Part 3: The Solar System Internet Communication System

Crew of Space Shuttle Mission STS-122

Space Shuttle Endeavour lifts off on Mission STS-100, from Cape Canaveral, Fl.,  carrying a next-generation Canadian robotic arm to the International Space Station.



Most people know this part of NASA, a rocket lifting off at Cape Kennedy with a crew of Astronauts aboard. But they have thousands of people behind them, getting the space craft off the launch pad and into space. We no longer fly the space shuttle. To tell you the truth I don't think we should have flown this piece of junk anyway.


Soon US Astronauts will be flying something else. 


 

• Lockheed-Martin’s  Orion spacecraft. This vehicle is not a part of NASA’s new commercial efforts per-se; however it is commonly referred to as the orbiter’s successor. There are virtually no similarities between NASA’s fleet of decommissioned orbiters and this new spacecraft. Orion is capable of being re-used six times at most. Orion has no payload bay, no robot arm and if crews wish to conduct EVAs – the capsule will have to be depressurized, requiring the entire crew (Orion has the capacity of carrying up to six astronauts) to don their space suits. In fact, if the service module section of the spacecraft was two feet less in diameter – it could fit      inside of the shuttle’s payload bay. When Constellation was NASA’s program-of-record, there was an effort by Canada (the developers of many of the robotic arms NASA uses) to build a robot arm to be used on Orion.

Length – 26 Feet

Diameter – 16.5 Feet

Payload Bay – NA

Remote Manipulator System – None

Partially Reusable

Boeing's CST-100 has been called a "space-taxi" and can either ferry astronauts or cargo (or some combination of the two). Image Credit: The Boeing Company

• The Boeing  Company’s CST-100 Space Taxi. This spacecraft is in some ways a simpler  version of the Orion spacecraft. It can carry a crew of six, cargo (the  amount of cargo would vary depending on the number of astronauts on board. That is about all this vehicle is capable of. It is designed to ferry humans and materials to orbit – and back, it is not reusable and has no EVA capabilities. Although the exact size of the spacecraft is unavailable it is estimated to be larger than the Apollo spacecraft but smaller than Orion.

Length – Unknown

Width – Unknown

Remote Manipulator System – None

Partially Reusable

Of all the capsule-based systems that are under development, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is the most-similar to the space shuttle. However, the differences in scale, are dramatic. Image Credit: SpaceX / NASA

• SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. In terms of basic abilities by the capsule-based systems – Dragon actually comes the closest to the shuttle in terms of capabilities. It is in terms of scale that the chasm of differences – appear. The dimensions of the payload segments work out to provide approximately 350 cubic feet of pressurized payload capacity. In terms of the spacecraft’s unpressurized elements, Dragon has about 4 cubic feet of recoverable and 490 cubic feet of non- recoverable payload capabilities. The Dragon is designed to carry up to seven astronauts.

Height – 9.5 Feet

Diameter – 11.5 Feet

Payload Capacity – Pressurized – 350 cubic feet – Unpressurized – 490 cubic feet

Remote Manipulator System – None

Reusable

In a break from what many commercial companies are producing (capsule-based spacecraft) - Sierra Nevada Corporation has opted for a space plane design. Like NASA's decommissioned orbiters, this space plane is reusable. Unlike NASA's retired fleet of shuttles however, the thermal protection system is ablative and will need to be replaced after ten flights. Image Credit: SNC

• Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft. Physically the most similar of the space taxis to NASA’s space shuttle, the Dream Chaser space plane is reusable and is based off of one of test articles that was used to design the space capacity is. Unlike the shuttle, Dream Chaser will utilize an ablative thermal protection system that would require replacement after several flights. The Dream Chaser is not quite 30 feet in length compared the space shuttle’s 122 feet.

Length – 29.5 Feet

Width – 22.90 Feet

Remote Manipulator System – NA

Reusable

The one spacecraft that comes closest to emulating the space shuttle, Dream Chaser, is not even a quarter the length of NASA’s retired fleet of orbiters. It has no robotic arm and lacks the EVA capabilities present on the space shuttle. Given that most of these vehicles could actually fit into the orbiter’s payload bays – the capacity to launch huge payloads such as the Hubble Space Telescope and whole segments of the International Space Station – has been lost. It is unknown how long these multiple capabilities the U.S. will have to do without.

Space shuttle Discovery will be retired to the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Washington. Atlantis will take a short road trip to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida and Endeavour will be sent to the California Science Center located in Los Angeles, California. The shuttle test article, Enterprise, will be moved to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum located in New York (Discovery will take Enterprise’s place in the Smithsonian).

http://io9.com/how-will-space-colonists-access-the-internet-on-mars-511693210

Internet on Mars

This is not all that NASA is about. We will start with what NASA told me that they are working on; the Solar Internet, in Part 4!