It is shown that a medium sized European space station (ESS) is achievable before 2010. This ESS should allow a permanent occupation by 2 to 4-men crews with a 3 months crew exchange cycle. Manned missions should focus on life sciences, materials, and bioprocessing. A coorbiting platform is required for processing in high quality microgravity environment. It will be a Columbus Man Tended Free Flyer or EURECA derivative. The polar infrastructure is independent of LEO manned one (only hardware commonality). Crew safety is a prime driver for the manned ESS and an escape means permanently docked at the station is required: a dedicated Escape Vehicle or Hermes if it can stay docked for a long time. The logistics support of ESS requires a combined use of Hermes and Ariane 5 flights. This implies high costs for the operations due to launch costs (2 to 4 Hermes flights per year and 1 Ariane 5 flight every 9 to 12 months). This first generation ESS does not allow efficient and intensive commercial activities because of the high operational costs. The reduction of these requires the introduction of new launching systems and the implementation in parallel of a 2nd generation manned infrastructure which might be foreseen in the post-2010 years.


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    Title :

    Study on Long Term Evolution Towards European Autonomous Manned Spaceflight (STEAMS)


    Contributors:
    M. Grimard (author)

    Publication date :

    1987


    Size :

    169 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English





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