Albert Einstein brings cheese and clean pyjamas to space station The European Space Agency has launched another heavy-hauling ATV robot cargo podule on a mission to bring supplies of cheese and fresh pyjamas to the International Space Station. A mighty Ariane-5 rocket stack blasted the 20,190 kg Automated Transfer Vehicle on a trajectory toward the ISS just before 11 pm BST last night, …
Yes, but what is scrubbing? the ISS scrubbers are CDRA units. which is a 'Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly'
Converting Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen does not really do much to complex aromatic hydrocarbons (or non-complex ones either!).
20 tonnes of basic supplies, to an established space station only in Earth's orbit, and it'll last a year for a skeleton crew and be more useful as a bin for getting rid of the stuff they've already churned through.
Kinda puts a Mars mission in perspective, unless we want to just start making dumping grounds throughout the route to Mars and the planet itself. That's a heck of a lot of weight and thrust and it doesn't even need to do much to "fall" back to Earth. And that's not even TRYING to be self-sustaining and putting longer-term equipment up there. God knows how many tonnes of soil and equipment you need to start a decent farm that probably won't produce enough food to be self-sustaining.
20 tonnes. 1 year. That's over a tonne a month, on average. Any sort of long-term mission, including heavy equipment and the initial carvings of a base, and getting rid of junk en-route, etc. is going to need a heck of a lot of fuel back here to support it.
"The ATV is the space station's largest resupply vehicle after the retirement of the space shuttle, hauling three times more cargo as Russia's Progress spacecraft and twice as much as SpaceX's commercial Dragon spaceship" - "Each ATV mission costs 450 million euros, or about $600 million, according to ESA"
http://spaceflightnow.com/ariane/va213/130604preview/
The Ariane 5 rocket payload is 24,000 Kg. The ATV payload is 6590 Kg. 2500Kg is ATV propellant for boosting ISS. 860 is to refuel ISS propellant tanks. 2500 Kg is 'Dry Cargo'. 570 Kg is water (for the Russians?).
Falcon 9 lifts 60% of this payload. Falcon Heavy lifts 205% of this payload.
Dragon payload is 3300 Kg, but can return 2500 Kg to the ground.
Cygnus payload is 2700 Kg with no return (launch vehicle, Antares, was just tested)
MPCV loaded is a 21,000 Kg payload, that can be lifted on F9 or Atlas or Delta.
Just some numbers for comparison...
After a little bit of Google I found that the following was apparently true :
Because the word "craft" is both singular and plural then spacecraft should follow suit.
Craft in this context refers to the floating, flying kind and not the hobby variety.
Airplanes and boats are collectively known as kinds of craft.
Knitting and woodwork are collectively known as crafts.
In other news, NASA announced overnight it is sending a rescue mission to the International Space Station for a crew member who mistook a tube of epoxy patching material for peanut butter. The unnamed crew member is temporarily being fed through a drinking straw, but will require surgery to remove internal adhesions.
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