Conference 7.286::space

410.0. "U.S. Space Station Editorial" by OBLIO::K_CASSIDY () Fri Mar 11 1988 15:47

> I found this editorial as part of two notes in the aerospace notes file.
> (The other parts were summaries of Aviation Week articles).  I thought it
> sums up everything I have been reading about the current design of the space
> station so well that I extracted it into a single note.  See Aerospace notes
> 58 and 60 for the original text.  Comments, anyone?
>     Kevin C.

Path: muscat!decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!rutgers!clyde!watmath!utgpu!
From: [email protected] (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Space news from December 7 AW&ST + Space Station editorial Part 1.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 19 Jan 88 05:46:51 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 243
 
    Editorial about the Space Station.  "...there is a hollowness to
the station program; a nagging feeling that there may be considerably
less long-term substance to the effort than the initial numbers
indicate... lack of commitment is the foremost reason.  It must be
unnerving for the newly named station contractors to hear frustrated
program officials at NASA saying that their biggest challenge is to
convince top level managers within their own agency that the space
station is a viable program and that adequate funding for it must be
pursued vigorously... The contrast with what the US space program used
to be is stark indeed. December 7 marks the 15th anniversary of the
Apollo 17 launch... it will pass with no official notice.  A national
consensus had been generated in support of Apollo and despite a
certain amount of public wrangling over costs, sufficient resources
were found to support the program.  Unless a concerted effort is made
to rekindle that same national consensus in support of the space
station, there is a good chance the program is headed for oblivion..."
 
    As I understand it, Alcoholics Anonymous will tell you that you
can't make any progress on an alcohol problem until you admit that (a)
you have a real and serious problem, and (b) fixing it will be
difficult and painful. 
 
    How is this relevant to the Space Station, you ask?
 
    The Space Station is dying.
 
    Not just troubled, but *dying*.  Its cost escalation is out of
control. After repeated cutbacks to try to get costs under control,
they still far exceed the original $8G target -- and they are still
growing.  This is *BEFORE* a single part has been launched, *BEFORE*
any metal has even been cut, *BEFORE* we even have a final design for
some parts!  There is just no hope that the project can be held to
anything near current estimates at this rate.  And if it goes well
beyond them, as it will, there is a serious danger of cancellation, or
cuts so severe that they amount to cancellation.  This cannot be
avoided if NASA continues to treat it as "business as usual".  It is
time to admit that the Station is in real and serious danger, and that
it cannot be saved without drastic and painful changes. 
 
    What kind of changes?  Well, first, what goals do we have too
meet, i.e., what is the thing *for*? 
 
    Well, it's not for the excitement of space exploration, that's for
sure. If we wanted excitement, the right thing to do would be the
long-overdue return to the Moon.  The station, by itself, is boring. 
So it has to be justified as a tool for other purposes.  What are the
uses of a manned space station? 
 
    There are people, including me, who argue that in a rational
universe many currently automated space activities would be at least
man-tended, to improve their reliability and reduce their cost.  This
is pretty much out of the question with Earth-to-orbit costs the way
they are now, though. Although we ought to be working on cheaper
transport, it won't happen overnight.  What are the uses of a manned
space station in our current situation? 
 
    One is obvious:  Many biomedical microgravity experiments simply
cannot be done without human presence as things stand now (we will
politely ignore the people who claim that robotics and telepresence
technology will be up to handling such things Real Soon Now).  This is
trivially true when the experiments in question use humans as their
experimental animals.  Many of these experiments want lengthy stays in
free-fall. 
 
    Many other experiments, like materials-processing work, don't need
(or even actively don't want) human presence while they are running,
but would benefit greatly from occasional human attention.  In
principle this could be done with shuttle visits, but those are very
expensive and in short supply.  The situation looks much better if
many experiments can be visited at a time. Unfortunately, lumping a
whole bunch of experiments into one box brings back many (not all) of
the problems that are cited as disadvantages of manned spacecraft: 
interference between experiments, compromises due to shared
facilities, contamination from the "housekeeping" activities of a
large spacecraft.  The best solution is to put these experiments on
modest free-flyers with human visits available on a flexible and
frequent schedule. 
 
    Another prominent use of humans in a rational world would be
interaction with experiments, as witness some of the on-orbit repairs
and modifications that have already occurred aboard Spacelab and other
missions.  The high costs of human presence in our current world
reduce the importance of this argument, but it's not entirely trivial
even so, particularly for first-generation exploratory experiments
which lack past experience to draw on. 
 
    Observation experiments, both Earth-observation and astronomical,
generally are simple enough to run by remote control, and do not want
the problems caused by nearby humans.  They do want occasional
man-tending, though, and novel experimental instruments might be an
exception to the general rule. 
 
    Finally, it is clear from past studies, like Fairchild's
Leasecraft effort, that integrating a satellite well enough to
guarantee it will be functional after the high acceleration and
vibration of a launch is very expensive, and that major cost
reductions could be had from on-orbit final assembly. That would also
bypass launcher payload limits, which considerably restrict what can
be done today.	 Only the most limited forms of such assembly are
practical today without human presence. 
 
    Do these things justify a manned space station?  I would say yes. 
But not quite the sort that is now being planned.  The station should
not be meant primarily as a mounting platform for major experiments;
major experiments will want their own platforms, and even minor ones
will want private or shared unmanned platforms.  (Even the biomedical
lab may eventually want its own platform so it can spin for
partial-gravity experiments.)  The station's jobs are to support the
biomedical lab, to provide a convenient place for small exploratory
experiments that are expected to need a lot of hand-holding, and to
serve as a base for man-tending and assembly work. At least one major
shared unmanned platform should probably be considered part of the
station (although it will co-orbit rather than being attached) as a
service to small experimenters who want high-quality microgravity
conditions but haven't yet worked up to running their own platform.
Another useful service would be a modest number of standardized small
platforms that could be leased to individual experimenters. 
 
    Okay, that's what we want; how do we get there?  Sorry, I'm going
to leave you in suspense until part 2.] 

*********************************************************************
 
    In the first installment of this editorial, I argued that we need
a space station, but that the program is in desperate trouble and
needs drastic changes to survive.  Its missions should be support of a
biomedical lab, small hands-on experiments, satellite assembly, and
man-tending of free- flying platforms to support all the things that
want occasional human attention but don't want the noisy, dirty
environment of a manned station. (Note that this is not quite the same
list of missions NASA has now.) 
 
    So, what sort of drastic changes am I talking about?
 
    Well, first, foremost, and almost solely:  Dump The Luxuries.  The
station is in deep financial trouble and can no longer afford to fund
everybody's pet project.  It is time to stick to building a useful
space station, and dispense with the pork barrel, the corporate
welfare programs, and the bureaucratic empire-building. 
 
    A major corollary of this, important enough to be mentioned in its
own right, is:  Use Existing Hardware.  One reason why the station is
so scandalously expensive is that it's developing nearly everything
from scratch.  This has to stop; new development should focus on the
(few) things which *cannot* be bought off the shelf. 
 
    On to specifics.
 
    The first Luxury which has to go is all the "high technology"
swill. The station's budget for automation and robotics development,
in particular, should be ZERO.  There have been nine space stations
flown to date (eight by the USSR), most of them quite successful, none
of them with any significant use of leading-edge automation or
robotics.  The same applies more generally to high technology:  the
only fundamental defect of Skylab -- built with early-1960s technology
-- was the lack of any way to resupply it in orbit.  (It had other
flaws, but nothing that could not have been cured easily at the time
with 5% higher funding and a longer-range outlook.)  The station
cannot afford to develop technology it does not need, and that means
it should do virtually no technology development. 
 
    Next in the list of Luxuries is the Polar Platform.  This has
nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the space station, and should
be funded on its own merits or not at all.  (NRC agrees with me, by
the way.) 
 
    And speaking of Platforms, the Co-Orbiting Platform needs, at the
very least, a long hard look.  I don't recall the details of the
current plans for it, but I strongly suspect it falls under the same
heading as the Polar Platform. 
 
    But I did say I wanted co-orbiting platforms, didn't I?  Yes, but
not of that sort.  The station needs one major shared platform for
multiple small experiments, and a handful of modest single-experiment
platforms for things that are especially touchy or that have outgrown
the shared platform.  Neither of these needs to be developed from
scratch.  SII's Industrial Space Facility is perfect for the shared
platform, and there have been several proposals for small platforms
that would do for the other role.  NASA's role in these projects
should be limited to ensuring compatibility and guaranteeing startup
customers; there is no need for major NASA funding for hardware that
private industry is perfectly willing to finance itself. 
 
    That leaves us with the station proper.  The most obvious
essential is the pressurized modules.  Can we buy existing hardware
there?  Damn right. ESA would be overjoyed to see a straight
commercial order for half a dozen Spacelab "long modules"; they have
long felt that they got thoroughly shafted on the original Spacelab
deal, and this would go a long way toward fixing that.  It would be
worth seeing if the "long module" could be stretched into an
"extra-long module" cheaply, but this is not vital. Yes, this means
that agreement with the Europeans is essential and that it would not
be even theoretically possible for NASA to "go it alone if necessary";
the current unwillingness to depend on supposed "partners" is another
Luxury, as are the parochial US demands that are obstructing agreement
with ESA. 
 
    The hardware to connect the modules is probably going to have to
be built from scratch.  This means that it should be kept as simple as
possible. If the station needs more internal volume, we add more
modules and more connectors, rather than making the existing ones
fatter.  (Note that this is the opposite of what NASA is doing, and
the budget reflects it.)  The station should be planned around adding
a shuttle external tank (or more than one!) as the long-term solution
to volume problems. 
 
    The Spacelab modules do need external support equipment to provide
things like power and life support, as do the currently-planned
station modules. In the current plan, this support equipment is partly
built in and partly the responsibility of a "logistics module" which
is periodically replaced. A reasonable plan.  The built-in stuff will
need some development, as will the other "furnishings" of the
pressurized modules; much of it can be done with commercially
available hardware, though.  As I recall, Japan originally wanted to
do the logistics module.  Fine, let them; we need that much more badly
than we need Yet Another Laboratory Module, which is what they're
doing in the current plan.  See above comments on international
cooperation. 
 
    Given that the station I envision is *not* a mounting point for
major experiments, the need for the big truss needs to be re-assessed.
If it remains necessary, it's time to get some construction firms
bidding. If they are allowed to make it a bit heavier than an
aerospace contractor would, they can do it FAR more cheaply.  The
station is not like the shuttle:  every kilo of dead weight in either
is that much less payload when it's launched, but the station only
needs to be launched ONCE.  We are far better off accepting slightly
higher launch costs to keep the development costs down. 
 
    Yes, the station needs reboosting periodically, but a heavier
station will need that less often, so to a first approximation the
weight of the station cancels out when computing station-keeping
costs.  In fact the heavier station probably comes out ahead when
indirect costs [e.g. experiments disrupted by reboost acceleration]
are figured in. 
 
    Speaking of reboosting, rather than developing all-new hardware
for the station, the simplest way to handle this is to carefully put
the logistics module at the center of gravity and include an
off-the-shelf liquid-fuel engine and tankage in it.  Since the
logistics module gets replaced with a new one regularly anyway, and
that is the logical time for a reboost (this puts the replenishment
visits at the low point of the station's path, which is just right for
maximizing shuttle payload), this eliminates any need to mess with
in-space refuelling and so forth. This is *not* ideal and we should
pursue better systems, but it will get the station operational with
minimum delay and cost, which is the major requirement right now. 
 
    The station needs power.  Fortunately there are several
commercially-available large solar arrays.  Buy a dozen of whichever
looks best. It will be cheaper and quicker than building a new design
from scratch. Solar-dynamic power is an excellent idea, LATER.  The
nonsense of running the power at 20 kHz, requiring *everything* to be
developed from scratch, is a Luxury of the stupidest kind and should
be discarded at once.  Yes, higher frequencies mean lighter power
equipment, which is why aircraft power systems run at 400 Hz rather
than 50 or 60 like land-based power.  Off-the- shelf aircraft hardware
will do just fine for most of the station's needs; the extra benefits
of 20 kHz cannot possibly pay for themselves. 
 
    Some other support systems, like cooling, probably will need some
new development.  Again the emphasis should be on simplicity and rapid
availability rather than on optimal design and minimal weight, and
aerospace contractors should be avoided whenever possible -- those
people couldn't sell you a pencil for less than $10 if they tried,
especially with NASA "helping". 
 
    Although we should be putting some effort into things like
lightweight spacesuits for easier EVA, for the moment we will need
remote manipulator arms of some sort.  This is also said to be the
easiest way to dock the shuttle to the station; could be. Fortunately,
reasonably suitable arms are available off the shelf (well, almost...)
from Spar Aerospace, which builds them for the shuttle.  There is no
reason to mess around with a major redesign.  As for the mobile base
for them, dare I suggest that it's better to just buy half a dozen
arms and put them in all the likely places? 
 
    Finally, we have to launch the thing.  At least some of the stuff
will have to go up on the shuttle, since it's the only man-rated
launch system we've got handy (unless we take the Soviets up on
Commercial Soyuz!!).  It sure would be nice to use a heavylift booster
for the big things, though.  I know how to make one available, too. 
Just ask Boeing/Hughes to quote a price for twenty Jarvis launches
spread over, say, ten years.  The station won't need all of them, of
course, but does anyone suggest that we can't find uses for the rest? 
And the nice part of it is that Boeing and Hughes are willing to do
the development with their own money, provided they're sure of having
customers.  The one thing better than getting a heavylift booster is
getting it FREE -- and we can. 
 
    Intelligently done, the above program would cut station costs
vastly, and probably shave some time off the schedule too.  [These are
not unrelated; doing something sooner is usually *cheaper* these     
days.]  Do I think there is any chance of it happening?  No way, no
hope, no chance.  Remember how Congress squealed when NASA proposed
some minor rearrangements in station responsibilities within the US? 
How do you think they would react to some of the above suggestions
right off the bat, never mind after the lobbyists got going? 
 
    My prediction?  I give the space station less than a 50-50 chance,
the way things are going.  And I don't see any way to save it.] 

Those who do not understand Unix are |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly.    | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry

Article: 1268
Newsgroups: sci.space.news
From: [email protected] (Peter E. Yee)
Subject: Goldin says America needs Space Station Freedom now [Release 92-92]
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1992 19:13:43 GMT
 
Bill Livingstone/David Garrett           June 24, 1992
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
(Phone:  202/453-8400)
 
RELEASE 92-92
 
GOLDIN SAYS AMERICA NEEDS SPACE STATION FREEDOM NOW 
 
	America needs a laboratory in space -- Space Station Freedom
-- so scientists can learn how to protect the health of humans living
and working for long periods in space and improve the quality of life
on Earth, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said today in remarks
before the National Space Club.
 
	"We can light up the sky with the inspirational work of Space
Station Freedom, or we can stand by and watch the greatest
technological bonfire of the century if it's canceled.
 
	"We've waited long enough.  To keep the next generation of
benefits from space flowing back to Earth, America must have a permanent
presence in space.
 
	"We need Space Station Freedom and we need it now," Goldin said.
 
	Despite 30 years of space flight, Goldin said doctors still know
very little about how the body reacts in space, since no NASA mission,
except Skylab, has lasted more than 14 days.  The data from Mir is
woefully inadequate, because their research capabilities just aren't
there.
 
	"Before astronauts can live on the Moon, or travel to Mars, or
even spend months in orbit, we need to find out how to counteract the
debilitating effects of zero and partial gravity.  And the only place
to learn about operating for long periods in space is in space," Goldin
emphasized.
 
	In weightlessness, muscles deteriorate, there is a reduction of
red and white blood cells, there is a loss of bone mass and sensory
problems with integrating information.
 
	"The rate of bone loss in space is ten times as great," Goldin
said.  "On Earth, we call this osteoporosis.  Twenty-million American
women suffer from it.  Finding how to counteract it could bring relief
to those women."
 
	In a country that focuses all too often on the short term, NASA
is the one of the few agencies dedicated to our future.  About $2
billion of NASA's budget is for the space station.
 
	"Sounds like a lot until compared with the $6.3 billion Americans
spend on pet food each year, or the $4.3 billion we spend on potato
chips, or the $1.4 billion for popcorn," Goldin added.
 
	Every time America has gone to the frontier, we've brought back
more than we could ever imagine, Goldin said.
 
	"As NASA turns dreams into realities and makes science fiction
into fact, it gives America reason to hope our future will be forever
brighter than our past," Goldin said.
 
	Goldin stated that Thursday's Shuttle launch, which contains
first-class experiments to learn the molecular structure of viruses and
diseases, illustrates the importance of Space Station Freedom.
 
	"We'll be examining the structure of new drugs, blood cells,
antibodies and enzymes that control bodily functions.  One experiment
will try to find out what makes bacteria resistent to penicillin, so
scientists can make `tougher' penicillin against infections," he said.
 
	During Columbia's 13 days in orbit, NASA will grow "crystals"
of proteins in the AIDS virus to understand the molecular structure.
The protein is placed in a solution.  Then through evaporation crystals
form, which then are examined using X-rays (crystallography), which can
reveal its three-dimensional molecular structure.  Thirty- one
different protein crystal experiments will be performed, along with
dozens of other kinds of research.
 
	"Researchers will grow crystals of the proteins in the AIDS virus
and its antibody.  By understanding their molecular structure, we hope
to speed the search for drugs that will interrupt the virus's vicious
cycle of destruction.
 
	"The tidal wave of basic science that's waiting to be flown in
space is what will let us live longer lives, in a cleaner environment,
with a higher standard of living.
 
	"The cutting-edge technology that comes from space research is
what provides the new jobs and new industries of tomorrow," Goldin said.

    I like all his arguements, except I think he has the wrong priority.
    
    Why is space station a higher priority than advanced/cheaper lift?
    
    I would think that cheaper lift will pay for itself in terms of the
    space station we can afford.
    
    Tony

But cheaper lift development in and of itself isn't splashy enough to get 
general support. Hopefully, Freedom development will justify these other 
supporting projects. Nothing said that the logical steps would be taken to 
get us back into space to stay. Too much pork barrel and politics.

I like the osteoporosis angle. I was aware of the effect but never saw it 
as a direct spinoff opportunity. Not to be morbid but having something which 
amplifies the effect by an order of magnitude can really help accelerate
the research and verification.