[FPSPACE] The Saga of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and the ISS

[palladium at aol.com]

Jim et al:

One other possibility:

Elon Musk's Dragon cargo / crew transport capsule is supposed to be 
flight-ready by 2010. This can hold 6 crew members:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon

Perhaps NASA could contract to have a Falcon 9 / Dragon standing by 
with a one or two-person crew and five empty seats?

I also wonder if the Dragon might answer the need for a large-capacity 
crew rescue vehicle for the station and enable it to start hosting 
larger long-duration crews?

Dave Michaels



-----Original Message-----
From: James Oberg <jeoberg at comcast.net>
To: LARRY KLAES <ljk4 at msn.com>; fpspace at friends-partners.org
Sent: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 10:07 am
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] The Saga of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and 
the ISS


The last scheduled shuttle mission in 2010 will have a 'rescue shuttle'
ready to pick up the crew if needed, with a four person crew
(clearly a very veteran set of astronauts) fully trained and ready
to make the 'LAST PLUS ONE' shuttle mission.

NASA is considering using that flight as the bonus transport
mission, perhaps for AMS and other spares.

But it needs a crew rescue option in the event the mission
suffers lethal heat shield damage and is stranded on the
space station.

There is one tantalizing option: fly the mission with a
three-person crew and have a Soyuz vehicle on
standby for pickup. Or instead of all three landing
in a Soyuz that came up empty, split them up in a
normal crew down-rotation AND a later rescue-devoted
additional Soyuz.

Because of the larger station crew, and the much smaller
shuttle crew in need of rescue, the supplies needed for
the previous shuttle crew's 90-day stayover could last
six months or more, significantly relaxing the time-criticality
of retrieval of the stranded shuttle crew.

It -- might -- work.


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