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orbital maintence tools? a threat?
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tszaboo:

--- Quote from: Kim Christensen on December 21, 2023, 09:13:41 pm ---The problem with launching a repair mission from Earth's surface is that it takes a lot of deltaV (Fuel) to reach orbit and rendezvous with the target satellite to be repaired. So much so, that for small satellites, it's just as efficient to send a new one because the robot + parts payload mass would be comparable. It can work for fixing large expensive/massive sats, like the Hubble repair missions.

It could possibly work if you had a large number of expensive satellites that all used the same universal parts. Then you could park a "parts depot" and repair robot in a similar orbit with a bunch of spares. But that would have problems of it's own due to the difficulty in keeping propellant from slowly leaking away and the limited number of orbital changes. (Costing DeltaV/Fuel every time you rendezvous with a different sat) Plus, space is a harsh environment and the spares would slowly degrade from radiation, etc.

--- End quote ---
I tried doing this in KSP, and it wasn't feasible there. And it was with theoretical nuclear engines. Inclination change is too expensive, it was just more economical to launch a maintenance mission. Or to scrap the craft and launch a new one.

coppercone2:
I assume it would be a scheudled rocket with lots of maintenance bots (low cost) that go to different sats and work on them

like the bus, drops people off at different locations.
Kim Christensen:

--- Quote from: tszaboo on December 21, 2023, 10:56:51 pm ---I tried doing this in KSP, and it wasn't feasible there. And it was with theoretical nuclear engines. Inclination change is too expensive, it was just more economical to launch a maintenance mission. Or to scrap the craft and launch a new one.
--- End quote ---

Hello fellow kerbonaut!  :D
Yes, inclination changes are expensive fuel wise. It could work if the repair craft was servicing multiple sats in geostationary orbit all at around the same time. Then there'd be no inclination changes required, the repair craft's orbit wouldn't need to change much to move from one sat to another, and it wouldn't spend years waiting in space for the next repair mission. The sats would still have to be designed to have modules easily swapped and things could still go irreparably wrong (pun intended).
coppercone2:
hmm thats when you send the panel beaters into space on a special mission, when the chassis is dented
Dan123456:
I personally like the idea of space maintenance robots  :)

The longer we can keep things up there alive, the less rockets we need to launch, meaning less space junk  :)

Sure some satellites will need to be replaced with new, better systems, but I would imagine a lot of others work perfectly fine with their current hardware  :)


--- Quote from: wraper on December 21, 2023, 09:13:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: u666sa on December 21, 2023, 08:56:33 pm ---I will go further. Elon Musk right now doing reusable self landing boosters. Well, Soviet Union did those in 70s and deemed them too expensive and not useful. It is old tech. What Elon Musk doing now in consumer segment is 20 + 30 = 50 years old. Soviet Union pioneered this tech and scrapped it. Just think about the technology in terms of time. You have to feel it and breath it in. What we have there up there now is 40+ years ahead of what we will have in consumer segment down here. It makes absolutely no sense to keep old crap in orbit.

--- End quote ---
LOL, first of all Soviet Union never tried landing a rocket booster, let alone reusing. Secondly SpaceX launching reused F9/FH for almost 100 times this year alone paints a different picture.

--- End quote ---

You might be correct about the USSR. I dunno. But the US was looking at / using reusable stuff decades ago. One similar to what u666sa is talking about was called the DC-X and it got abandoned only for Musk to take his inspiration from it years later. There was also the space shuttle which has put the most people into orbit to date.

Also, have they really reused boosters 10+ times? Or is are they just the space age version of the ship of Theseus?

I do not know the answer to that (and doubt anyone outside of the company does) but am just weary to take SpaceX’s word due to the copious amounts of bullshit Musk spews constantly. I.e. weren’t we meant to be living on Mars last year?

Again, I have nothing against SpaceX, just Musk.
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