[FPSPACE] Orbiting robots could repair satellites on the fly

[gorski]

The problem of course is that there's a somewhat limited ability of a
satellite to adapt to the repair job--and astronauts have been getting
good at this job for a while.  Not just Hubble either--what was the first
one, Solar Max I think?  (anybody else remember the "Ace Satellite Repair
Co."?)

Somewhere lurking in a drawer I have a short pamphlet on the Ronald Reagan
Plan for Space Utilization (title was something like that).  Whatever
happened to orbital transfer vehicles?  Maybe the 1984 idea of a manned
vehicle with an aerobrake was impractical to build, but a robotic space
tug to move things from a useful orbit to a lower/more easily accessible
orbit and back seems like it has some practicality to it.

Did that idea go the way of the dodo around when Freedom and Mir-2 merged
to become ISS?  Was it just budget cuts that ate into it, or did the fact
that ISS has such an incredibly steep orbital inclination compared to all
the rest of the American hardware in space, that we threw away the space
tug idea because we had nowhere to tow broken satellites to?

Anybody have any idea?

--Chris.


On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, LARRY KLAES wrote:

}Orbiting robots could repair satellites on the fly
}
}NewScientist news service June 28, 2008
}
}Space agencies and satellite
}operators should accelerate their
}efforts to develop robotic mechanics
}that can more economically fix
}errant satellites on demand, three
}researchers argue....
}
}http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=8956&m=25748
}
}
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