14 thoughts on “Integrated Vehicle Fluids”

1. Where did you find the graph?

   1. Dennis Wingo tweeted it this morning. Not sure who made it.

      1. Mike Duke and Brad Blair…

2. It seems ok I guess. There have been other things, like hydrogen fuel cells, available for these kinds of tasks for quite a long time though. I think both Apollo and the Shuttle used fuel cells. But I guess a piston combustion engine can generate power for more kinds of uses and it is a lot easier to repair.

   The APUs are one of those essential pieces in actual manned spacecraft which just don’t the same level of publicity that the engines get. Which is another reason why the SLS Frankenrocket makes no sense. If you eat all the budget on the Frankenrocket then you have no money left to create the rest of the components which is need to have an actual viable exploration and colonization effort.

   1. I don’t think you have the power density you need from a fuel cell to run hydraulics, to say nothing of transfer pumps, do you?

      1. If you have a fuel cell you don’t run hydraulics, you use electromechanical actuators. NASA MSFC had a complete rewiring plan for the Shuttle to remove all the hydraulics and replace them with more fuel cells and electromechanical actuators for the SSME gimbals and the aerosurfaces. Would have eliminated the highly unreliable APU’s.

         1. The problem with APUs wasn’t reliability so much as maintainability, with the hypergolics. I know that in the eighties we worked with Moog in Downey to go to electromechanical actuators, but couldn’t make it work with the tech available at the time; the response rate was too slow to meet the requirements for control authority. But perhaps it improved later.

      2. However, if you want to run hydraulics, you can. I have an electrically powered hydraulic system to push up a 5,000 lb tower and it uses about 1.5 kilowatts at max power.

         Not a big deal. I you need a lot of startup current, you couple it with a bank of super capacitors.

3. It seems reusable upper or 2nd stage is low hanging fruit once things can be refueled in space.

4. I had a discussion with an SLS supporter in which he claimed that depots were unstudied, and would cost billions to develop. Clear Lake group think seems to be involved.

   1. Depots have been studied in depth and a NASA headquarters report 2 years ago also dug into the issue.

      1. It was the combined certainty and ignorance combined with a certain level of condensation that convinced me of the futility of that discussion.

         1. “Condensation”? Are you saying they were being dense? 🙂

5. It is claimed in the video that using the new IVF unit would help to eliminate Helium usage. I can’t see how, since Helium is used to maintain tank pressure, and the IVF unit is for providing electrical power. (And don’t the turbopumps already do that?) The real innovation I see here is the ability to refuel on orbit, which is a game-changer, implying multiple re-uses of second stages..

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