Does everyone know what an ATV is? Heres a short description:

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) ferries propellants, food, water and equipment to the ISS. Once docked, it uses its own engines to correct the stations orbit, compensating for a regular loss of altitude due to drag and contributes to
collision and debris avoidance. At the end of its mission it is filled with waste, de-docked and burns up as it heads back into the Earths atmosphere.

That gives the ATV an inside surface area of approx. 1823, and a volume of approx. 5452 according to my, admittedly, bad math. Does anyone else see a GREAT WASTE in filling these vehicles with trash and setting them to burn up on reentry? If you want to burn up the trash, you dont need to put it in a vehicle, just put it in a trash compactor and then eject the cubes to burn up on reentry. Whats wrong with our space program that, with such budgetary concerns each year, they can afford to just throw away such assets when they could be much better utilized in space?

Dimensions

Length: 9,794 mm (probe retracted)
Largest diameter: 4,480 mm
Solar arrays span: 22,281 mm
Mass Budget

Vehicle dry mass:
10,470 kg
Vehicle consumables: 2,613 kg
Total vehicle mass: 13,083 kg
Total cargo upload capacity: 7,500 kg
Mass at launch (max): 20,750 kg
Waste download capacity: 6,300 kg (420 km altitude,
51.6 inclination)
Propulsion

Main propulsion system: 4 x 490 N thrusters
(Pressurized liquid bi-propellant
system)
Attitude control system: 28 x 220 N thrusters
(Pressurized liquid bi-propellant
system)
Propellant: Monomethyl hydrazine fuel and
Nitrogen
tetroxide oxidizer
Pressurization: Helium pressurant at 31 MPa
Communications Infrastructure

To ground: S-band via TDRS satellite
ATV to ISS: S-band antenna via Proximity link
Navigation: GPS
Thermal/Environmental Control

Thermal Control: Multi Layer Insulation material, active thermal control using Variable & Constant Conductive Heat Pipes and paints
ECLSS: Fire detection, air circulation,
air temperature monitoring
Electrical Power

Ascent to ISS and de-orbit: 4 Solar panel wings of 4 panels each and 40 Ah rechargeable batteries
Number of arrays: 4
Number of panels/array: 4
Generated power: 3,800 W after 6 months in orbit
Required power: < 400 W Dormant mode
supplied by ISS: < 900 W Active mode
Main Construction Material

Pressure shell: Al - 2219
Micrometeoroid and
Debris Protection System:

Primary bumper: Al-6061-T6
Secondary bumper: Nextel/Kevlar blankets
Internal structure (racks): Al-6061-T6
Thermal insulation: Goldised Kapton Multi-layer
Insulation blanket & aluminised beta cloth
Solar arrays: Silicium Solar Cells on 4 Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic Sandwich panels
Launcher Configuration

Payload: 8 racks with 2 x 0.314 m3
and 2 x 0.414 m3
envelope: each 1.146 m3 in front of 4 of these
8 racks
Cargo mass: Dry cargo: 1,500 - 5,500 kg
Water: 0 - 840 kg
Gas (Nitrogen, Oxygen, air,
2 gases/flight): 0 - 100 kg
ISS Refueling propellant: 0 - 860 kg (306
kg of fuel, 554 kg of oxidizer)
ISS re-boost and attitude control
propellant: 0 - 4,700kg
Total cargo upload capacity: 7,667 kg
Launch vehicle: Ariane 5 (300 x 300 km, 51.6 transfer
orbit) ATV-2 will be launched with its
solar panels folded to the body of the
spacecraft. Electrical power will be
supplied by non rechargeable batteries.
Launch site: Kourou, French Guiana
Launch date: 15 February 2011

On Feb 16 the European Space Agency's second Automated Transfer Vehicle,
ATV 2 "Johannes Kepler" was launched by Ariane 5ES vehicle 544 from
Kourou. The core stage flew to a -1274 x 139 km x 51 deg orbit; first
EPS burn reached a 142 x 256 km orbit at 2208 UTC, followed by
circulazation at 268 x 271 km at 2250 UTC and ATV separation at 2254
UTC. The EPS third burn at 0015 UTC on Feb 17 was used to deorbit the
stage. The separated ATV has a mass of 19712 kg. ATV 2 docked with the
Station's Zvezda module on Feb 25. The Progress M-07M cargo ship had
undocked from Zvezda on Feb 20 at 1312 UTC and was deorbited over the
Pacific at 1612 UTC.

The High Frontier

These lyrics are by John Stewart and T. A. Heppenheimer to replace the original words of the song "The New Frontier," written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio in 1962 to honor President John F. Kennedy.

Some to the rivers and some to the sea,
Some to the soil that our fathers made free,
Then on to the stars in the heavens for to see,
This is the High Frontier, this is the High Frontier.

Let the word go forth, from this day on
A new age of mankind has begun.
Hope will grow for the human race!
We're building a colony deep in space!
This is the High Frontier, this is the High Frontier.

Let us begin, for it shall take long,
Let everyone sing a freedom song.
Not for ourselves that we take this stand,
Now it's the world and the future of Man.
This is the High Frontier, this is the High Frontier.

The day will come, it's going to be,
A day that we will someday see
When all mankind is reaching out
Without a limit, without a doubt!
This is the High Frontier!

On 3/1/11 10:30 AM, Victor Smith wrote:

> That gives the ATV an inside surface area of approx. 1823, and a volume
> of approx. 5452 according to my, admittedly, bad math. Does anyone else
> see a GREAT WASTE in filling these vehicles with trash and setting them
> to burn up on reentry? If you want to burn up the trash, you dont need
> to put it in a vehicle, just put it in a trash compactor and then eject
> the cubes to burn up on reentry.

You'd need to eject them awfully fast to be sure they deorbit. Though
this wouldn't be as hard in LEO as it would be in a higher orbit; you
pretty much just need to make sure they reach enough atmosphere to drag
them down before they smack into your station on the next orbit.

I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I
also agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once you
have some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't throw
it away. That's valuable real estate.

That is not how government programs roll, but I'm hopeful that once
commercial industry gets involved, they'll take a more sensible
approach. I'd love to see a rocket designed from the beginning to leave
as much habitable volume in orbit as possible on every launch -- maybe
the second-stage tank section, for example, which (unlike the STS
external tank) would be designed with airlocks, etc. Yes, this reduces
your payload a bit, but in exchange your orbital outpost gets a little
bigger with every visit.

Best,
- Joe

On Mar 1, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Victor Smith wrote:

> That gives the ATV an inside surface area of approx. 1823, and a
> volume of approx. 5452 according to my, admittedly, bad math. Does
> anyone else see a GREAT WASTE in filling these vehicles with trash
> and setting them to burn up on reentry?

The ATV has no heat shield, no parachutes, nor can it maneuver for a
landing. Adding these would add cost and complexity. It's a system
trade. Whether they made good choices, hard to say.

> If you want to burn up the trash, you dont need to put it in a
> vehicle,

The primary mission is to bring stuff up. Getting rid of the trash is
just taking advantage of the fact that the ATV was coming anyway.

> just put it in a trash compactor and then eject the cubes to burn up
> on reentry. Whats wrong with our space program that, with such
> budgetary concerns each year, they can afford to just throw away
> such assets when they could be much better utilized in space?

If you don't get rid of the trash, the ISS will, fairly quickly,
become completely filled with the stuff. It's not valuable, so they
get rid of it.

To simulate the situation, keep all the trash you generate inside your
house for a couple of years. It'll become clear why they throw it away.

Space Solar Power (SSP) can supply massive amounts of electrical power
to Earth with no greenhouse gas emissions and no dependence on the
Persian Gulf. The basic idea: gather solar energy in space and
transmit it to Earth. Today's satellites already use solar energy
and transmission has been demonstrated with 90%+ efficiency. If the
space segment is built from lunar materials, SSP may be the cleanest
possible energy option since most of the work is done in space. The
energy available is far, far more than used today, more than enough
for everyone.

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On Mar 1, 2011, at 9:50 AM, Joe Strout wrote:

> I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I
> also agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once
> you
> have some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't
> throw
> it away. That's valuable real estate.

The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of
ports and cannot bring anything up ever again.

The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing
accounts of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good
on Mir?

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

Al, I think this is one of those rare occasions where the point has
slipped right past you.

Victor wrote:

>> That gives the ATV an inside surface area of approx. 1823, and a
>> volume of approx. 5452 according to my, admittedly, bad math. Does
>> anyone else see a GREAT WASTE in filling these vehicles with trash
>> and setting them to burn up on reentry?

...to which you replied:

> The ATV has no heat shield, no parachutes, nor can it maneuver for a
> landing. Adding these would add cost and complexity. It's a system
> trade. Whether they made good choices, hard to say.

But nobody was suggesting the ATV should be landed. Victor was
suggesting (and I was tentatively agreeing that) instead the ATV should
be left on station, to increase the habitable volume.

Then Victor continued:

>> Whats wrong with our space program that, with such
>> budgetary concerns each year, they can afford to just throw away
>> such assets when they could be much better utilized in space?

...and you replied:

> If you don't get rid of the trash, the ISS will, fairly quickly,
> become completely filled with the stuff. It's not valuable, so they
> get rid of it.

Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
cubes and ejected into the atmosphere.

To my tentative agreement, you wrote:

> The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
> keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of
> ports and cannot bring anything up ever again.

Now THIS is a valid point. To implement Victor's idea, they would need
to solve this problem. I would probably suggest something like a "port
bus" -- a long tube with docking ports all along it. Newly arriving
vehicles either dock here, or get moved here after completing their
duties at some other docking port. Each one then becomes an additional
room for use or storage, as well as an additional source of solar power,
increased air volume to reduce the urgency of leaks, etc.

Perhaps the port bus is daisy-chainable, so when it gets full (which at
our current launch rate might be only once every year or two!), you
dedicate an extra launch to bringing up another one and bolting it on.

I realize I'm glossing over all sorts of probably-important technical
details, including how all this changes the center of mass of the
station, etc. But I also suspect that clever engineers could work those
out if they tried hard enough.

Best,
- Joe

From: Joe Strout
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

"Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
cubes and ejected into the atmosphere."

Could that compacted trashby used with a plasma generator to create thrust?
Just wondering if the compacted solids be used for something rather than just
betossed out.

On Mar 2, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Matt Gallimore wrote:

> Could that compacted trash by used with a plasma generator to create
> thrust?
> Just wondering if the compacted solids be used for something rather
> than just
> be tossed out.

It's mass so if you eject it, by whatever means, in the right
direction you can reboost a bit. Might be an interesting design study
to think through all the issues.

"Earth is the cradle of Mankind, but one cannot stay in the cradle
forever," Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

This ought to be the immediate thrust for the design of space propulsion
systems; convert any mass into fuel, to be used in a suitable propulsion
system. Ideally this idea should have occurred to the designers of the space
station in the design stage itself.

Regards,
Selvaraj

On 3 March 2011 07:54, Al Globus wrote:

I think the only kind of thruster which could effectively use trash as reaction mass would be a mass-driver. Which on reflection would be an excellent ISS experiment to verify in-space mass-driver function. It wouldn't have to be terribly long for this application (a few tens of feet, I would think). The mass-driver could assure that the ejected trash promptly entered the atmosphere 45 minutes later.

Ah, but I see a complication. Even to verify the bore-size needed for a lunar mass-driver ala High Frontier, the diameter would still be much smaller than many of the pieces of trash ISS produces. So one would additionally need a pelletizer capable of grinding up large pieces of trash. I remember in the original HF studies it was proposed that at an early point of operations, mass-driver tugs would be shuttling back and forth from LEO to LLO on pelletize chunks of Space Shuttle External Tank.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt Gallimore
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 12:11 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

From: Joe Strout >
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

"Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
cubes and ejected into the atmosphere."

Could that compacted trash by used with a plasma generator to create thrust?
Just wondering if the compacted solids be used for something rather than just
be tossed out.

On 3/3/11 7:48 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> I think the only kind of thruster which could effectively use trash as
> reaction mass would be a mass-driver. Which on reflection would be an
> excellent ISS experiment to verify in-space mass-driver function. It
> wouldn't have to be terribly long for this application (a few tens of
> feet, I would think). The mass-driver could assure that the ejected
> trash promptly entered the atmosphere 45 minutes later.

I agree with the general principle here, but we don't necessarily need
to be talking about a magnetic mass driver of the sort you'd use on the
Moon. There was another design I vaguely recall seeing (in the Stanford
study?), which was basically a rapidly rotating tube. Mass pellets are
fed into the center, at the hub, and they get accelerated by the
rotation and shoot out the end. Timing is carefully managed so that
they shoot out in the direction you want them to go.

This doesn't require any buckets, and doesn't require too much of the
ejected mass; it just needs to be the right size, shape, and material
properties to not get stuck in the tube.

> ... the diameter would still be much
> smaller than many of the pieces of trash ISS produces. So one would
> additionally need a pelletizer capable of grinding up large pieces of
> trash.

Right.

> I remember in the original HF studies it was proposed that at an
> early point of operations, mass-driver tugs would be shuttling back and
> forth from LEO to LLO on pelletize chunks of Space Shuttle External Tank.

Sounds cool!

Best,
- Joe

Yes, they called it the rotary launcher. At first I worried about imparting angular momentums to ISS, but I supposed you could have two, counter-rotating launchers.

I've also wondered about using tethers to de-orbit trash from ISS. That also would give a slight orbital boost.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Joe Strout
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:32 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

I agree with the general principle here, but we don't necessarily need
to be talking about a magnetic mass driver of the sort you'd use on the
Moon. There was another design I vaguely recall seeing (in the Stanford
study?), which was basically a rapidly rotating tube. Mass pellets are
fed into the center, at the hub, and they get accelerated by the
rotation and shoot out the end. Timing is carefully managed so that
they shoot out in the direction you want them to go.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Al Globus wrote:
>
> On Mar 1, 2011, at 9:50 AM, Joe Strout wrote:
>
> > I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I
> > also agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once
> > you
> > have some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't
> > throw
> > it away. That's valuable real estate.
>
> The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
> keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of
> ports and cannot bring anything up ever again.

But if the ATV was designed Mir, or is it Soyuz style then every ATV would be built with two ports. Then every arrival 'grows' the station a little at a time.
Brooks

Mike, this is just a thought, and I may be way out of line with reality, but what if we used a big mirror and focused it as a solar cooker onto the trash, turning it molten, and then use it for propulsion, either using little molten pieces or actual plasma if it got hot enough? Wed probably need to construct some kind of container that wouldnt melt, but it seems doable. I;m not a scientist, though, so I could easily be mistaken...
From: Combs, Mike
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 8:48 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

I think the only kind of thruster which could effectively use trash as reaction mass would be a mass-driver. Which on reflection would be an excellent ISS experiment to verify in-space mass-driver function. It wouldn't have to be terribly long for this application (a few tens of feet, I would think). The mass-driver could assure that the ejected trash promptly entered the atmosphere 45 minutes later.

Ah, but I see a complication. Even to verify the bore-size needed for a lunar mass-driver ala High Frontier, the diameter would still be much smaller than many of the pieces of trash ISS produces. So one would additionally need a pelletizer capable of grinding up large pieces of trash. I remember in the original HF studies it was proposed that at an early point of operations, mass-driver tugs would be shuttling back and forth from LEO to LLO on pelletize chunks of Space Shuttle External Tank.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com [mailto:mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt Gallimore
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 12:11 PM
To: mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

From: Joe Strout >
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

"Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
cubes and ejected into the atmosphere."

Could that compacted trash by used with a plasma generator to create thrust?
Just wondering if the compacted solids be used for something rather than just
be tossed out.

I like the tether idea, its an elegant solution that does away with the waste of the ATV. Using pellet accelerators for multiple applications throughout the Earth-Moon system, though, always makes me think that Id hate like hell to be following a craft so powered...might be a rocky road.

From: Combs, Mike
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:45 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

Yes, they called it the rotary launcher. At first I worried about imparting angular momentums to ISS, but I supposed you could have two, counter-rotating launchers.

I've also wondered about using tethers to de-orbit trash from ISS. That also would give a slight orbital boost.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com [mailto:mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Joe Strout
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 10:32 AM
To: mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

I agree with the general principle here, but we don't necessarily need
to be talking about a magnetic mass driver of the sort you'd use on the
Moon. There was another design I vaguely recall seeing (in the Stanford
study?), which was basically a rapidly rotating tube. Mass pellets are
fed into the center, at the hub, and they get accelerated by the
rotation and shoot out the end. Timing is carefully managed so that
they shoot out in the direction you want them to go.

On 3/5/11 3:31 PM, Victor Smith wrote:

> I like the tether idea, its an elegant solution that does away with the
> waste of the ATV. Using pellet accelerators for multiple applications
> throughout the Earth-Moon system, though, always makes me think that Id
> hate like hell to be following a craft so powered...might be a rocky road.

Well, yeah. And there oughta be a law that any such system must expel
its reaction mass at at least solar escape velocity, so that it doesn't
become a long-term problem.

Best,
- Joe

One criticism I've heard of using mirrors for vaporization propulsion (I think this was in regard to moving asteroids) is that it's hard to keep the vaporizing material from coating the mirror, steadily reducing its effectiveness.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Victor Smith
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 4:25 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

Mike, this is just a thought, and I may be way out of line with reality, but what if we used a big mirror and focused it as a solar cooker onto the trash, turning it molten, and then use it for propulsion, either using little molten pieces or actual plasma if it got hot enough? We'd probably need to construct some kind of container that wouldn't melt, but it seems doable. I;'m not a scientist, though, so I could easily be mistaken...

Why not seperate the mirror from the vessel holding the material? Say using a transparent sphere with an open nozzle on end, then the mirrors are outside the sphere reflecting light on the sphere heating up the material inside. Even if the sphere itself becomes fouled over time, you could either clean it, replace it, or just heat up the now increasingly opaque sphere itelf which in turn heats up the material inside.
Brooks

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike" wrote:

Brooks,
Yeah, that was more or less the idea: heat a chamber with the mirror and vaporize the contents, which then escape from your nozzle creating thrust, which should result in any vaporized metals moving directly away from the mirror and the vessel.

From: brooksn
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 10:58 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Automated Transfer Vehicles

Why not seperate the mirror from the vessel holding the material? Say using a transparent sphere with an open nozzle on end, then the mirrors are outside the sphere reflecting light on the sphere heating up the material inside. Even if the sphere itself becomes fouled over time, you could either clean it, replace it, or just heat up the now increasingly opaque sphere itelf which in turn heats up the material inside.
Brooks

--- In mailto:spacesettlers%40yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike" wrote:

From: alglobus@...
Subj: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

On Mar 1, 2011, at 9:50 AM, Joe Strout wrote:

> I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I also
agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once you have
some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't throw it away.
That's valuable real estate.

The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of ports and
cannot bring anything up ever again.

So, why haven't someone built a 8 to 20 port module where the things can
be stored.
I would like to go up there and farm and I can do it. I could also recycle
everything in orbit and keep it in a close orbit to the ISS and could sell
them the things they have to have instead of sending up more every so often.

John Wayne Smith

The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing
accounts of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good
on Mir?

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On 3/8/11 9:00 AM, jwsmith42000@... wrote:

> > I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I also
> > agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once you have
> > some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't throw it away.
> > That's valuable real estate.
>
> The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
> keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of ports and
> cannot bring anything up ever again.

Right, that's why I suggested a (daisy-chainable) docking module.

> So, why haven't someone built a 8 to 20 port module where the things can
> be stored.

What a good idea. :)

> I would like to go up there and farm and I can do it. I could also recycle
> everything in orbit and keep it in a close orbit to the ISS and could sell
> them the things they have to have instead of sending up more every so often.

What do you mean by "I can do it"? If you'd like to, and you can, then
why haven't you?

Best,
- Joe

> > I think it's a good idea (worth considering further, anyway). And I
also agree with your general principle, which I'd put this way: once you have
some habitable volume in orbit, you KEEP it there; you don't throw it away
That's valuable real estate. <<

> The ISS has a limited number of ports where vehicles can dock. If you
keep everything that comes up docked, you very quickly run out of ports and
cannot bring anything up ever again. >

Right, that's why I suggested a (daisy-chainable) docking module.

_jwsmith42000@..._ (mailto:jwsmith42000@...) wrote On 3/8/11
9:00 AM --

_joe@..._ (mailto:joe@...) replied at 3/8/2011 11:25:34 A.M.
Eastern Standard Time:

> So, why haven't someone built a 8 to 20 port module where the things can
be stored. >

What a good idea. :)

> I would like to go up there and farm and I can do it. I could also
recycle
> everything in orbit and keep it in a close orbit to the ISS and could
sell
> them the things they have to have instead of sending up more every so
often.

What do you mean by "I can do it"? If you'd like to, and you can, then
why haven't you?

Best, - Joe

Joe, good questions always. I will answer the second before I get to the
first.

When I was discharged from the US Army in 1967, the first thing I did was
to get married to my childhood sweetheart. Both of us being lower middle
class economically we decided we wanted to chase money. The first year we
made a million dollars, the second we did better but by the time we got to the
tenth year chasing money had ruined our lives and marriage. I gave her
everything and walked out the door, never to look back.
A couple years later I remarried to a woman who wanted to concentrate on
raising children and we did.
4 of our own plus almost a hundred others from several weeks to 10 years
or more. Paid for it all out of our pocket. Never took a dime from the
Government. Then she wanted to go to law school to better be able to defend the
children. She became a socialist and joined them and that was when it was
time for me to leave again. Gave her everything, except the farm and my
children. It took until the year 2000 to finish raising my children by myself.

Now for your first question. - I stopped appreciating NASA in 1972. Never
did really trust or like the government and eventually felt the same about
NASA.
I never understood why they wanted to build a breakable machine to try to
do everything that had to be done. There will not be a Wal-Mart or Home
Depot just around the corner.
I wondered why they wanted to build machines to do jobs that could better
be done by nature. I decided back in 1973 that cleaning the air and water
could better be done by nature and knew that I or another private individual
would have to be the one that did it. So, I set to studying the situation,
reading almost every thing I could about living off earth. I have even
read most of what Mike and you have written looking for tidbits of
information.

For the most part it was always, lets build a machine to get things done.
I studied agriculture as far back as 3000 years to find information and am
satisfied that I can do it.
Now I am just waiting for a ride and the money to pay the fare.
I spent most of last week in Kansas talking to people about that.

John Wayne Smith, CEO
1000 Planets, Inc.
203 W. Magnolia Street
Leesburg, Florida 34748

On 02/03/2011, Joe Strout wrote:
> Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
> ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
> cubes and ejected into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work.

The problem is that the trash isn't guaranteed to burn up!

The American military found this out the hard way. They reentered
spysats several times, until a farmer in the UK found some glass in
his field. Turned out that that was the main mirror that had survived
reentry. Embarrassing!

Further, there's a higher than a 1 in a million chance of it killing
somebody per reentry, which is the threshold where you start to care,
and if you keep chucking stuff out, sooner or later that *will*
happen... and it's traceable back to the ISS.

Not only that, not only can it kill people, but it can cause property
damage as well, and that will happen much more often, people are a
smaller target, but property is bigger.

The purpose of using the ATV as a trash truck is to dump it
specifically into an ocean, typically Pacific, Atlantic or Indian
ocean.

> Best,
> - Joe

--
-Ian Woollard

On 3/8/11 4:48 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:

> On 02/03/2011, Joe Strout > wrote:
> > Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
> > ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
> > cubes and ejected into the atmosphere.
>
> Unfortunately, that doesn't work.
>
> The problem is that the trash isn't guaranteed to burn up!
>
> The American military found this out the hard way. They reentered
> spysats several times, until a farmer in the UK found some glass in
> his field. Turned out that that was the main mirror that had survived
> reentry. Embarrassing!
>
> Further, there's a higher than a 1 in a million chance of it killing
> somebody per reentry, which is the threshold where you start to care,
> and if you keep chucking stuff out, sooner or later that *will*
> happen... and it's traceable back to the ISS.

I agree that's unacceptable... but I also think it's avoidable. Spysats
can be pretty huge. We're talking about cubes of trash the size of...
well, the interior of a trash compactor. Call it 40 cm on a side at
most. I don't think that could survive the reentry, or if any part of
it did, that would be because it was so fluffy it just floated to
ground, in which case it's not going to hurt anyone either.

I realize I'm hand-waving, and real aerospace engineers would need to
work the numbers in detail... but my intuition is, it wouldn't be a
problem. (Or at the very least, could be *designed* to not be a problem.)

> The purpose of using the ATV as a trash truck is to dump it
> specifically into an ocean, typically Pacific, Atlantic or Indian
> ocean.

Well, that, and it takes substantial delta-V to get out of orbit. I
don't know how exactly you would deorbit trash by itself. I imagine
some sort of linear or rotary accelerator, but that's where I insert
additional hand-waving and trust the engineers to figure it out.

Best,
- Joe

On Mar 8, 2011, at 8:29 PM, Joe Strout wrote:

> We're talking about cubes of trash the size of...
> well, the interior of a trash compactor. Call it 40 cm on a side at
> most. I don't think that could survive the reentry, or if any part of
> it did, that would be because it was so fluffy it just floated to
> ground, in which case it's not going to hurt anyone either.

Rather than guessing on everything, I suggest doing a little analysis
and research so there is something behind it other than a hunch.

If the dinosaurs had a space program, they'd still be here.

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On Mar 7, 2011, at 5:47 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> One criticism I've heard of using mirrors for vaporization
> propulsion (I think this was in regard to moving asteroids) is that
> it's hard to keep the vaporizing material from coating the mirror,
> steadily reducing its effectiveness.
>
You have to have some way to clean the mirror. I once did some
analysis of this for asteroid return. Unfortunately, I don't seem to
have saved it. If memory serves, you have to clean the closest-to-the-
asteroid optical element on a time scale of hours. The calculation
involves the velocity and mass of the material you must eject, the
potion of the 3D angle the optical element occupies, and the depth of
material deposited before the mirror degrades substantially.

However, given the state of my memory I wouldn't put too much stock in
the number.

>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
> From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> ] On Behalf Of Victor Smith
> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 4:25 PM
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles
>
> Mike, this is just a thought, and I may be way out of line with
> reality, but what if we used a big mirror and focused it as a solar
> cooker onto the trash, turning it molten, and then use it for
> propulsion, either using little molten pieces or actual plasma if it
> got hot enough? We'd probably need to construct some kind of
> container that wouldn't melt, but it seems doable. I;'m not a
> scientist, though, so I could easily be mistaken...
>

NASA's first theme for lunar exploration is: "Human Civilization --
Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement."

Al Globus
alglobus.net

The views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On Mar 7, 2011, at 5:47 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> One criticism I've heard of using mirrors for vaporizationpropulsion (I think
>this was in regard to moving asteroids) is that
>
> it's hard to keep the vaporizing material from coating the mirror, steadily
>reducing its effectiveness.

"You have to have some way to clean the mirror. I once did some analysis of
this for asteroid return. Unfortunately, I don't seem to

have saved it. If memory serves, you have to clean the closest-to-the-asteroid
optical element on a time scale of hours. The calculation

involves the velocity and mass of the material you must eject, the potion of
the 3D angle the optical element occupies, and the depth of

material deposited before the mirror degrades substantially.

There was also some discussion of using lasers to cut away pieces of an
asteroid. Wouldn't such a mining devicehave a similar problem of ejecta
bombardment? Or would the laser tend to clear particles out of a direct line of
return?

Its still a phenomenal waste of resources. Once you have that much real estate on station, you keep it there and integrate it with the rest of the station. If dropping the trash into a lower orbit until it encounters atmosphere and burns up doesnt work, and cant be MADE to work (which it undoubtedly can), then do the opposite: Send it to the sun. Heard today about how they either currently are or soon will be utilizing solid and liquid wastes as radiation shielding. Any solids could be sacked up and tethered in space to add to the effectiveness of the station radiation shield. See, multiple uses for a variety of waste products and trash that converts them from a drain on resources into a resource in its own right. The main point is that you DONT THROW OUT THE BABY (SPACECRAFT ATV) WITH THE BATHWATER!!!

From: Ian Woollard
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 5:48 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

On 02/03/2011, Joe Strout wrote:
> Nobody was suggesting keeping the trash. Victor was talking about the
> ATV, not the trash. The trash, he suggested, should be compacted into
> cubes and ejected into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work.

The problem is that the trash isn't guaranteed to burn up!

The American military found this out the hard way. They reentered
spysats several times, until a farmer in the UK found some glass in
his field. Turned out that that was the main mirror that had survived
reentry. Embarrassing!

Further, there's a higher than a 1 in a million chance of it killing
somebody per reentry, which is the threshold where you start to care,
and if you keep chucking stuff out, sooner or later that *will*
happen... and it's traceable back to the ISS.

Not only that, not only can it kill people, but it can cause property
damage as well, and that will happen much more often, people are a
smaller target, but property is bigger.

The purpose of using the ATV as a trash truck is to dump it
specifically into an ocean, typically Pacific, Atlantic or Indian
ocean.

> Best,
> - Joe

--
-Ian Woollard

I'm really not getting' it. If you heat your crucible with a mirror located
to the North of the crucible, and your venturi/nozzle opening from the
crucible is aimed to the South, your result is thrust to the north, AND it
seems to me that any obscuring deposits would be leaving the neighborhood of
the crucible AND mirror very quickly and in the opposite direction from the
mirror. How then does it impair the mirror?

From: Al Globus
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 12:31 AM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles

On Mar 7, 2011, at 5:47 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:

> One criticism I've heard of using mirrors for vaporization
> propulsion (I think this was in regard to moving asteroids) is that
> it's hard to keep the vaporizing material from coating the mirror,
> steadily reducing its effectiveness.
>
You have to have some way to clean the mirror. I once did some
analysis of this for asteroid return. Unfortunately, I don't seem to
have saved it. If memory serves, you have to clean the closest-to-the-
asteroid optical element on a time scale of hours. The calculation
involves the velocity and mass of the material you must eject, the
potion of the 3D angle the optical element occupies, and the depth of
material deposited before the mirror degrades substantially.

However, given the state of my memory I wouldn't put too much stock in
the number.

>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
> From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> ] On Behalf Of Victor Smith
> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 4:25 PM
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles
>
> Mike, this is just a thought, and I may be way out of line with
> reality, but what if we used a big mirror and focused it as a solar
> cooker onto the trash, turning it molten, and then use it for
> propulsion, either using little molten pieces or actual plasma if it
> got hot enough? We'd probably need to construct some kind of
> container that wouldn't melt, but it seems doable. I;'m not a
> scientist, though, so I could easily be mistaken...
>

NASA's first theme for lunar exploration is: "Human Civilization --
Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement."

Al Globus
alglobus.net

The views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

On Mar 10, 2011, at 3:41 AM, Victor Smith wrote:

> I'm really not getting' it. If you heat your crucible with a mirror
> located
> to the North of the crucible, and your venturi/nozzle opening from the
> crucible is aimed to the South, your result is thrust to the north,
> AND it
> seems to me that any obscuring deposits would be leaving the
> neighborhood of
> the crucible AND mirror very quickly and in the opposite direction
> from the
> mirror. How then does it impair the mirror?
>
The mirror (or other optical element) must have a direct line of sight
to the point of vaporization. Some of the material will take that
path in the opposite direction.

> From: Al Globus
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 12:31 AM
> To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles
>
> On Mar 7, 2011, at 5:47 AM, Combs, Mike wrote:
>
> > One criticism I've heard of using mirrors for vaporization
> > propulsion (I think this was in regard to moving asteroids) is that
> > it's hard to keep the vaporizing material from coating the mirror,
> > steadily reducing its effectiveness.
> >
> You have to have some way to clean the mirror. I once did some
> analysis of this for asteroid return. Unfortunately, I don't seem to
> have saved it. If memory serves, you have to clean the closest-to-the-
> asteroid optical element on a time scale of hours. The calculation
> involves the velocity and mass of the material you must eject, the
> potion of the 3D angle the optical element occupies, and the depth of
> material deposited before the mirror degrades substantially.
>
> However, given the state of my memory I wouldn't put too much stock in
> the number.
>
> > Regards,
> >
> > Mike Combs
> >
> > From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> > ] On Behalf Of Victor Smith
> > Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 4:25 PM
> > To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Automated Transfer Vehicles
> >
> > Mike, this is just a thought, and I may be way out of line with
> > reality, but what if we used a big mirror and focused it as a solar
> > cooker onto the trash, turning it molten, and then use it for
> > propulsion, either using little molten pieces or actual plasma if it
> > got hot enough? We'd probably need to construct some kind of
> > container that wouldn't melt, but it seems doable. I;'m not a
> > scientist, though, so I could easily be mistaken...
> >
> NASA's first theme for lunar exploration is: "Human Civilization --
> Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement."
>
> Al Globus
> alglobus.net
>
> The views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
> position of any organization I'm familiar with.
>
> -----
> 03/08/11
>

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~150 times the surface area of the Earth
in usable real estate. See http://space.alglobus.net for details.

Al Globus
http://alglobus.net

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.

How about avoid this and just use an electric arc to plasmify the trash
and then propel it outward using something similar to a vasimir rocket.
This would have the advantage of expertise in doing this already
around, because this is being seriously investigated as a possible way
of getting rid of trash here on Earth.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Victor Smith" wrote: