsule and fill the pressure vessel with extra fuel tanks up to the cargo limit.”
Why use a capsule? The things that make the capsule a capsule are the things you don’t need. The mass of that pressure vessel is completely redundant. It doesn’t have its own main engine, just RCS. It isn’t designed to carry around loads on its docking port while under thrust.
You need something more like a rocket stage, frame/tanks/engines, so you might as well base it on a Falcon second stage. If you’re already launching the payload on a Falcon, you’re already using the second-stage to do the main orbital insertion burns, then it’s already physically there in orbit, attached to the payload. And the second stage is already designed to carry the load. Just add your Dragon-derived RCS and docking control-systems to the second stage. (And maybe a bit of reinforcing to handle torque-forces during manoeuvring.)
Once SpaceX figures out how to recover and reuse the second stage, by definition it will be able to recover and reuse this modified version of the second stage. And IMO, even an expendable version would be a good design to start work on since both NASA wants a shiny new L2 station and Bigelow wants commercial stations in LEO. Having the capacity to not only launch modules, but also dock them directly, would be a unique selling point. Falcon Tug, not Dragon Tug.
But for BEAM, I assume the module will have its own RCS to bring it within ranger of Canadarm2. (Bigelow are working on Boeing’s CST-100, I thought RCS was what they brought to that party.)
🙂
I seem to recall stumbling across this idea before.
Didn’t I send a fleet of these fishing for asteriod debree with a net from a Spacex junk beam??
Waste not want not
Lolol
George
DTARS:
Of course we have the Russian Progress as a ‘working model’ for our Dragon Tugs. Progress has been around for decades and the Russians haven’t used them in any kind of imaginative way like we’ve described. Gotta put our faith in American ingenuity for this idea to fly (literally).
tinker
Paul:
Yes, I’ve thought the same myself. The Tugs don’t have to look like Dragon capsules, just be recoverable and reusable is all. The point I was making is that Dragon Tugs could be implemented now with what SpaceX has ‘on the shelf’, as it were.
Bigelow will use propulsion modules on their free flying stations but I don’t think that they are considering such for the ISS project. Dragon Tugs would do nicely as Bigelow’s propusion modules too. Guidance and propulsion is one neat package. Fly a new Tug to replace the near empty one, Recover, refurbish, reuse and refly. Think of it like the plans to attach propulsion modules to communication satellites to extend their functional lives. All you’d need is a hard point to dock the Tug with. No fuel transfer needed. Since Dragon Tugs have their own solar power and flight computers, integration is minimal.
SpaceX could solicit their potential customers, like Bigelow, to mount simple, lightweight hard points to their space station modules and have a Dragon Tug waiting in orbit to take control when they get their. Again, this means more station module mass to orbit which only has to fly once.
tinker
“The point I was making is that Dragon Tugs could be implemented now with what SpaceX has ‘on the shelf’, as it were.”
No, that was the point I was trying to make. The Dragon capsule is just too far removed from a “tug”, it would need a full ground-up redesign. You can’t just stick some extra tanks inside, you’d have to redesign the whole thing, every system.
And the payload too. Remember, it’s not just enough to have a “hardpoint” for your Dragon Tug to attach to, the Dragon is doing a full docking approach just to grab the payload, it needs a matched NDS partner for its docking control system. Plus the payload need a second NDS set for the station dock, since the one on the Dragon will be blocked by the payload itself. And you need the payload’s docking system to integrate with the Tug’s controls (so the Tug can “see” through the payload’s sensors.) And that integration must happen in orbit, after the Tug docks to the payload.
“and have a Dragon Tug waiting in orbit to take control when they get their.”
And that’s two launches. Payload and tug. Which is why I think it’s better to modify the same second stage that launches the payload. It’s already there, attached to the payload, fully integrated at launch. And it doesn’t need to be reusable to be… usable.
“But for BEAM, I assume the module will have its own RCS to bring it
within ranger of Canadarm2. (Bigelow are working on Boeing’s CST-100, I
thought RCS was what they brought to that party.)”
Wrong; it’s an entirely passive module. BEAM will be loaded into the trunk of the SpX-8 Dragon mission and, after berthing at Harmony Nadir, the SSRMS will extract it and move it to Tranquility Aft. After it is attached, the crew will inflate and activate the module.
I’m actually pretty excited about that because it really shows how flexible the Cargo Dragon system can be, when combined with inflatable modules.
Yeah, I saw the video presentation since writing that. Simple solutions are best sometimes.
The $17.8m is for phase 2 of the effort, which “ESTABLISHES THE REQUIREMENTS, PERFORMANCE METRICS, COSTS, AND MANAGEMENT OF THE EFFORT THAT WILL BE USED TO DESIGN, DELIVER, AND OPERATE THE BEAM.” In other words, it’s for paperwork and not for the actual construction and delivery of the BEAM. This agreement is a big deal because inflatables are now officialy on NASA’s development agenda. The data from this mission and future missions will hopefully lead to their actual use for human habitats.
Thanks for that. That makes more sense. [I kept seeing references to “to provide and operate…”.]
So who at NASA writes these agreements?
“…THE CONTRACTOR SHALL CONTRACTOR…”
HUH?
Mark, Folks:
Just bumping my idea for a dumbbell type space station (possibly using Bigelow habs) in case you missed it.
tinker
You might kill two birds with one stone by pumping water back and forth rather than having moving masses.
Mark:
That was my original idea (posted above somewhere) but Paul suggested moving mass on tracks like the transporter on the ISS so I put that in. On Orbit replacement units would be fine. It’s a good idea and something we know how to do (although not for this purpose). If there’s less mass than last time, just move the mass further away to center the docking port you want to use. Simple
Anyway, old design! 10 hours old to be exact. I’ve figured out another method that lets you have many (more than 2) docking ports amidships with no lateral movement of mass at all! Anyone want to take a crack at that one? You got your one clue.
tinker
Tinker not to interrupt but please read my comments at the end of the last Spacex hopper report. I’m still thinking about building you lifter thrust frame. More like an earth building. Your the top part of the thrust frame would be made using Teddy bear method. Making second or third genoration dumb bell station.
StarScrapers land on Mars
Tinker
I just realized some things about your lifter/StarScrapers and maybe how they should be built and used.
Our welding rods come in rectangular metal boxes, about 5 inches by 5 inches and about 18 inches tall, the perfect shape and size to model your to orbit tank. As I have said before your main tank should be square to maximize useful space in Space lolol. Since your tank is basically square it is easy to reinforce using standard X bracing either inside or as part of your external thrust frame.
Your thrust frame can now be square. Standard structural girders that support the tank from underneath like a floor(not just the sides as you have suggested.) On the sides of these floor girders is where you mount your tugs.
Your lifter should be powered by methane engines because that is a green fuel plus it can be gathered on Mars. You told me that the ratio of methane to liquid oxygen fuel is close to one to one. Well regardless of which is more, your on orbit tank should be oxygen and your tugs carry the methane.
I disagree with you that you put your payload underneath. Lololol your payload only goes inside the to orbit tank. To carry standard payloads to orbit you add oxygen tanks to each of your tugs. Turning each tug into a 5 engine bigger Spacex recoverable first stages. So each of your tugs can either fly with one recoverable tank using the on orbit tank for oxygen (The real estate version) or it uses it’s own oxygen tank added on top making each tug twice as tall (the payload version).
Lolol now your thrust frame is used as a basket to carry what ever 40 foot by 40 foot payload your want. Height could be determined by volume and weight.
Also there is no reason to carry your whole thrust frame to orbit, your two second stage tugs could stay attached to the lower heavy part of your thrust frame which has landing legs just like Spacex hopper and bring it back to earth for another flight, saving most of your cross tank plumbing and pumps.
Ok lolol
Soooo
What would it take to get your whole lifter/StarScraper into LEO with landing legs and enough fuel to land it on mars????
One flight using standard one tank tugs to get the shell up there, then you upfit the interior with standard LVs or a couple of payload flights from your double tank tug payload version. Then with your last flight you fly double tank tugs with no payload and you fly all six tugs attached to the lower thrust frame and landing legs, to dock with your MarsScraper which turns it into a GIANT lander. Then you head to mars with enough fuel to land on Mars and maybe make fuel for a return as well.
How many tugs would you want to carry to Mars to be part of your mars lander configuration???? My guess would be all of them so that some of your empty tankage could be used for fuel manufacture.
I envision 6 two tank tugs with total 30 engines strapped to the thrust frame with a StarScraper tank filled with settlers already in their mars apartment units, and this high rise has the ability to land on Mars and fly back to earth.
Tinker, you didn’t understand before why I was asking about Spacex building engines smaller than a Merlin 2. I think that each of these tugs should have 5 methane Merlin engines the center one dropped down for recovery control. Would 5 merlin 2s be to big or not. Depending on the load couldn’t you leave an engine turned off on each stage if you didn’t need the extra lift??
Didn’t Mr. C say all missions start with a lander??
Isn’t your lifter the cheapest easiest way to build a mars lander/transporter/habitat/and mars return vehicle all in one???
Wouldn’t you take two of your lifters and cable them together and spin them for artificial gravity to Mars??? Couldn’t one or two of your lifters be put in mars orbit as space stations???
Couldn’t your lifter BE the engine, railroad cars and stations I’m looking for to build railways to the moon and Mars as well as LEO and BEO.
Isn’t Spacex doing the R and D right now for your lifters tugs????
Shouldn’t Spacex be planning to build your lifter in future to settle the inner solar system?????
Steve
I know you will say that what I want is a millennium falcon and again I will disagree lol. I want a modular vehicle system that can do it all!!! Lol including heavy lift lolol.
Maybe StarScrapers/MoonScraper landers/MarsScraper landers are just what we need to build the Inner Solar System Railroad.
I’m not sure how to design the lunar version. Maybe it runs on hydrogen. Any suggestions?????
It DTARS
Just a little imagination
PS. Just to be clear you fly this in TWO versions that share the same basic thrust frame.
THE REAL ESTATE VERSION
The real estate version flies just like Tinkers lifter which puts an large empty tank in orbit. The tugs on this version only have one main methane tank.
THE PAYLOAD VERSION
Using the same basic thrust frame this version has tugs with double tanks making each tug twice as tall so the tugs carry the complete fuel load leaving the 40 foot by 40 foot thrust frame for GIANT payloads.
Each version could have landing legs where the second stage pair of tugs brings lower the part of the thrust frame (the tug collar) back to it’s launch point.
Since the tugs all use the same reusable engine configuration, couldn’t some of the tugs fly double duty as a standard LV???? Perhaps you possibly even just stack your three tugs and put a payload on top letting each tug use it’s recovery tech in the flight profile where it is comfortable????? Also upper stage tugs only fire as many engines as needed.
Humm sounds like Tinkers lifter could and should be the standard for a complete rocket fleet to me!!!
PSS and don’t tell me we don’t have the ability to assemble this crap in space, its mostly modular, plus my tick pilots are ready!
Tinker, Your lifter makes more sense with each passing day.
DTARS:
Square tanks? Why not! Since the extra mass in reinforcing would be considered payload to orbit, you’d still win if you have an empty starscraper on orbit after launch. The pressure on the structure goes in the same direction; liquid fuel pressure against air pressure before and during launch and air pressure against vacuum once it’s habitable on orbit.
Instead of a cross frame (like this > ⊠
), why not use an isogrid pattern and just leave them in as floors. Make the triangles large enough to pass the liquid fuel during launch but small enough to easily insert light prefab floor (deck?) panels into. Pre install the floor and wall panels with light, power, network & plumbing so they can be popped in, hooked up and forgotten.
So, launch the Starscraper to orbit. Purge the tank(s). Connect it to a ‘construction shack’ which can be used for life support until the starscraper’s physical plant is set up. Install prefab physical plant in shirt sleeves! Install floor and wall panels (may require additional conventional launches) and hook them up.
Did I miss anything or are we open for business? Assuming we have enough power to be self sufficient and a supply chain for consumables… yes!
Our new tenants would be responsible for their own equipment, furniture and their specific consumables. We’d want to be by a bus stop with regularly scheduled runs too. What else? But you get the idea. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s just like any developer here on Terra Firma.
Put two of these suckers up there with a thousand foot tether between them and we’d have one mother of a rotating space station.
Hmmm… let me get MSPaint running…
Like this: Those are docking ports on the sphere in the (off) center. To access the ports the whole station is rotated (like a drill bit) while it is spinning (like a baton) until the docking port you want is lined up with the center of rotation. You can have any number of docking ports you want with no need for a rotating interface between an non spinning section of the station (like the Alpha Rotary Joints on the end of the ISS truss where the solar panels are).
Was that clear enough?
tinker
“To access the ports the whole station is rotated (like a drill bit) while it is spinning (like a baton)”
And the whole structure torques (like that experiment in yr4 science where you spin the bike wheel in your hands, then try to rotate it around a second axis.)
You’d need a mass to rotate in the opposite direction to counteract the change in angular momentum of the drill-bit manoeuvre. Like the weights on the truss, but probably at the end of the modules, rotating on a joint in the opposite direction to the drill-bit rotation. (End-cap fly-wheels, with the same angular momentum as the rest of the entire structure.)
If you’re talking about a 1000 foot truss, and giant square tanks-turned-modules, why not also order up an elevator for the docking ships? The capsule waits just off the centre of rotation, a long robot arm (a la Canadarm2) grabs it and positions it on a cradle where clamps latch on to secure the it. The cradle (and capsule) then travels down the truss to the the station’s docking node, built into the top of one of the main habitat modules. The cradle pulls the clamped capsule “down” until its docking adapter connects with the node’s docking adaptor.
[Obviously a counter-weight will need to move the other way, to balance the capsule and cradle. Not as bad as countering the mass of the entire station though.]
The crew then enter the station, and once inside can use your pressurised truss to visit the opposite module. (If the station has external equipment along the truss, as with
the ISS, the cradles would allow astronauts to do an EVA without de-spinning the station. They’d stand on a platform on the cradle and be raised/lowered into position.)
Assuming the elevator cradle can’t rotate around the truss, then the station needs one cradle (and track) per docking point on the docking node. (Ie, four docking points on the node, four tracks up the truss with one cradle per track. Plus at least one for the robot arm, plus a couple for counter-weights.)
Because the robot arm and all the cradles can move up and down the truss, they can move to wherever the centre of rotation is. That means that you can change the way you use the station over its life. If you want both modules at the same g, or one at lunar g and one at Martian, or something else, you just shift the counter-weights.
[Damn, I just spent 20 minutes trying to draw the basic idea for you, now the image button isn’t working. I know I’ve added images before. Can’t be bothered creating an account on a photo sharing site, just so I can include one link. Sorry, you’ll have to use your imagination.]
[[Graham suggested the same idea, elsewhere in the thread.]]
Paul:
I don’t think the ‘drill bit’ rotation of the station would cause the torque problems you suggest. It could be done slowly with moment control gyros. Also, to access any free port from either side of the center of (baton) rotation only requires a maximum of 90° (drill bit mode) clockwise or counter clockwise.
I was simply engaging in an exercise in making as simple a station as possible with nothing complex like a rotating restaurant in it.
I’ve always felt that a pressurized tunnel should connect the hab modules and elevators are a natural way for quick access between them.
I like your idea of a cradle for grabbing incoming spacecraft. Arm to cradle to perfect hatch matching every time. We’ll assume that once a station this big is built, it will always be occupied (by hundreds of folks) so having a docking system like this isn’t a show stopper like it might be with the ISS. If fact, they’d probably have a job for that: Space Traffic Controller, on duty, 24/7.
If your cradle rotates around the connecting tunnel, you can have a ring of docking ports on top (center facing) of each hab module around where the tunnel connects with the habs. Slick.
Dumbell is looking like a better idea all the time.
I’m working out the numbers for a three hab Dumbell with Earth gravity (where folks would mostly live and work), lunar gravity and Martian gravity (where folks would do science and train for… going there!)
tinker
From below/above:
“It could be done slowly with moment control gyros.”
Argh. I should have thought… These, of course, are exactly the counter-rotation mechanism that I said would be needed. And of course they are already going to be there in order to allow the drill-bit rotation in the first place. Brain fail, sorry.
“I’m working out the numbers for a three hab Dumbell with Earth gravity (where folks would mostly live and work), lunar gravity and Martian gravity (where folks would do science and train for… going there!)”
Logically, you’d put the two modules for Mars/moon gravity on one side, the Earth-g module on the other side. The greater mass of the 2 modules means the centre of mass is closer to that side, so they’ll be closer to the hub, which is what you want anyway.
However, other than as a mental exercise, there’s no point in having a 1g section. The point of a variable gravity facility is to work out the minimum amount of gravity needed to offset the effects of micro-g. Once you establish that, that becomes your gold standard for any future rotating stations.
And if the minimum is higher than Lunar or Martian gravity, we aren’t going to have permanent bases on either (unless we can build centrifuge bases.) So all stations after that will be one-g only. (Or more, to counter time spent in micro-g.)
In a way, once you go beyond a centrifuge test unit in a non-rotation station, you would want a dumbbell where one end is the test module, and the other end is just a plain empty tank. Over the years of operation, you slowly add an inert mass (water, say), which is dumped into the tank. As the mass in the tank-module increases every year, the other module moves further away from the CoM, thus increasing its simulated gravity. This, plus increasing the rate of rotation, allows you to span a full range of simulated gravity from 1% of Earth-normal up beyond 100% Earth-normal.
You’re looking for the point at which damage from reduced-gravity is eliminated, and the shape of the curve for each individual side-effect. Afterwards, you just design all new stations to that standard.
“We’ll assume that once a station this big is built, it will always be occupied (by hundreds of folks)”
In that case, you definitely do want a pressurised access way through the truss and an elevator system. And the elevator cars should be able to hold pressure if the truss is breached, with the “doors” being fully fledged docking ports. This not only protects travellers during a breach, but allows emergency movement between modules during a truss depressurisation.
As for the cradle. Another reason why I though it would be a good idea to have the docking node at the top of the module, rather than at the CoM/hub, is to reduce the evacuation time during an emergency. You don’t have to climb the (potentially breached) truss to reach the hub. In a large station, hundreds of crew, you’ll want enough “lifeboat” capsules on both ends. Pick the right time to “let go” and you might even get a free reentry burn.
[BTW, did you realise that using the docking method I suggested means the capsules are docking, in a partial gravity, upside down? Hatch down. There are ways around it, you can have the docking adaptor on the side of the capsule; lower the cradle level with the docking node, then pull the cradle/capsule in sideways to attach.]
Paul:
“However, other than as a mental exercise, there’s no point in having a 1g section.”
Although I agree with you that low testing must be done with humans (much as we do micro-gravity testing with folk up in the ISS, I still think a 1g zone would be necessary once a station gets big enough. ‘Regular’ crew could work and sleep mostly in the 1g hab pretty much indefinitely. ‘Test’ crews could do the same in the low g habs. This could be implemented incrementally as you suggest.
tinker
If you want something to rotate in the opposite direction use the solar panels. Electrical slip rings do not need to be air tight.
AMS:
Good point! The dumbbell station could be inherently unstable (anyone chime in on that?) so having a counter-rotating mass may just be a necessity.
If you put the solar panels, radiators and conditioning hardware on that counter-rotating section (Just like the ISS) only the power would pass through the rotatory joint. The power section rotary joint could be on one side of the center of rotation and Paul’s Spacecraft Docking Cradle (SDC) could be on the other.
So, habitats with various gravity gradients, a space proven power system (Andrew), a docking system that handles multiple spacecraft (Paul), Bigelows habs, Musk’s Falcon 9/Heavy to get ‘er ‘up there’ as well as ongoing cargo and supercargo (us)…
Well? Come on! Lets build it! 😉
tinker
Tinker, you said let’s build it?
Who should build your dumbbell space station????
Should privite industry build this with NASA as a helper and only a partcial customer? Shouldn’t this be completely different than the old model???????
Who ????
And how??????
Form an investment group maybe???
Folks:
http://www.forbes.com/sites…
Back onto the thread topic. It seems this Bigelow hab is going to be a li’le thing that’ll be launched in the ‘trunk’ of a Dragon cargo mission. When it expands, it will only be about ten feet in diameter. They’ll probably pluck the BEAM out with the Canadarm II and plug it in like do with other modules and the Dragon itself.
That’s the first I’ve heard details about size, transport and deployment. Pretty rational plan now that all the pieces are in place.
tinker
Interesting.
Bigelow is running out of money, laying folks off, and has no paying customers (even at the deposit level). But, NASA needs Bigelow so that it can claim there are other destinations for the commercial crew program and thusly have business cases for the commercial crew providers that close (at least in NASA’s version of commercial). If Bigelow goes away, what would they do?
Ah ha – a sole source contract to Bigelow that keeps him viable till Commercial Crew comes on line in 2017 (BEAM launch 2015 and tested till 2017).
How does this directly support any NASA program? Station stops at 2020. Is there an expansion plan anywhere? Habe the IPs bought in?
Where are inflatables on NASA’s road to a asteroid in 2025?
Why are we spending NASA money for something with only commercial application?
Can I gen up a Commercial Crew destination and get funded by NASA?
Why was this sole source? Where is the JOFOC?
Technically, it is interesting and looks like fun. Programatically, for NASA, its place is not obvious. Commercially, it is another case of government picking comercial winners and loosers by being the only (unjustified) customer.
I look to this following the path of COTS. Twice the promised development timeline, double the cost to NASA, lots of extra NASA personnel supporting, and operations at a fraction of promised tempo.
You have a future as a conspiracy theorist. Or perhaps just a few holes in your tinfoil hat.
“Where are inflatables on NASA’s road to a asteroid in 2025?”
They’re certainly on the road to Phobos in 2030 – everyone seems to agree that the hab for that and subsequent missions needs to be an inflatable.
I find it interesting that they plan to dump the module after the test is over. My guess is that they won’t be able to unless they have an immediate replacement. It will fill up with stuff or be considered too useful for some other reason.
I wish Bigelow had the space bug back when Max Facet had grand ideas for commercial use of space. Or maybe he is just getting some reuse from some of the old Space Industries business plans.