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#acc #nasa #orbiter #rocket #shuttle #spacecraft #spaceflight #station #sts #tank #wet #workshop #et
Published: 2020-12-05 23:53:31 +0000 UTC; Views: 15586; Favourites: 152; Downloads: 48
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Description
A Shuttle orbiter docked at a wet-workshop station built around two spent External Tanks (along with a few prefab modules). The configuration shown would have nearly 5x the habitable volume of ISS. The large modules at the base of each tank are integrated before launch as Aft Cargo Carrier payloads, and serve both as staging areas for tank conversion and provide services not easily accommodated in a tank (like radial docking ports)
There were a lot of proposals like this over the years, I didn't aim to replicate a particular one but this is most similar to the dual-tank design shown in ssi.org/wp-content/uploads/201…
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Repurposing the tanks would be good if we managed it.
Of course, I can imagine difficulties with that. The tanks already up there weren't originally designed for such use. So you would need to first transport tools to open up the tanks and modify them to accept new internal and external fittings, and some sort of rig from which those tools could be effectively used.
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Okay, so I somewhat misunderstood the situation and there are no tanks currently up there. And I can't retract the comment because the app sucks.
But there are still practical issues.
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Part of it is that by the time a lot of those proposals were made NASA was focused on trying to develop a craft that wouldn't need them in the first place.
There was doubtless also concern about messing with a proven design.
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For one thing, they were prioritizing development of a reusable spacecraft that didn't need them.
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I don't know about the latter. I mean, volume is only any good if you have the equipment in it and I don't they would have been able to launch the tanks with all the gear pre-installed.
The other countries would have still been able to meaningfully contribute by providing the guts that would actually make the volume useful, as well as external modules.
But to make that workable we would have had to commit a lot to developing and testing a reliable conversion-ready tank that could accept internal and external equipment (such as maneuvering) in the first place.
And then to implement it we would have to first get the tank up there and then undergo however many subsequent trips it would take to install the equipment so that it could actually be used.
The ISS meanwhile is comprised of modules that were ready to use as soon as they were in orbit.
On top of that, what I've read seems to indicate that NASA's priorities for shuttle development at the time were on a craft that wouldn't need an external tank and boosters to reach orbit in the first place.
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