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4 minutes ago, Kerwood Floyd said:

Sorry. Can you expand SSSU for me?

A mis-type of SSSH AKA StarShip/SuperHeavy, perhaps?

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1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

Superdracos would break the ISS into bits. It'll be standard Dracos.

Well, depends how many Superdracos, at what throttle setting. A low throttle for the majority of the burn, with a final full-blast kick at the end (when it's in the re-entry corridor) to break it up, since that is the general idea...

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I still find myself wishing they could find a way to put it in a museum. But I know that to bring it back would take the same amount of effort that was taken to send it up.

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23 minutes ago, cubinator said:

I still find myself wishing they could find a way to put it in a museum. But I know that to bring it back would take the same amount of effort that was taken to send it up.

Maybe starship can bring a module or two down? Justify it by claiming it's to study the long term effects of space on the hardware?

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2 hours ago, Minmus Taster said:

Maybe starship can bring a module or two down? Justify it by claiming it's to study the long term effects of space on the hardware?

They should at least send up a professional team with 3D scanning equipment and cameras to fully capture the interior so a hi-res VR can be made of it.

In fact, why the frack have they not already done this?  It would have been a great PR thing to do.   Imagine being in a swimming pool with a VR scuba mask and scuba gear and swimming through the ISS.  They could have been generating a lot of interest over the years, even with low res VR from 10 years ago

Edited by darthgently
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35 minutes ago, darthgently said:

They should at least send up a professional team with 3D scanning equipment and cameras to fully capture the interior so a hi-res VR can be made of it.

In fact, why the frack have they not already done this?  It would have been a great PR thing to do.   Imagine being in a swimming pool with a VR scuba mask and scuba gear and swimming through the ISS.  They could have been generating a lot of interest over the years, even with low res VR from 10 years ago

It isn't really proper VR, but they sent up some 360 degree cameras a while back and there's a sort of VR/360 experience on the Quest. I assume you've probably seen the google maps ISS too.

But yeah, it would be amazing to get a proper VR environment of the station.

My hope now for returning the whole ISS is now all but gone, but maybe they can at least return the Cupola or something.

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9 hours ago, darthgently said:

They should at least send up a professional team with 3D scanning equipment and cameras to fully capture the interior so a hi-res VR can be made of it.

In fact, why the frack have they not already done this?  It would have been a great PR thing to do.   Imagine being in a swimming pool with a VR scuba mask and scuba gear and swimming through the ISS.  They could have been generating a lot of interest over the years, even with low res VR from 10 years ago

The ISS is on Google Street View, if you know where to look for it. That's not quite the same, but still.

But yeah, I think it would be vastly easier to build a full-scale replica ISS for museum purposes than to try to save the one in orbit. It would not be the same, but it would be similar enough for a fraction of the fraction of the price.

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35 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

The ISS is on Google Street View, if you know where to look for it. That's not quite the same, but still.

But yeah, I think it would be vastly easier to build a full-scale replica ISS for museum purposes than to try to save the one in orbit. It would not be the same, but it would be similar enough for a fraction of the fraction of the price.

Is there a mock-up for trouble shooting?  Probably not given its size and all the changes over the years.  And cost.  Always cost

Edited by darthgently
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2 hours ago, Codraroll said:

try to save the one in orbit

Irradiated mutant bacteria from spaaaace being brought back to Earth? 

 

What could go wrong? 

 

Panik 

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/ames-science/ames-space-biosciences/multi-drug-resistant-bacteria-found-on-iss-mutating-to-become-functionally-distinct/

 

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2 hours ago, darthgently said:

Is there a mock-up for trouble shooting?  Probably not given its size and all the changes over the years.  And cost.  Always cost

Closest thing is probably the one in the NBL pool and its counterparts. I'm pretty sure that's split into various sections, but is complete enough for the astronauts to climb around on and practice whatever they need to.

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

But yeah, I think it would be vastly easier to build a full-scale replica ISS for museum purposes than to try to save the one in orbit. It would not be the same, but it would be similar enough for a fraction of the fraction of the price.

I agree, a museum replica would offer almost all the educational value of the real thing, aside from stuff like "that scratch came from a micrometeor strike back in 2015 etc. etc."

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Bringing a piece down in order to study the effects of a couple decades of exposure to the space environment (e.g. thermal cycles, micro-meteorites, etc) isn't a bad idea.  If we want to go to Mars, we're going to have to be able to build spacecraft that are resilient to that environment for years without external assistance.  That is yet to be done. (This idea has precedent. The older 737 classics were given a hard service life limit after studies of the lap joints revealed irreparable microscopic damage. The studies were done on sections of airframe cut out of aircraft that had been in service for decades.)

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Bringing down a couple of modules on Starship sounds entirely realistic to me. Perhaps not easy, or cheap, but “we choose to do the things because they are hard” & all that.  Could be a good excuse to demonstrate robotic construction tech, use that instead of EVAs to disconnect the various fittings. Doesn’t need to be pretty or maintain function, after all, and if something gets damaged it’s all going in the drink anyway. Someone did a plot of IFT-4’s reentry loading and it only peaked around 1.5G, ISS modules should have no trouble withstanding that. 
 

At the very least an off-the-shelf crew Starship could strip most of the interior, maybe the Coupola, for recovery. Even that would be a, well, coup…

Mockups in a museum just aren’t the same as even a piece of the genuine article. Cue Indiana Jones. 

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7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Irradiated mutant bacteria from spaaaace being brought back to Earth? 

 

What could go wrong? 

 

Panik 

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/ames-science/ames-space-biosciences/multi-drug-resistant-bacteria-found-on-iss-mutating-to-become-functionally-distinct/

 

Well, in that case, if a battery can survive reentry, could a mutant bacteria survive embedded deep enough in surviving debris?

Andromeda Strain II

This time it is coming from inside your own SOI!

 

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On 6/29/2024 at 6:49 AM, Codraroll said:

The ISS is on Google Street View, if you know where to look for it. That's not quite the same, but still.

But yeah, I think it would be vastly easier to build a full-scale replica ISS for museum purposes than to try to save the one in orbit. It would not be the same, but it would be similar enough for a fraction of the fraction of the price.

I remember walking through one of those during one of my NASA visits.  I think it was at Houston, but it might have been the cape , or possibly even the infinity science center just east of Louisiana on I10.

 

Ah, it was the infinity science center, and they just have a mock-up of the destiny module:

https://www.visitinfinity.com/galleries-exhibits/

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It's a short, watch til the end.   Is the space industry any different really?  It's all about those gravity well blues, trying different things, failing faster, getting back up, and doing it again

 

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On 7/2/2024 at 3:51 PM, darthgently said:

It's a short, watch til the end.   Is the space industry any different really?  It's all about those gravity well blues, trying different things, failing faster, getting back up, and doing it again

It is very different, unfortunately. This kind of attitude that we should try things, take risks and accept losses, both money and lives, lacks completely in whole civilized world at these times. Now politicians calculate prestige and companies profits and porce of failura is set to ridiculous. Everyone knows that space industry would not be tecnomagic at all and it would increase production of everything by orders of magnitudes but investments are negligible. Couple of states build political pork systems and on eccentric billionaire try something.  Most other companies just want to get their share of states' pork money.

I think humans do not achieve any significant steps in space operations or industrial utilization before we get pioneering attitude of exploration era back. We should build ships and send heroic expeditions to almost hopeless missions until some come back with all the presitige for funders and data needed to make next operation more safely and productively. It do not work as business. It must be ideologically driven process. There will be huge business later but timescale and risks are so high that it is not good investment in modern quarter year economy.

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