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Posted on 09/05/2009 4:03:14 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Japan's first unmanned spacecraft to haul cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) is nearly ready for its maiden launch next week.
The new cargo ship is poised to launch toward the station on Sept. 10 at 1:01 p.m. EDT (1701 GMT) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on a shakedown cruise. If all goes well, the inaugural spacecraft, called the H-2 Transfer Vehicle 1 (HTV-1), should arrive at the station on Sept. 17.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
cool. Any pics. Did we ping those in Japan?
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It launches next week but only if Godzilla doesn't get it first. |
Tanegashima is not too far away from where I live , actually . 80 miles ?
The US is planning to build some very heavy launch unmanned rockets, but I think is missing a bet. With a series of launches, a very large, modular engine could be assembled and fueled in space, whose purpose would be to shuttle other spaceships to and from Lunar, and eventually Martian orbit.
The idea is to save fuel for the other ships, so they just need to have the fuel to get to orbit and land, so they can have much more space for equipment and supplies, and they can stay at their destination longer.
Right now, NASA is contemplating a similar idea, of putting “refueling stations” in orbit, and while this is good, it just gets the spaceships to their destination easier, it does nothing to get them back to Earth.
And this is the other value of a space engine, that it carries the fuel to get there and back, so even if the engine fails at the destination orbit, the spaceship can still refuel with the space engines return fuel, and make it back to Earth.
Cool. Maybe in the future it will be one of the major spaceports of the world.
That sounds like a good idea. I think having a fuel dump already at Mars makes sense but a third backup could also be used. Orbital refueling stations is something I used to have when I dreamed of space travel, makes sense to get to the moon and back.
I thought they were going to have him toss it into orbit. More than one way to ‘go green.’
Awesome!
Thanks, Japan!!
There’s plenty of food aboard her, bound for the ISS.
Unfortunately, the ISS crew will be hungry again a half hour later.
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