cargo ships

[willpittenger]

You have to refuel your tug regularly. That adds to the mass of your launch vehicle. Also the tug needs complex rendezvous equipment. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[rocketman5000]

ATV already has complex rendezvous equipment to autonously dock.

 

[kane007]

Which has yet to be tested in the real world. Nor do I believe have ESA ever had 2 spacecraft perform a rendezvous nor a docking, Correct me if I'm wrong.<br /><br />Thus, fingers crossed that their simulations are near perfect.

 

[rocketman5000]

I'm far from an expert on the ESA, but with their close (closer than the us at least) I hope that they could pick up a pointer or two from The Ruskies

 

[holmec]

Thanks. Yes indeed that is a dream. I wonder if Russia will really bring it about. I hope so, and I hope it will be just the beginning. With tugs we can manage our orbital space and not just litter it. <br /><br />then orbital space becomes something more useful and reliable. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[holmec]

Automatic docking systems have been used by Progress. ESA has successfully tested their complex docking systems (in the lab mind you, yet fairly realistic). Plus note that ESA's ATV is a throw away system. Take a tug that is maintainable, and a reliable complex docking system (which will be attainable in the future) and you can see that you have a craft that can handle itself and cargo canisters.<br /><br />Fuel, yes indeed fuel is needed. Initially you could lauch fuel with the cargo container, but soon you would wand the tug to have a bigger fuels supply. So you lauch a fuel canister for the tug to use for a few missions. And then later, you start to see that a fuel satation might be economically feasable, so you build that. Next you may discover manufacturing techniques from near Earth object and the moon. So you develop an infrastructure that supports the tugs that maintains our orbital space that assists us with satellite maintenance/reclamation and space station support and orbital space ship support and maybe even assistance with sample recovery from outer space missions.<br /><br />You see it becomes a self feeding system. A system that wants to grow with the economical feasibility. <br /><br />So I thing the tug 'revolution' is starting and won't stop. We desperately need them. I just think its a current market that has not been exploited yet and has some good potential. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[PistolPete]

The upside to a tug is that you are not throwing away expensive items such as engines and avionics every time you need to send cargo into space. Most people when they calculate the cost of a launch only think about the cost of of the LV and not the cargo. For a new satellite this may be up to an order of magnitude of the cost of the LV. For something as "mass produced" as the Soyuz or Progress spacecraft it is probobly much lower.<br /><br />If it can be assumed that the price for a Progress and Soyuz are the same then to determine the price of such a vehicle let's look at what a space tourist pays to ride on a Soyuz: a cool $20 million. Let's say that said tourist is paying for his/her "share" of the flight, aka 1/3 of the total launch cost. Astronautix.com puts the launch of a Soyuz U launch vehicle (11A511U) at $40 million in 1999 dollars. If this is true then the cost of a Soyuz or Progress spacecraft is $20 million. $20 million is a chunk of change for just 1,200 kg of fuel cargo and 1,340 kg of dry cargo.<br /><br />I imagine that a cargo module as described in the afformentioned Russianspaceweb.com article weighing approximatly 7,000 kg with nothing but the most rudimentary of RCS and avionics systems would cost no more than $5 million ($10 million maximum) and would deliver up to 2.5 times the cargo. Even if most of the fuel cargo has to go to refueling the Parom, then it would still pay for itself within a few launches. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[PistolPete]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>You have to refuel your tug regularly. That adds to the mass of your launch vehicle. Also the tug needs complex rendezvous equipment. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />The Russians have been using autonomous docking systems on their Progress supply spacecraft for decades. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[halman]

rocketman5000,<br /><br />The European Space Agency is certainly likely to gain by working with the Russians, but can you imagine what would happen if China decided to spend some small fraction of its enormous dollar surplus buying and developing Russian hardware and launch capacity? The only thing holding Russia back from outpacing everyone else right now is lack of money. China can develop its own space technology, but I am hoping that they will decide to bypass that detour, and just purchase what they want. China could easily spend 100 billion a year on off planet exploration, and that kind of money in Russia right now would buy everything in sight.<br /><br />Oh, well, I do dream sometimes. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[erioladastra]

"I do wonder whether all documents get translated in French and Japanese as well?"<br /><br />If anything is translated to/from Japanese it is on Japan's dime. For ESA, English actually works best - their engineers and controllers are from France, Italy, Britain, Germany... so it works as the common langauge for them.

 

[rocketman5000]

Anyone pro space is a hopeless dreamer. Luckly we don't all have money to chase those dreams..

 

[holmec]

So that means that Rutan and Branson and Allen are hopeless dreamers about to make money hand over fist with suborbital space.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[rocketman5000]

No I was stating that we all wish the best for space. If all of us had money to persue our pipedreams there would be so many launch systems out there that the market would be over capacity and no one would make money. <br /><br />Look at commercial air transportation in the US as an example of too much competition. Margins have been slashed to the point of almost no profit so customers can be lured from the competition.

 

[nyarlathotep]

I remember in the 70's that there was a young man named Paul Allen that had hopeless dreams about personal computers. We need more hopeless dreamers.

 

[josh_simonson]

I think what he means is that folks should dream of things to do IN space, rather than dream of redundant means of getting there. <br /><br />Using supply (of LVs) to drive demand (for space launch) is called 'voodoo economics' for a reason. It just moves the equibrium point a little down the same demand curve. What Branson and Bezos are doing is fomenting and building to suit an unserved demand in a different market. SpaceX et al, believe there is sufficient waste in the existing LV oligopoly to undercut them at a profit, steal market share and increase the market marginally with a lower price point.<br /><br />An ISS space tug would be a completely new market, currently the only unmanned craft that can deliver goods to ISS is the progress. The existance of such a tug would reduce the requirements on disposable payloads to an MPLM with attitude control. Something like that will be needed with the retirement of the shuttle if we don't want all our space station modules to be independant spacecraft (like the russian ones). Certainly some sort of tug is a requirement for Bigelow to assemble his space stations. I doubt he wants to install an OMS and automated docking hardware in every module.

 

[steve82]

"Look at commercial air transportation in the US as an example of too much competition. Margins have been slashed to the point of almost no profit so customers can be lured from the competition. "<br /><br />There was a program about the Airline business on CNBC or something a while back that profiled American Airlines. One of the former CEO's (I can't remember which) said that he never looked at the airline as a profitable business and advised people not to try to invest in them that way. Instead, he felt they are more of a public utility. They exist to serve the public, not the shareholders necessarily or the employees. Perhaps we should look at Commercial Space in the same light. A "free market" that needs "airmail contracts" in addition to paying passengers and cargo to survive.<br />

 

[holmec]

Sure. But I think this dream is really going to happen. It just seems too utilitarian to not happen. And with the rising concern of space junk, and the concern about profitability in space. I am just waiting for an international effort to curb the space junk and maybe even get rid of it via managing it. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[rocketman5000]

I saw part of that program, and heard the comments of the CEO. That comment really stuck in my mind.

 

[willpittenger]

Does that mean we'll have a "Amtrack of the air"? We could call it "Amair". <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>