Eric Berger has the story. But no mention of when they could do this, other than “later this decade.” What’s the constraint? As far as I know, nothing except the lifeboat issue. NASA insists (irrationally in my opinion — we have no such capability for Scott/Amundsen in the southern winter) that it must be able to evacuate the entire crew all the way to earth in an emergency, and since a Soyuz can only handle three, the maximum crew with two of them docked is thus six.
What would it be worth to get that extra researcher aboard? Again, someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but most crew time is taken up with maintenance functions of the facility, leaving only one crew member available for the actual research for which the thing was ostensibly built. If true, that means that adding another crew member would effectively double the amount of utility from the facility (presumably, CASIS would know). That is, if we get (say) four thousand hours a year of scientific research at the ISS with six crew (I’m assuming more than a forty-hour week, obviously), we might get to eight thousand with that seventh crew member. If it’s costing three billion a year to maintain, that drops the cost per hour from $750K/hr to only $375K/hr. Still ridiculously high, but a relative bargain.
What is such research time really worth? Likely a lot less than that, of course, but suppose someone were willing to pay $50K/hr for ISS research. That would mean that the extra crewperson would be worth $200M/yr. A different way of looking at it is, how much would the marginal cost of that person be were we to accelerate the time line? To answer that question means that we have to understand what is involved in such an acceleration.
If Dragon had a life-support system (even one only good for a couple hours) and couches, it has demonstrated its ability to serve as a lifeboat now, except for one issue — it has no independent docking/undocking capability, and won’t until it gets a NASA Docking System (NDS) as part of Commercial Crew. But despite what Skip Hatfield says in the linked Space Safety piece, even the system it used for the berthing could be used to undock in an emergency, by just releasing it and backing off with thrusters. Similarly, Boeing could probably have a CST sitting there within year or so, after a test flight to demonstrate its entry capability (as Dragon did in 2010), given sufficient funds. The long pole in its use as a crew module are development and testing of the abort system, which is unnecessary if it is used as a lifeboat. If I were CASIS, I’d ask SpaceX and Boeing how soon they could provide that service, and how much it would cost. Because, at least in theory, it’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The fact that this isn’t being accelerated while wasting billions on an unneeded rocket that won’t fly for many years (and is unlikely to ever fly) is just one more demonstration of the dysfunction of our space policy.
The original crew size specified was 7. That is, when the reliability and maintainability numbers were defined, the size was 7 with the expectation of 4 crew to do constant maintenance (40 hr work week, they actually get weekends and holidays, though vacations are assumed to occur outside of missions). A fifth crew member would handle over run. And 2 crew members for science. This was all predicated on the US built lifeboat, which was cancelled before the ISS specs were even dry. Then the X-38, which could take down 7 supposedly, that was later cancelled. After X-38, it’s been pretty much Soyuz only as lifeboat, but there was talk of 2 docked and a third visiting regularly enough, so nearly 7 average. But we don’t even have that with the Soyuz flight rate.
I think the crew is just squawking in anticipation of future budget battles to assure budget to do exactly what you are suggesting (except for going with lifeboats). After all, neither SLS nor Soyuz will get them a larger crew size in the next 5 to 10 years.
Well, my point is that all the talk is about Commercial Crew which (rationally or not) implies a launch abort system, and billions. But we can have a lifeboat much sooner for much less, and that’s what enables the larger crew size. I haven’t seen anyone discuss this issue.
The forty-hour work week was the requirement (the theory). How has it turned out in practice? And isn’t it a little ridiculous to think that someone whose time is so costly isn’t being asked to work longer hours? It’s as nutty as thinking that they shouldn’t risk their lives. They get to live in freaking space.
I’m not exactly sure how it turned out, as I moved to Shuttle when the Station became fully manned. However, the Station schedule was to be created daily by a massive database that tracked things to be done (science and maintenance) with various priorities and alotting for crew personal time and hygiene. I think the answer is most operations take less time than scheduled, and the crew doesn’t have problems turning knobs and checking payloads in their time off. Of course, the number one thing is earth watching.
What kills me is the notion behind the 40 hour work week. You’re right, we ask for more than 40 from our military personnel. But astronauts are civilian civil servants. So, they fall under civil labor laws, and that’s where the whole 40 hour week, plus weekends off and holidays comes from. This despite the fact they don’t go home for the weekend (or go shopping or visit a theater or leave to anywhere). I certainly see the point of downtime, but yeah, I would think (since I was asked to do so) they could put in 45 hours a week and lookie there, you now have 30 extra hours of science (nearly double). 9 hour work day, but hey, you have zero commute from your bed to your desk each day.
What kills me is the notion behind the 40 hour work week.
It seems to be ingrained in NASA. At their recent hacker challenge, they had a printed schedule with start at 9:00, finish at 5:00, an hour off for lunch, and scheduled breaks.
You need to appreciate NASA’s perspective. Could you just imagine the Congressional outrage if something did happen and an astronaut had to be left behind to die on the ISS because there was no room in the ‘lifeboats”? Would you want to be the bureaucrat explaining to Congress and the President Commission that you decided to take a calculated risk and now an astronaut is dead because of your decision?
Its not that NASA is risk adverse, its Congress. NASA is behaving in a rational matter having experienced multiple times the Congressional and Presidential Abuse that happens when they make a mistake. And like any abuse individual they go to great lengths to avoid being giving the abuser a chance to abuse them further…
Yes, the sooner NASA is out of space and is turned over to private industry the better, especially if the firms are incorporated outside the U.S., beyond the reach of Congressional Abuse when things go wrong.
I do appreciate NASA’s perspective (though no one is “risk adverse” — there is no such thing — the phrase is “risk averse.”). My goal is to change Congress’s perspective.
If I were NASA administrator, I’d be making speeches early and often on how ridiculous our attitudes are toward crew safety.
Even if they have to leave somebody behind to undock a Dragon, they would still have a Soyuz to take the remaining 3. If they had the life support that would allow ten. Add a BA330 and they have life support for 13. That’s two Soyuz and one Dragon. No ten year wait required.
Rand, I think there’s a problem with your idea. The mechanisms that unbolt the CBM are on the ISS side. In the event of an ISS power outage, you’re stuck.
That is a problem. I can think of at least one fix for it that would cost less than a million dollars and be implementable within a year.
I would be interested to learn your fix.
A few spare batteries and a connector aught to solve that. They can send me a big consultant fee check anytime.
Isn’t this just because the CBM is an active/passive system? If you could put an active module on a Dragon wouldn’t that solve the problem?
Given that there are no robotic arms on a Bigelow Habitat I suspect that is already in the plans.
Thomas Matula
July 2, 2012 at 10:31 am | # | Reply
You need to appreciate NASA’s perspective. Could you just imagine the Congressional outrage if something did happen and an astronaut had to be left behind to die on the ISS because there was no room in the ‘lifeboats”?
Thomas, it’s a fair point, as far as it goes. But unless I’m missing something here, that point doesn’t address what Rand is suggesting. There would be no astronauts left behind in this scenario. What am I missing?
Kayawanee,
You, and Rand, are assuming that the Dragon will be allowed to be used as a lifeboat before its accepted for “Commercial Crew”. Under COTS D that might have been allowed (COTS D1?) and a simple fix. But now that NASA sees “Commercial Crew” as a major program it will probably take longer for NASA to develop a RFP for the changes to allow an early development of a “lifeboat” then to just push forward with “Commercial Crew”.
I am not “assuming” anything. I’m simply pointing out that NASA could be sensible.
That seems like a different issue. I was asking why you thought the 7th astronaut would be left behind if the Dragon was used as a lifeboat. I still don’t follow your reasoning there. Please explain.
Dragon has more to do than just a life support system. As currently configured the solar arrays are only good for 3 or 4 weeks on orbit and there are probably several other things I/we don’t know about.
Dragon has more to do than life support and docking. As currently configured the solar arrays are only good for 3 or 4 weeks on orbit and there are probably several other things I/we don’t know about.
Even if that’s true, why would Dragon need solar panels to serve as a lifeboat?
It has on board batteries that would without load would probably take years to drain and could be recharged periodically.
Solar panels do degrade but why only a few weeks? If so, they are using the wrong kind.
As currently configured the solar arrays are only good for 3 or 4 weeks on orbit…
First I’ve heard of this. But regardless, this is a problem with an expiration date. SpaceX already has DragonLab in works with a two-year on-orbit lifetime, and the DragonRider variant is designed to survive on ISS keep-alive power for 200 days.
A primary difference between the APAS and NDS is the use of springs and dampers as opposed to the newer electromechanical sensors and actuators to dampen post-contact oscillations.
I vote a totally mechanical non electrical system. Doesn’t anybody else see the flaw of a system that doesn’t work if the power isn’t right?
Solar panels charge the batteries. Even if you charged batteries through station you’d still need very large batteries to run life support and everything else for the several hours needed for reentry. Depending on when the emergency happens, you might have to wait many hours to get into position to land somewhere desirable. I think I saw 24 hours as worst case but that’s only if you accept a single spot on the globe. You’d have more choices in an emergency but still you can’t have your crew bobbing around in an Arctic Ocean gale for 24 hours waiting to be picked up.
Wrong kind of solar panels? Depends on your definition of wrong kind. I think their solution was brilliant. They use commercial cells than degrade terribly in any sort of radiation environment. They only needed 2 weeks so they over sized the panels and accepted the degradation. Even cheap space cells cost well over $400/Watt plus the panel build you’re close to $1000/Watt. It only goes up from there. Panels are usually the single most expensive component on a spacecraft.
Charge from ISS, send up a lifeboat version with more battery. Or upgrade the solar panels. Either way, again, it’s something that shouldn’t take years and hundreds of millions.
IIRC, SpaceX are planning on having space-qualified solar arrays available by 2014 anyway for long-duration DragonLab flights…
No way could Elon Musk come up with a big, efficient battery. No way in… Oh, nevermind.
degrade terribly in any sort of radiation environment
Isn’t a radiation environment exactly what you need for power cells? I can’t believe that 50 years later we haven’t designed something exactly for this environment that doesn’t degrade even if it’s performance otherwise wasn’t everything you’d want. Something that lasts forever but only give a tenth of the power might be useful.
Right now, ISS gets an average of 35 hours per week for all science. A seventh crew member would push that up to around 75 because all of the maintenance needs are already covered with existing crewtime allocations.
So it would more than double. And the current cost per hour is even greater than I estimated (about a million bucks).
Justin,
Rather then going through the expense of adding a new lifeboat, what would be needed to reduce the hours it needs for the crew to run it? It was managed by a crew of 3 for years, why does it need 5 now? Has anyone done a serious recent study of the tasks required to see how many might be done from Earth by advanced telebotics? Or replaced by software?
I know in both the mining and offshore drilling industries similar studies are finding ways to greatly reduce the numbers of individuals needed on site.
NASA is working with telebotics.
Otherwise, its much cheaper to place heavy robotic equipment in a mine or offshore rig than launch into orbit. There are some advantages in reducing food and waste, but unless you completely eliminate humans, you still have many other weight concerns you can’t eliminate, so adding another human is marginal cost.
Then there is the whole desire to have human experience space. Otherwise, we can just launch LDEFs with re-entry capability (likely what X-37 is doing).
Leland,
Actually the petroleum engineers I talked to indicated a large portion of the crew on an offshore rig was there to monitor gauges and turn values. The rough necks on the rig were only a small portion of the crew. Needless to say the mass needed to do so telebotically was much less then the workers.
I suspect the same is true with the ISS. Most of the astronauts time is probably spent monitoring gauges and pushing buttons which could be done just as easy from Earth, except of course the astronauts won’t be in ‘control” of the ISS if such tasks are routinely done from Earth.
I think you misunderstood, and I see my mistake. As I stated, it is fairly cheap to put in telebotics in a mine or offshore. I didn’t state well, that it is not so cheap to to do this with ISS. At that point, I explained why.
However, there are, as in they are utilized on ISS, experiments that can be controlled via the ground. They don’t require telebotics, because monitoring gauges and pushing buttons can be performed with SCADA like systems (NASA doesn’t seem to like using the term SCADA, but if you deal with offshore, you should know it). One problem with this (and its one of the problems you may be missing), is that such systems require a great deal of bandwidth. Despite what many believe, there isn’t as much bandwidth capability with ISS as scientist would like. There’s plenty when you are over certain ground stations, but not during all orbits. You can get better coverage renting TDRSS, but there’s only so much there, and its in high demand controlling Obama’s drone army.
A better question is, what worthwhile science and experiments is ISS doing that would justify the cost of additional astronautpower?
David,
An even better question. Could those experiments be done cheaper and quicker on a private station like a Bigelow Habitat?
Time for somebody to dust off those bailout from orbit plans? I don’t imagine there would even be a shortage of volunteers for a live test after a couple of successful dummy runs.
MOOSE!!
There’s a guy who is getting ready to bail out of a balloon at 120,000 feet, perhaps this month. Should he survive, I’ll bet he’d love to give MOOSE a go.
An absolutely great idea. Not a chance in current mental environment.
Dragon could’ve worked as a lifeboat one the last mission, without any life support other than perhaps some CO2 adsorbent and a computer fan, depending on how ballsy they were.
Dragon has 353 cubic feet of internal pressurized volume, and at 21% oxygen the cabin holds 74.13 cubic feet of O2. Impairment kicks in around 14-16% O2, and taking 16% as the lower limit there would be 56.48 cubic feet of O2 remaining, so 17.65 cubic feet of O2 could be consumed. On average we consume 0.022 cubic feet per minute (0.011 cfm while sitting, but they’ll be pretty hyped up), so just an empty Dragon should provide 800 man-minutes of O2. That’s one man for 13 hours, 3 men for 4 hours, or 7 men for 2 hours. The last mission took 5.5 hours from seperation to splashdown, and they weren’t in a hurry.
So, a few people could’ve ridden it back like they were cargo, but seats would be nice.
That was SpaceX’s COTS-D1 plan. Fitted foam seats and oxygen candles. They stopped talking about it when it became obvious NASA was not going to allow them to capitalize on their time-to-market lead.
So Dragon would make a fine lifeboat right now. They already have the seats. O2 candles don’t sound like millions of dollars and years of time to add.
How many docking ports does the station have available?
Russia side its Posik, Rassvet, Piers (2 Soyuz + Progress) plus end of Zvezda (or is it Zarya) for ATV (or Soyuz or Progress).
US side there are two PMA’s one on the end of Node -2, one on the end of Tranquility (?).
Harmony ought to have two available ports, bottom side where Dragon/HTV docked and maybe topside?
Unity has the Z1 truss on top, Quest airlock on one side, Tranquility on the other and Leonardo on the bottom.
Transquility has PMA 3 (2? 1 is bebetween Zarya and Unity, 2 is on the end of Harmony) on its end, the cupola on one CBM port. Maybe three left?
So that leaves Harmony with two, Tranquility with maybe 3, 2 PMA’s. So maybe 7 ports? HTV, Dragon lifeboat, cargo Dragon visiting and maybe crew Dragon and suddenly getting tight on ports.
Is the NDS going on PMA’s or CBM’s? That has been unclear to me from reading,
The current plan (AIUI) is:
Node 1: Forward – Lab; Aft – PMA 1 (to Zarya); Right – Airlock; Left – Node 3; Up – Z1; Down – Cupola (currently PMM)
Node 2: Forward – PMA 2; Aft – Lab; Right – Columbus; Left – Kibo; Up – Open (for Dragon/Cygnus/HTV berthing); Down – Same as up
Node 3: Forward – Open (Kibo); Aft – PMM (currently open); Right – Node 1; Left – Open (solar array, currently PMA 3); Up – Open (truss); Down – PMA 3 (currently Cupola)
This will give 2 berthing spaces for cargo and 2 docking spaces for crew.
The calculation about the science value per hour is predicated on the value of all science being done on the ISS worth the cost of the program. And even if the rare experiment does generate tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour, are there enough of those to support a second researcher? I’d be surprised if they could support the first. Alternatively, is it possible science is just a clever rationalization of a pork project?
If the ISS can’t support even one researcher what is it for at all?
Ken,
Propaganda (kumbaya in orbit) and jobs (had to find something for the NASA Centers to do to justify their existence). Science is just the excuse so the rubes don’t get wise 🙂