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Can the station go full SpaceX in the future?


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44 minutes ago, Boyster said:

Is it possible for SpaceX to cover most crew rotations in the near future?

Is there like a major obstacle, like production or even rules to keep the competition healthy?

Do they have 2 SpaceX compatible man-rated docking ports?  (plus one for the supply dragons)

They need to keep one connected as an escape pod if tehre are any crew on board, plus one for bringing up additional crew.

Also, I think Soyuz handles the refueling?   So if Dragon does not offer that capability Soyuz will still be needed to top off the tanks.

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1 hour ago, Terwin said:

Do they have 2 SpaceX compatible man-rated docking ports?  (plus one for the supply dragons)

They need to keep one connected as an escape pod if tehre are any crew on board, plus one for bringing up additional crew.

Also, I think Soyuz handles the refueling?   So if Dragon does not offer that capability Soyuz will still be needed to top off the tanks.

The cargo variation of Soyuz does the refueling, you can do raising burn with capsules but they need center of mass docking ports for this. 
Now its fairly easy to add docking ports. Dragon trunk can carry them in the trunk, probably other options too. 
However its an reason why NASA want both dragon and starliner in addition to the reliable Soyuz as platforms. 
Things can go wrong, quite easy that spaceX manages to damage their manned pad or getting grounded because of issues, how many manned pads do Soyuz have? 

 

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3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

You know it's half Russian, right?

Its a private company, why there should be a nationality lock....except if there is something to do with American government.

2 hours ago, Terwin said:

Do they have 2 SpaceX compatible man-rated docking ports?  (plus one for the supply dragons)

They need to keep one connected as an escape pod if tehre are any crew on board, plus one for bringing up additional crew.

Also, I think Soyuz handles the refueling?   So if Dragon does not offer that capability Soyuz will still be needed to top off the tanks.

Those are some big obstacles, i guess that is probably way too hard to overcome in the near future and in this station.

 

 

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There are two International Docking Adapters installed, which is what Crew Dragon uses. Cargo Dragon uses the common berthing mechanism to dock, so it doesn't use the ports used for crew operations.

You should clarify what you mean by "near future" because Starliner hasn't been cleared while Crew Dragon has, so for the short term SpaceX is already handling all American launched crew rotations, though there are of course Russian launches as well. Looking at the schedule SpaceX is handling the next two rotations, and Soyuz is handling the third, so for certain values of "near future" SpaceX is handling crew rotations. In the long term Boeing does have a contract to launch Starliner and there are ample political and practical reasons why that will be seen through and we have every reason to believe Russia will continue (every time someone suggests retiring the ISS they say they'll just undock their modules and continue on their own).

From a technical standpoint there isn't a reason why SpaceX couldn't handle crew rotations (as far as I know), though production capacity could be a limiting factor. They can't handle all ISS operations, specifically refueling, but crew rotations are possible. As it stands right now all it would take is the grounding of Soyuz and this actually would be the case until roughly June 2021 (assuming Starliner performs flawlessly from here on and the hypothetical Soyuz grounding lasted that long). From a political and practical standpoint it is almost certain that this wouldn't be allowed to persist. At a minimum Russia would insist on launching crews both for their own national pride and also to maintain the international ideal of the International Space Station. With respect to Starliner, it gives us a backup in case some flaw is found in Crew Dragon, which is a very practical reason to keep it given the history that lead to the commercial crew program in the first place. On the political front Boeing has a lot of contracts with NASA and the government at large and employs a lot of people.

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ATV were using Russian docking adaptor, so probably there could be built an ATV-based tanker.

And there is another strange thing about Crew Dragon and Starliner docking, as Crew Dragon is equipped with IDSS Rev.E-like docking port, with narrow soft capture ring with magnetic strikers, while Boeing had officially declared that they will use the more APAS-95-like version of that standard, probably Rev. B, with wider soft capture ring, mechanical strikers, and narrower tunnel between the petals, so it should be incompatible with the Dragon receiving adaptor.

So, impatiently waiting for the Starliner docking to see what has taken place irl.

Edited by kerbiloid
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1 hour ago, satnet said:

From a political and practical standpoint it is almost certain that this wouldn't be allowed to persist. At a minimum Russia would insist on launching crews both for their own national pride and also to maintain the international ideal of the International Space Station.

Obviously if something happened to ground Soyuz, then Russia would face the same issues the US faced after the retirement of the shuttle. Either buy seats on a US spaceship or don't fly.

But no, politically Russia is *not* going to buy seats from the US (or a US company). And certainly the US would be unlikely to give them away for free, after all the years that Russia made the US pay for seats.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

impatiently waiting for the Starliner docking

As are we all.

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22 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

You know it's half Russian, right?

It (the oldest parts anyway) is 20 years old already.  Even 10 years ago it required nearly all available astronaut/cosmonaut time dedicated to repair/maintenance of the ISS (the crew is slightly larger, so presumably they have 1 man-day of non-maintenance work per day).  By the  time they straighten the politics out (assuming Ms. Shotwell handles all the negotiations and takes all of Elon's communication devices, otherwise never) it will probably be in a state worse than Mir when it was finally deorbited.

It would be far easier for Spacex to put up their own space station than to acquire the ISS.  It would probably be a lot cheaper than maintaining the ISS as well.  Besides, that's pretty much how they do things anyway.

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22 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

But no, politically Russia is *not* going to buy seats from the US (or a US company). And certainly the US would be unlikely to give them away for free, after all the years that Russia made the US pay for seats.

They will probably keep reserving seats on each other's ships.

Edited by kerbiloid
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On 11/14/2020 at 1:20 AM, Boyster said:

except if there is something to do with American government.

There is a potential for that these days. The worst ideas come from politicians being urged to "do something, anything".

On 11/13/2020 at 11:41 PM, magnemoe said:

how many manned pads do Soyuz have? 

One, I think. The other one is under renovation, and the ones at Plesetsk and Vostichnyi probably don't count.

Edited by DDE
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Given Boeing's Starliner, it's at least two 'private' firms.

Though it's somewhat likely, if the USOS do prove to last really long, that we will start to see new companies and new countries aboard the space station. I could see India on-board, maybe Japan as they're looking into having a manned version of HTV (for the latter all still on paper, their problem is more on the manpower rather than technical capabilities). Given Artemis and other lunar programmes however it's likely that countries would rather join the moon outpost.

 

Honestly the problem is with the station itself - it's pushing 20 years now, even your house staying still on the ground are only designed for 50 years while not having to constantly fight vacuum and temperature gradient every 90 minutes and bombarded with micrometeoroids. I could see it last maybe another 20 if they managed to somehow carry out retrofit of the whole thing - would require something along the lines of the now-retired Space Shuttle...
ROS isn't going very well IMO due to leaks etc, yet USOS can't do orbital boosts by itself. SAW might prove to be the most reliable thing out there structurally (as it's just a truss structure in zero-G), although not so much for the hydraulic parts.

Edited by YNM
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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

An orbital service center for Starlink.
To catch then with a net, repair with a soldering iron, and release back.

It does sounds cool and i am not sure if you just joking around but anyways

ofcourse it would cost less to just launch new ones and renew the fleet in case you were debating it.

Edited by Boyster
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46 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I'm joking. When a typical Starlink sat needs a repair, it's probably easier to replace it without disassembling.

Yeah i am not good with catching jokes,

although you made me wonder what if a net could be used to rapidly collect the damaged sats and make their deorbit faster for various reasons.

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