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Incentive for Space Stations


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20 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Can I interrupt the thread a little with some musing?

I just realized that space stations and ground stations in Kerbal Space Program are nearly polar opposites in terms of gameplay:

The game gives you plenty of opportunity to build a wicked cool space station: You send modules up in orbit, you dock them together indefinitely using RCS and docking ports, there are plenty of parts to build with, and they're overall just convenient to build. The entire docking mechanic seems tailored for space station construction. However, the benefit of putting together a space station is marginal at best. You have so few reasons to build them, so all the parts and all the docking is, putting it bluntly, for naught. They're really cool and easy to build, though, so many players build them just for the vanity. They're sort of like epic car jumps in GTA - the game doesn't reward you for it, but it's so fun you do it anyway.

Meanwhile, ground stations. Perfect for flag planting missions, sending Science from the surface of various bodies, giving you a permanent presence outside Kerbin, and of course, you can extract resources from the ground. However, the stock game gives you really few parts to use for your ground station, and the mechanics of assembling them are clunky at best. Lining up the elevation of docking ports is a real pain, even on flat ground, moving the modules in place is cumbersome (can be done with some rover skills, but it's difficult), and to refuel ships with the fuel you extract, you need to land them directly on top of the station. There are many good reasons to build ground bases, but doing so is very difficult and the game lacks a mechanic geared towards it. Ground bases are useful, but so inconvenient to build that many players won't even bother with them.

So overall, you have one type of station with lots of parts, relatively easy construction methods, but no real incentive to build; and another type of station with loads of incentive, but few parts and no convenient construction method.

 

Luckily, mods can make both types of station a lot more bearable. Station Science and its likes gives space stations a legit gameplay purpose. KIS/KAS add fuel lines to make refuelling spacecraft from bases a lot easier. Extraplanetary Launchpads lets you launch craft off other planets with the resources you collect. There are habitat mods that add specific ground station parts, rover mods that make ground station construction more convenient, etc. But still, in stock, it's interesting that the two types of station fill each other out so nicely. One type you can conveniently build without a reason why, one type with all the reasons but none of the convenience.

 

Doesn't the AGU address a number of concerns with regard to surface bases?  I would like to see some system of cabbies or umbilicals so you can link power and other resources between proximate surface modules.

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2 hours ago, tater said:

HST was designed with a 3m mirror, it was reduced to 2.4---because that's what KH had. The spacecraft was basically the same, obviously the optics (aside from diameter) and instrumentation would be different for astronomical use vs pointing it down. It's not really substantially different as a spacecraft, the form factor chosen was not accidental, it prevented them from having to reinvent the wheel.

You're missing my point. Yes, they might happen to look similar. Yes, they might happen to have similarly-sized mirrors. Yes, they might even happen to have a lot of the same guts. That doesn't actually mean that they are similar, because the missions they're meant to fulfill are quite different and tend to evolve differently.

2 hours ago, tater said:

Regarding counterfactuals, yes, there are many. My point was that the counterfactual where HST is launched on Titan is necessarily one without Shuttle. I think your others with shuttle are certainly possible for the Shuttle case. I think as long as there is shuttle, HST is launched with shuttle, and is either repaired, not repaired, or replaced/not replaced with shuttle. Mine assumes a world without the money sinkhole that was Shuttle. Repair in such a universe seems pretty unlikely, as well (a sort of "Eyes Turned Skywards" future with LEO-specific Apollo CSMs as manned spacecraft, but they would lack the cargo bay, arm, etc for repairs).

Well, it's funny you should mention Eyes, honestly...

2 hours ago, tater said:

I also did not say mass produced in the generic sense, I said are "for space telescopes" mass produced (bad wording on my part, mea culpa). perhaps that caveat was not clear enough. Any such device is a one off, but for space telescopes "mass" production would likely mean no more than certain commonalities in spacecraft design, not instrumentality. The same is true of KH 11/12. There were built in a few blocks, and even with those distinctions, each was still "one off," and customized vs all the others. Heck, all the Shuttle orbiters were different, though "for space shuttles" they were "mass produced." That phrase was not ideal, but don't lose the forrest for the trees, the point was that such instruments would share common elements that would make making multiples easier.

That was what I meant by mass production as well. It does not work for scientific satellites because it's completely missing the point of scientific satellites and the whole structure of science, which is borne out by the utter flaming failure of the concept the few time it's been tried (as I mentioned, the Planetary Observers and Mariner Mark II programs were supposed to be exactly this, and led to one of the most expensive planetary science missions ever launched, Cassini, and the expensive and failed Mars Observer). Science builds on itself, so you never want to just keep building the same vehicle again and again once you've launched it once. You want to change it and alter it to meet new demands and new goals. Once you start looking, really looking, at what using new instruments means, it's obvious that for all but relatively minor changes you end up needing a whole new vehicle, not just a tweaked version of the old one. Which, as I've said, plunges you back into the world of new programs and the resulting costs and delays.

There's also the very important fact that while Congress (or the Politburo, or whoever) is probably willing to pay for a few spy satellites at a time, so they can be built in batches, they are probably not willing to pay for a few telescopes at a time. And if you're waiting on each launch to find out whether you're building the next telescope, you're really not going to be seeing any benefits relative to...well, waiting on each launch to figure out what the next telescope is going to be.

2 hours ago, tater said:

The repair missions were certainly dubious in terms of economics. COSTAR was not the only such service mission, there were others at 1.5B$ each for the flight alone. My claim is primarily that HST could have been launched and replaced for less than 2 shuttle missions cost (and I stick to 1.5 B$ per launch, not supposed marginal costs when the shuttle never launched as often as planned).

As I have pointed out twice now, even if you use the $1.5 billion figure the cost of launching a service mission was no greater than launching a new telescope, and quite possibly less depending on how well development went. There are plenty of cases where "simply" "reusing" existing designs for a new missions turns out to blow up in people's faces and demand far more money than a new whatever would, and it's quite probable in such a case as this where astronomers would be demanding quite significant changes to continue supporting your continuing multi-billion dollar new telescope program.

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NASA could likely have forced Perkin Elmer to figure a new mirror, frankly. The testing mistake they made at Danbury was really inexcusable. They worked on KH, as well (wonder if they had to redo any of those, actually...)

The guts were basically the same (spacecraft guts, not the science). Telescopes are telescopes, frankly. The largest space concern regarding that aspect of Hubble is very likely thermal design, and KH had similar concerns (they were principally concerned with angular resolution, after all, looking at targets on the ground, and the crazy temperature variation on orbit would be a big concern for either platform WRT seeing).The specifics of the optics are a mechanical issue, and while important, the electronics are a physically small component. Note that COSTAR itself would have cost a ridiculous amount of money, so add that to the launch costs. 3 billion in Shuttle flights, and a ~1.2B$ telescope plus costar (100M? more?) vs ~800M$ in expendable LV costs, plus 2x1.2B$ telescopes. 4.3B$ vs maybe 3.2B$. Of course Titan was not a bulletproof LV, there is every chance that the telescope goes the way of some sisters---1 KH9, and 1 KH11---that never made it to orbit in '85/'86.

Anyway, even quibbling a lot over the numbers, they are in the same price range (which you are basically saying as well).

On topic for the utility of stations, the notion would be that somehow ISS could have fixed HST somehow. You send a reusable tug. You send the tug to fix HST where it is, or you drag it back, fix it, then send it back up? Such a mission still requires a delivery from Earth (COSTAR, in this case), but they get routine cargo deliveries anyway, so that's not a big deal. Still if repair is an economic reason for a station, then we need to posit a commercial station that does nothing but repair to earn its keep. That seems incredibly unlikely. Every repair likely needs custom parts, so the lead time in repair work is months to put those parts (assuming they exist, and don't need to be made) on a launch manifest. Then the parts are sent to a station that might be no where near the target satellite... I'm not seeing it.

Edited by tater
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I'd like to see a system where contracts require you to deliver delicate science packages to the an orbital lab for analysis. Too many Gs or hard bump causes the package to be damaged reducing science return and or incurring a financial and rep penalty.

"Deliver these chicken eggs to your orbital lab, hatch them and return them safely to kerbin. No omelettes!"

The package could be a unique part issued for that particular mission. It would need to be docked to a craft with a manned lab and a certain amount of electric charge would be used to "open" the package (performing the experiment) and gain science points. Multiple labs could increase the science profit.

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I'm a little confused why Hubble repair is being thrown around as a case where it would be economical to keep a crew on orbit.

Regarding replacement vs. repair, for Hubble, NASA found it economical to devote an astronaut with multiple PhDs to being Hubble's operational and quality assurance expert full-time for ten years (maybe longer; it's been a while since I talked with him). They also found it economical to send this man up to fix the telescope when it had problems, instead of keeping him on-station.

(Now that I've put it like that, it highlights another part of why ground instead of orbit: you can't keep people in orbit forever. They need crew rotations, and overlapping expertise. This means more launches and more training than if you just dedicate one guy to it on the ground and send him up if there's a problem.)

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