Space Shuttle passenger module concepts

[FutureSpaceTourist]

The space shuttle project thread, http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1928.0, had a brief discussion of ideas to put passenger modules in the cargo bay. I thought it might be interesting to try and capture some more details in a separate thread.

I believe some concepts were originally created in the 1970s, eg I've seen the following reference cited: Steve Durst, 1979, "The Space Shuttle as a Passenger Vehicle", Preprint AAS 79-317. Others were from the early to mid 80s, eg the November 1985 Popular Mechanics article: 'Space Vacation 1995' (starts on p59) mentions proposals by Society Expeditions, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell and Lockheed. A couple of illustrations from the article are attached.

Does anyone have any more details / art work of any of these concepts?

P.S. I'm aware none of them would have made sense commercially etc!

 

[Orionblamblam]

Does anyone have any more details / art work of any of these concepts?

Rockwell did some design work on such things, but seemed to aim most of it at the obviouis forthcoming need to launcha whole lot of orbital construction workers to work on the solar power satellites and such. I've got some simple diagrams around here, but I bet someone else gets to 'em sooner.

P.S. I'm aware none of them would have made sense commercially etc!

The Shuttle was supposed to have a flight cost of $25 million. Carrying fifty passengers, that's half a million each. Compare to the quarter million people are willing to pay (hopefully!) to fly three minute sof zero-G on Virgin Galactic, or the $20 million to go to the ISS.

Of course, the shuttle was also supposed to have a turnaround time of two weeks. So, some things didn;t turn out quite as planned.

 

[Byeman]

http://www.spacehab.com/files/atec/history/spab_history_book.pdf

 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Just found the following paper, "The Space Tourist", AAS-85 771: http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_space_tourist.shtml

It includes the attached graphics and some information on several shuttle passenger concepts from the late 70s to early 80s:

• A 74 passenger module by Rockwell
• A couple of Space Habitation Associates concepts, including a modified Spacelab

 

[DaveJ576]

Can you imagine the difficulties involved in getting all the passengers onboard and in their seats while the shuttle sits vertically on the pad? Feeding 70+ people through the one access hatch, down to the middeck, through the access tunnel, into the module, and climbing down a vertical ladder to their seats? Wow, what a nightmare!

 

[blackstar]

Can you imagine the difficulties involved in getting all the passengers onboard and in their seats while the shuttle sits vertically on the pad? Feeding 70+ people through the one access hatch, down to the middeck, through the access tunnel, into the module, and climbing down a vertical ladder to their seats? Wow, what a nightmare!

Now imagine that as soon as you get to orbit, a bunch of those people will get spacesick. And also keep in mind that as soon as somebody is weightless, fluid flows to their head, tricking their brain into thinking that they have to urinate.

One of the things that I find so annoying about the space field is how many ideas get proposed that don't involve even a tiny bit of common sense.

 

[archipeppe]

Now imagine that as soon as you get to orbit, a bunch of those people will get spacesick. And also keep in mind that as soon as somebody is weightless, fluid flows to their head, tricking their brain into thinking that they have to urinate.

One of the things that I find so annoying about the space field is how many ideas get proposed that don't involve even a tiny bit of common sense.

Quote.

To get the difficulties to have 40+ people in microgravity take a parabolic flight and see what happens (who writes has participated to 6 mission onboard the ESA Airbus ZEROG aircraft......).

 

[Michel Van]

To get the difficulties to have 40+ people in microgravity take a parabolic flight and see what happens (who writes has participated to 6 mission onboard the ESA Airbus ZEROG aircraft......).

that reasion why at NASA, ZERO-G aircraft are nickname Vomit Comet :

 

[archipeppe]

that reasion why at NASA, ZERO-G aircraft are nickname Vomit Comet :

Affermative, the first day of flight we suffered, usually, the 30% of people with space-sickness effect (headache and vomit), with scopdex drug.
Even more without.

 

[blackstar]

I was just at JSC for work and was surprised to learn that NASA now contracts out all its parabolic work to ZeroG and their Vomit Comet is in flyable storage. They said that they only use their own aircraft a couple of times a year.

 

[OM]

that reasion why at NASA, ZERO-G aircraft are nickname Vomit Comet :

Affermative, the first day of flight we suffered, usually, the 30% of people with space-sickness effect (headache and vomit), with scopdex drug.
Even more without.

...There's apparently been some research into adding Reglan and/or Promethazine doses to the pre-launch regimen, both of which I take regularly to stem off stomach and vomiting issues associated with gastrophoresis. Not sure how far this has gone, considering the program is nearing its end.

 

[Graham1973]

The attached diagram is from one of NASAs late 1970s Solar Power Station studies.

Lunar Resources Utilizations for Space Construction. Vol. 1,2 & 3

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830077470_1983077470.pdf

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830077471_1983077471.pdf

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830077472_1983077472.pdf

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://www.spacehab.com/files/atec/history/spab_history_book.pdf

Link is dead, unfortunately.

 

[compton_effect]

Basically a Space Shuttle and External Tank, on top of a LOX/Propane first stage. The first stage would have splashed down in the ocean after slowing down using Dimethylhydrazine powered landing engines. There is a irritating error in the launch animation, showing the Shuttle staging without the External Tank. But other than that - its a great article.

EDIT - The comments are well worth the read. Dimethylhydrazine is so reactive, that when used in labs it is stored as a solution in hydrochloric acid.

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://www.spacehab.com/files/atec/history/spab_history_book.pdf

Link now dead unfortunately.

EDIT: Forgot I had already posted about this!

 

[flateric]

...

 

[Grey Havoc]

I had overlooked that I had previously posted on that link being dead. Woops!

 

[starviking]

I had overlooked that I had previously posted on that link being dead. Woops!

But it got Flateric in!

 

[Grey Havoc]

True!

 

[Byeman]

I had an intimate relation with Spacehab. I was in Air Force, my colonel and I were briefed on the concept in the early fall of 1985 by Bob Citron. The Air Force had no need for such a facility but would likely use some of its capabilities (which it eventually did). After I left the USAF in 1992, I was employed by McDonnell Douglas to work on the Spacehab program. I worked on all missions except the two post Columbia. I left the program in 2001 to join NASA to avoid working on shuttle missions (Spacehab was hopelessly tied to the shuttle). My fears were realized in February 2003 on a Saturday while I watch TV and relayed in the news to my friends/former coworkers, who were waiting on the runway for the return of Columbia. Even though I wasn't employed by MCD by the time of the accident, one of my last task before quitting was the initial training of the Columbia crew on Spacehab habitability features.

 

[Archibald]

Mission STS-107 was the 113th Space Shuttle launch. Planned to begin on January 11, 2001, the mission was delayed 18 times[6] and eventually launched on January 16, 2003, following STS-113.

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

STS-107 to ISS?

STS-107 to ISS?

forum.nasaspaceflight.com

STS-107 was initially proposed as a "research" mission to bridge the gap between a series of Spacelab missions in the 1990s and the operation of the ISS. The science community was concerned that NASA was essentially going to stop its research for something like 5+ years while it built ISS, then try and re-start the research after all the members of the community had quit and gone on to other things. So the NRC recommended that at least one, possibly two shuttle research missions be flown in the late 1990s. A congressional staffer then put this into (I think) a NASA authorization act. NASA then turned this into plans for two research missions that they then reduced to one mission, STS-107. STS-107 then got repeatedly delayed (in part because NASA officials never really wanted to do it in the first place).

 

[blackstar]

STS-107 was initially proposed as a "research" mission to bridge the gap between a series of Spacelab missions in the 1990s and the operation of the ISS. The science community was concerned that NASA was essentially going to stop its research for something like 5+ years while it built ISS, then try and re-start the research after all the members of the community had quit and gone on to other things. So the NRC recommended that at least one, possibly two shuttle research missions be flown in the late 1990s. A congressional staffer then put this into (I think) a NASA authorization act. NASA then turned this into plans for two research missions that they then reduced to one mission, STS-107. STS-107 then got repeatedly delayed (in part because NASA officials never really wanted to do it in the first place).

I wrote that post that you quote above. And as I wrote then (10 years ago), I was the person working for the CAIB who wrote the section of the CAIB report about how the STS-107 mission came to be. I was an investigator for the CAIB, and I was assigned to the policy and budget part of the investigation, and I was writing that section of the report with some other people. And then one of the Air Force officers who was working on the chapter of the report on crew training came to me and said that they needed a section--maybe only a page or two--about why NASA created the STS-107 mission. It was a unique mission, a research mission in the middle of a whole bunch of ISS construction missions. They knew I wrote history, so they thought I might be the person to write it. That turned out to be an understatement.

So the first thing I did was ask my boss/former professor if he knew where I should start, and he said that STS-107 came out of a report produced by the National Research Council's Space Studies Board (note that the NRC is now referred to as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine--it's also where I currently work). The report was public, but I wanted to get to the "why" behind what it said. So I called up the board director of the SSB. He told me that I needed to talk to the person who had run the study that produced the report. So I did. She told me the background: NASA had been doing a series of Spacehab missions every couple of years for a long period of time. This was a key part of the life and microgravity science research community. They depended upon those missions to fly experiments. So they were doing those regularly, then they stopped them expecting that ISS would start flying and the research community would start using ISS instead. Except that there was a pretty big gap between the last Spacehab mission and ISS availability. So the study recommended adding another Spacehab mission.

The really funny aspect of researching this was when she told me that I should talk to the congressional staffer who turned that recommendation into legal language. You see, my girlfriend used to work for this person at the NRC that I was talking to, and this person told me the name of the congressional staffer, who just happened to be the husband of the person who had introduced me to my girlfriend. Considering that I already knew most of the people involved in the early stages of creating what became the STS-107 mission, the subject that I was researching for the accident investigation, I realized that I was exactly the right person for that job.