Plans for crewless space station underway
JF Mezei
Ground crews are making plans to possibly operate the International
Space Station without crew for awhile, but preparations are not yet
underway in space.
"The teams in Houston are in the preliminary stages of deciding
everything from what ventilation we�re going to leave running, what
lights we�re going to leave on, what condition of each particular
experiment will be on, every tank, every valve, every hatch � there�s a
lot to do," said NASA astronaut Mike Fossum at a news conference from
the International Space Station with fellow NASA astronaut Ron Garan
Tuesday.
The details will be shared with astronauts in the weeks ahead, he added,
and they will have plenty of time to implement them.
In the meantime, the only preparations that the astronauts have been
making so far is to document some of their space station work using
video, in order to hand it over to the first crew to repopulate the
space station. Up until now, all such handovers have been done face-to-face.
On Aug. 29, NASA had disclosed that following the crash of the Russian
Progress unmanned cargo space ship on Aug. 24, some astronaut trips to
and from the space station will be delayed.
The delays will give the Russian space agency time to investigate the
accident and make sure the problem that caused it has been resolved.
Following the retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet, astronauts are
currently transported to the station aboard Soyuz spacecraft, which use
the same rockets that failed during the Progress launch. U.S. and
Russian space agency officials do not plan to make any manned launches
until there have been at least one or two successful unmanned spacecraft
launches with the rockets.
By the time that happens, all astronauts currently aboard the station
may have already returned, leaving the space station crewless for the
first time in more than 10 years.
Garan and two other astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth on Sept.
15, a week after their original planned return date of Sept. 8.
Fossum and the other two remaining astronauts on the space station are
scheduled to return in mid-November.
Currently, the next Soyuz flight to the space station is scheduled to
arrive on Nov. 2, before the return of Fossum's expedition.
But Fossum said the possibility that it will be delayed remains, as
"there�s a lot of things that need to stack up to make that [flight]
happen."
He noted that troubleshooting a rocket isn't easy and could take a long
time if the problem doesn't involve obvious recent hardware, software or
process changes.
If the space station does need to go crewless, the risk to the space
station is low provided it remains crewless for a short time, Fossum
said. The types of problems that are most likely to pose an issue
without crew are things like the failure of a pump last year that
knocked out half the station's cooling capability, which are not that
serious in the short term but do reduce the station's ability to
tolerate other failures.
"As that short gap turns into many months... it leads toward a greater
possibility that we would have a problem up here that became very
significant with nobody to take action."
Brian Gaff
few possibilities, but I doubt that anyone is going to stick teir neck out
and say much till everyone is sure. as for 1 or two unmanned launches, well,
one has to occur, but I guess it depends on how long the Soyuz on orbit life
could be safely extended.
This is the price you pay for not having a back up system of course..
Brian
--
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Blind user, so no pictures please!
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote in message
news:4e672571$0$12580$c3e8da3$a8a6...@news.astraweb.com...
> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/06/technology-astronauts-space-station.html
>
> Ground crews are making plans to possibly operate the International
> Space Station without crew for awhile, but preparations are not yet
> underway in space.
>
> "The teams in Houston are in the preliminary stages of deciding
> everything from what ventilation we�re going to leave running, what
> lights we�re going to leave on, what condition of each particular
> experiment will be on, every tank, every valve, every hatch � there�s a
> "there�s a lot of things that need to stack up to make that [flight]
Alan Erskine
> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/06/technology-astronauts-space-station.html
>
> Ground crews are making plans to possibly operate the International
> Space Station without crew for awhile, but preparations are not yet
> underway in space.
>
Streeeetching here... could Dragon be ready for crew launch before ISS
would need to be unmanned?
What about replacing Soyuz with a Dragon for crew return?
Jorge R. Frank
> On 7/09/2011 6:04 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/09/06/technology-astronauts-space-station.html
>>
>>
>> Ground crews are making plans to possibly operate the International
>> Space Station without crew for awhile, but preparations are not yet
>> underway in space.
>>
>
> Streeeetching here... could Dragon be ready for crew launch before ISS
> would need to be unmanned?
No.
Alan Erskine
Why not?
JF Mezei
>>> Streeeetching here... could Dragon be ready for crew launch before ISS
>>> would need to be unmanned?
>>
>> No.
>
> Why not?
How far ahead are they in outfitting the inside of Dragon with life
support, control systems, seats, toilet etc ?
When you look at the development of the ISS, getting the shell of
modules was quick and easy, but they seemed to spend a large amout of
resources/time on the outfiting and testing of the modules.
Alan Erskine
re-entry. The crew can use pee-bags for a day or two.