Re: Vision of the three Rs: Regular, Reliable and Reusable

In article <1173234383.109833.39680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Hyper" <hyperboreea@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Both launches and EVAs are expensive and dangerous in large part because
we do them so rarely. Anything that would get us doing them on a weekly
(or better still, daily) basis would almost certainly be a good thing,
as far as I can tell.

EVA are both exhausting and dangerous. Simply doing more, with current
equipment, invites accidents.

Right, but the point is if we were doing them on a weekly or daily
basis, we wouldn't be using the current equipment for long; we'd be
improving it. If I had to speculate, I'd guess that we would both
increase suit pressure to match ship pressure, to avoid the long
pre-breathing period; and put active actuators in the joints, like the
exoskeleton already commercially available in Japan, to avoid strain and
fatigue. Those two developments alone would make EVAs a lot less
exhausting and dangerous.

Plus, you can't fly large diameter components on existing launchers.

True, if you define "large" as "bigger than can fly on existing
launchers." But then, that will always be true.

I'm talking Skylab large.

That's large -- but with inflatables, I'd guess we could get even
larger, even with existing launchers.

Best,
- Joe
.

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