Japan to Develop Gateway Habitat, Resupply Vehicles
The Ashahi Shimbun reports that Japan has formally signed on to NASA’s lunar Gateway project with specific elements to develop.
Japan’s space agency plans to take charge of development of a habitation module and an unmanned logistics vehicle for the Gateway cislunar space station as part of an international project….
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) hopes to showcase the country’s excellence in technologies with an eye toward having a Japanese astronaut included in the lunar mission.
JAXA plans to work with its European counterpart to develop the habitation module by drawing on technologies it cultivated during the development and operation of the International Space Station’s Kibo experiment module, including one for recycling air and water aboard a spacecraft.
It also plans to take charge of resupplying goods using the HTV-X, a spacecraft under development as a successor to the Kounotori (HTV) unmanned transfer vehicle, seven units of which have been launched successfully.…
47 responses to “Japan to Develop Gateway Habitat, Resupply Vehicles”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Do it!
Looks like it is just a version of the ISS in lunar orbit with other nations adding modules to it. What a waste.
exactly
ISS is an amazing achievement, and has been incredibly resilient to political dumbfuckery for decades.
I’ll rather have bird in the hand than two in the bush
I grew up during the Shuttle era. I remember a long list of programs that promised to be “the next big thing” – all canceled.
I like programs that are so well designed they actually get built. I’m done looking for silver bullets. I’m willing to incorporate any breakthroughs we find, but if we really want to develop space we need to stop waiting for fantasy solutions to come along: just get to work, take the time, and spend the money.
We’ve taken over 40 years and spent tens of billions. But we’re still in no particular danger of getting any real solutions. You need to re-examine your premises.
I do not believe that .. not by a long shot … we have a ton of basic understandings about living and working in space acquired over the last two decades… look at just how many experiments have been conducted on the ISS that china .. starting from scratch on their station will have to perform to catch up .. if they have not already stole all the data
It’s certainly true we have learned things on ISS. We learned fairly early on what the Russians had figured out long since on the Salyuts and Mir – extended stays in zero-G are bad for the human mechanism. Since then, NASA has assiduously avoided every opportunity to learn more by building some sort of rotating fractional-G hab in space. Here’s hoping the Gateway Foundation succeeds in building some version of its Von Braun Space Station. NASA is certainly never going to. On a dollars-spent-per-item-of-useful-data-acquired basis, ISS has been no great shakes.
NASA is not the one that has stopped centrifuge type operations.
GOP killed the life centrifuge.
Likewise, they have fought against space stations that spin.
So, this is a CONgress/Clinton/W killing of items.
And actually, ISS has been a great win, for all of our partners. America has paid something like 3/4 of the ISS, so that is why it does not appear to be great. However, with a bit more spending, we could lower all of our costs to LEO as well as to the moon.
I await with bated breath your shocking revelation that Republicans are also responsible for male pattern baldness.
I notice a third two-term president who served more recently than the two you named who also did nothing toward making ISS more useful.
Of course ISS has been a great win for all our partners, especially the Russians. We pay most of the bills, they do most of the flying on the thing.
There is a difference between increasing usefulness, vs doing nothing. Iss utility really did not change under Obama. Nor did it decrease.
Iss was supposed to have centrifuge unit for putting rats/mice in under various Gs. That was probably the single most important use of iss after the engineering testing. W killed CAM.
HOWEVER, under Obama, because of Lori garver, commercial space continued and is thriving, somewhat. Had The GOP not cut funding nearly every year while increasing the massive amount to SLS/Orion, then we would already be sending ppl to ISS.
oh, he is another flat earther, anti-vax, anti-nuke, anti-AGW, Trump is not a russian asset, no such thing as evolution, type of guy.
Facts be damned.
Not sure who the “he” is that you are referring to here.
interesting thoughts…we may be in one of two canyons…the first is that we simply need better technology. Aviation pre WW2 is not a very broad effort, it gets better after WW2 but struggles until the jet comes along…and this is all in a venue where nothing had to be done to the destination once you got there…IE aviation did not have to make Honororo or the UK habitable.
another possibility is that we are right now…as good as it gets for sometime.
the game changer in space…is that everything has to go there to make it liveable and thats heavy lift and I dont see that changing anytime soon…so that requirement and the execution of energy to leave the planet seem to be where we are stuck because it has contributed to well nothing that justifies human spaceflight economically
MUSK of course is the great white hope…he is going to revolutionize everything…I will be curious to see if he does that. so far..nothing he has done as been an economic or programatical game changer
If past history is any guide, you will continue to find everything SpaceX does in the next 10 years as wanting as you – pretty much alone – imagine its doings of the past decade to be. You will also hail as revolutionary minor advances made by aerospace ancien regime stalwarts such as Boeing and laud obvious dead-ends like SpaceShipTwo.
when they open the launch cabinet and actually lower the launch cost then we can all pop the champagne (Or jack Daniels) I have seen this act to many times in my life now….ie lots of promises and little changes
Lets see.
Average Launch costs by Airbus used to be something like 120M for less than 20 tonnes to LEO, while Atlas was ~200M, and Delta was over 300M (and that was not even DIVH).
SX has it down to 40-60M on less than 20 tonnes and < 150M for more than 25-50+ tonnes.
But hey, no gamechanger.
As previously noted a truly tedious number of times, your definition of “little” seems purely personal and completely baseless. Ask ILS and ArianeSpace how “little” the changes wrought by SpaceX have been. To avoid personal damage, I’d recommend doing so via social media and not in person.
LOL.
Yeah, that Falcon 9 has done NOTHING to bring down the costs of launch,
nor has it taken a large amount of commercial launch from Europe, Russia, China, etc.
Nor has he brought Commercial, NASA, or even DOD launch prices down and none of the other launch companies are the least bit worried about what SX is doing to them.
Next you will tell us that MAX was a great flying aircraft and that Boeing did NOTHING WRONG.
Seriously, thank you for the good laugh today.
ISS did not stick around because it was well designed.
It stuck around because Clinton had put in a number of international treaties with it so as to PREVENT CONgress/next WH from axing it.
Yeah… well designed.
Design is not just an engineering issue. Program design, funding source, keeping the customers (Congress and foreign partners) satisfied with the product – it’s all part of a well designed product. Does Apple just design a phone? No, they design the packaging, the ad campaign, the logo placement (first with upside down logos on laptops), even the stories the products are sold in.
A successful space program does so much more than just withstand launch load or meet performance requirements.
Looks more like we’re getting two hands in the bush. In short, we’re being diddled.
Wonder how the Japanese are going to get the hab module and the HTV-X to NRHO. Recall that the H2B or the H3 have about a GTO capability of about 8 tonnes..
Either distributed launch or hitch a ride on an SLS/Orion flight.
My biggest issue with Japan doing the HAB module is that they’ll likely (IMHO) go with an aluminum shell rather than an expandable module. I’d really like to see an expandable module for the HAB as we’re most likely going to need such a HAB module on the surface of the moon (and Mars).
Distributed launch isn’t an option for the Japanese. Both the Hab module and the HTV-X are unitary payloads.
Plus the HTV-X as currently spec’d have only station keeping and very low onboard Delta-V capabilities. It appears to be optimized for ISS logistics. You need to added additional propulsion capability for the HTV-X to go beyond LEO.
Hypothetical: The upper stage to send the Japanese module to the moon could be launched on a separate launch vehicle. The HTV-X would then dock with the upper stage to do the TLI burn.
Then JAXA will have to be able to do orbital docking. The HTV-X is still going for berthing at the ISS due to presence of the CBM hatch. The HTV-X Lunar logistic transport will need an upgrade to NDS docking port to docked with the NRHO Gateway or a departure stage. Basically a new pressurized cargo module for the HTV-X.
If, for some reason, JAXA couldn’t develop (or buy) docking technology, they could stick a smallish robotic arm, with an SSRMS compatible end, on the HTV-X to “self berth” itself to an SSRMS grapple fixture affixed to the upper stage.
Easily within Japanese capabilities. The main thing missing is auto-dock capability by HTV. As SpaceX has demonstrated, this can be developed by a competent aerospace company. And, just as SpaceX intends to use this tech to dock Starships tail-to-tail for refueling, Japan can use it to dock an HTV to a Moon-bound transfer stage as well as to optionally dock with ISS.
I think you’ll see everyone is going to make sure they can get their cargo vehicles to NRHO with the rockets they make (modules are a different boat and can be one-offs). A6, H3, FH, Vulcan, OmegA, whatever, I think you’ll see everyone play whatever games necessary (EP, larger upper stages, lighter payload structure, whatever) to reach the Moon. Stuff like launching your own cargo vehicle (HTV, ATV, Dragon, Cygnus, Progress) is both a business decision and a national pride issue – people want to launch their own stuff. The era of routine heavy/super heavy lift is coming and it’ll be necessary to expand to the Moon and beyond.
yes/no/maybe…national pride…
the ISS formula was a success at building ISS because it managed to “fund” the space station 1)mostly through the US taxpayer but 2) through equipment that other taxpayers paid for that was eventually parlyaed into the US “Paying back” through “use”
the lunar effort has apparantly bogged down to merely trying to repeat that formula on a smaller scale…but the essence of the station is there…the US is pushing most of the dollars to develop the primarly chunks of the hardware but because the chunks of the hardware it is developing are taking so much money to support “our” industrial space complex” we need the other complexes to “chip in” some side things…and for that we will satisfy their national pride by having their people on the lunar landings.
its a relatively cheap way for them to get lunar landings and it is the only way that a vastly inefficient US space program can continue on the limited dollars available…but which keeps the essence of the program intact.
in other words for national pride and local political means the US gets a program where it pays the bulk of the cost and gets the least crew time, but it convinces secondary programs which in themselves have no other reason for existing to come along and continue the program
there are two side issues…the first is that the effort at least in ISS terms is slow in actually accomplishing the things of value that pay for either the initial investment or the continuing one…the second is that private industry at least in the US has struggled to find a toehold in the entire operation.
as to the latter sadly, at least for me who has advocated private industry in human spaceflight as a means of lowering cost and increasing effort…none of those things have happened. at least we have commercial cargo but really the savings seems underwhelming…and as for commercial crew…well maybe in 2020…of coruse we have heard this song before
curious to see what affect Musk’s latest efforts have on this. how many FAlcon’s is he launching this year…? he wont make 20.
Every SpaceX CRS mission saves the U.S. at least $200 million over what a sole-source solution from, say, ULA would have looked like. Even the Orbital – now NGIS – CRS missions save $100 million each. That’s between $4 and $5 billion and counting. Seems fairly impressive to me. And the figure would be way higher if compared to what continued Shuttle missions would have cost.
Your claimed “advocacy” of “private industry” seems to consist entirely of heaping scorn and abuse on any private business that is actually making a go of space business while praising those which are not – e.g., Virgin Galactic, ULA and Boeing.
Actual competition is a good thing.
Yes it is. So is culling the herd.
Agreed. But you need competition before you can “cull the herd”. If you have only one provider, it doesn’t matter how horrible they are, because “culling the heard” would result in no supplier of that capability.
True. But we have two CRS suppliers now and will shortly have three so that doesn’t seem to be a near-term likelihood. Assuming ISS is extended beyond 2024, there may be a CRS-3 round of contracts in which some new player displaces the most expensive of the current batch.
Every SpaceX CRS mission saves the U.S. at least $200 million over what a
sole-source solution from, say, ULA would have looked like.>>
I would agree both in principle and reality and that is why when Rich Kolker and I wrote the piece in the Weekly Standard 20 years ago which advocated the “Liberty vehicle” (both supply and crewed) we advocated extensive competition…so far as to really looking for four different suppliers…two for the uncrewed and two for the crewed…with as I recall all the winners having to invest about 1/4 of the total cost of development
we still may get there. I suspect that OSC once it is flying will “take” the hardware return product of SpaceX right now, meaning they will become one of the two commercial crew holders and OSC will “probably remain” the other one due to their rather massive bulk AND the flexibility of its vehicle
what is unclear is “are we saving money from the shuttle program” considering everything else the shuttle program had to offer. the answer is “probably” but on a cost per pound number to the station…its a close race
“go of space business”…Virgin has the chance particularly in their suborbital efforts to be the first true passenger carrying line. I dont know about their airlaunched…but if they start flying next year and if they dont have a major accident (at least 1 big if) they will in my view start something useful.
I am waiting to see how the booster compeition works out. SpaceX has clearly failed at expanding the market and lowering prices enough to do that. they seem to have “refurbisable” shuttles 🙂
anyway none of this addresses my comments on the station
This is demonstrably false .. more than one customer has stated without the lower price of spacex’s launchers they would not have been able to complete their project.
Of the 70 launches of SpaceX how many of those launches would not have happened without spacex because all the alternatives were to expensive. ESPECIALLY when it was a ITAR type project that HAD to launch from the US.
50 million for a F9 with a previously flown 1st stage… for that much throw weight to LEO .. who is even close to that price? Now include ride sharing .. and we ARE seeing more hardware hitting space.
a single or couple of customers on the margins of a product being able to get into the game is far different then a new product group
when SWA came into being the aviation industry changed, this is the kind of change Musk has promised and so far not gotten
its unclear that the F9 has done this
We’ll just have to differ on interpretation of launch market expansion over the last decade and, in particular, the last three years.
But SpaceX is planning two dozen Starlink missions, at least half with rideshare opportunities, next year along with three entirely dedicated SSO rideshare missions. Plus, of course, whatever Plain Old-Fashioned Satellites happen to come its way to launch. Even leaving the whole matter of SHS entirely aside, 2020 should tell us something pretty definite about the nature of the new normal in the launch market.
I agree with your last sentence
Well, you got your wish with COTS. Better, in fact. SpaceX and OSC – as it was then – had to put in over half the COTS development money themselves.
In the next part of your reply I think you mean SNC, not OSC. SNC will, inevitably, take part of the downmass returns now monopolized by SpaceX as Dream Chaser is the only ISS resupply vehicle, besides the SpaceX Dragons, that can re-enter. DC is neither going to squeeze SpaceX out of either the freight hauling or crew hauling businesses, nor Boeing out of the crew hauling business, anent ISS. The odds of DC replacing Starliner to any extent as an ISS crew vehicle are not zero, but not great either. Both launch on Atlas 5/Vulcan, but DC, being heavier, would need a more expensive configuration of its launch vehicle for crew just as it will for cargo. That’s without even considering the aerodynamic problems of a lifting body launched vertically with no fairing.
Anent just ISS, Shuttle was at least an order of magnitude more expensive to fly on a per-pound basis than the CRS vehicles are and the CC vehicles will be. Not close. Shuttles averaged a cost of $1.6 billion per mission, rarely flew to ISS at anything approaching its 18-ton maximum payload for that destination and often flew at 1/4 of maximum or less. The normative Shuttle ISS payload was about 7 or 8 tons. The normative CRS payload is three to four tons. That’s half the payload for an eighth to a twelfth the cost.
SpaceShipTwo is a dead-end. It will barely work in current trim. It completely lacks both the capacity and the range to be any sort of hypersonic transport. Only very long-haul routes are candidates for such a capability. SpaceShipTwo can’t fly such routes.
And it can’t really be scaled up to fly such routes either. It’s engine has already arguably been scaled up to the ragged edge of possibility. A completely different vehicle with completely different engines would be needed to initiate antipodal suborbital passenger service. And SpaceX is close to having such a vehicle. VG is not.
SpaceX pretty clearly has expanded the market for launch and has barely gotten warmed up compared to what’s coming shortly even without reference to SHS.
I didn’t make reference to your comments on ISS – and, by extension, Gateway – because I pretty much agree with you. I should have explicitly said so.
I would expand on your remarks only to the extent that I think the main problem with both ISS and Gateway is that both are big enough to consume all or most of the politically available human spaceflight dollars without being anywhere near big enough – especially Gateway – to make any material contribution toward establishing a spacefaring economy.
Sorry yes SNC for OSC…had OSC on the brain…we are working on an amateur radio proposal for a long duration mission they are working on
I will be curious to see how DC evolves…but I suspect with its runway landing and low G touchdown it takes the majority if not all of the down mass business…as for launch vehicle distribution they have a lot of choices including BO…
I really dont want to get into a CRS/Shuttle comparison…its really apples to oranges (although to be fair I brought it up). A shuttle flight was more or less encompassing…you got the crew change out, cargo upmass and a LOT of down mass particularly using the Ninjas as the carrier. Plus the shuttle was pretty good at reboost…and well it was a very versatile vehicle but for a large cost…
we will see where SpaceX goes
VIrgin I dont agree with your assesment at all. who cares about hypersonic point to point are any of the other pie in the sky things which are not going to happen at best for several decades if ever.
what Virgin is going to get a shot at…is the first bulk and long term passenger carrying vehicle to try and turn a profit
If they succeed…they were not a dead end…no one else has
DC will likely get all or most of the live specimen return downmass, but I think the remainder – which is most of it – will be split between DC and Cargo/Crew Dragon 2 because SpaceX, by virtue of flying both crew and cargo missions, will have more annual visits to ISS than DC.
A lot of downmass is inanimate, G-tolerant stuff. Broken ISS stuff that needs depot maintenance constitutes a high percentage of it. The EVA suits, for example, have been up and down a number of times each and, as they are getting no younger, will likely continue to be CRS frequent fliers. Things like that will ride down on whatever vehicle is next available and come back up ASAP on whatever vehicle is next up when repairs are complete. On a statistical basis, SpaceX will get the majority of such haulage jobs.
I still think SNC’s best bet anent DC is to throw in with the Gateway Foundation and do their best to see that Von Braun Space Station gets built. That puppy needs four dozen DC’s as “escape pods.”
Who cares about hypersonic point-to-point service? VG seems to care about point-to-point passenger service as they’ve been talking about it for some time. Seems nuts to me too so at least we have something else to agree on.
As for VG’s “core” business of taking the rich and the merely well-off on two-hour thrill rides with most of the thrill concentrated in a truly hairy minute or two… If that business actually starts next year, it will most likely face more or less immediate competition from BO’s New Shepard.
No more than a couple years beyond that, there will be some form of passenger-carrying Starship that could take over 200 people at a time into actual orbit for the same ticket price. That assumes the same $50 million price of a current F9 mission carried over to the SHS and divided by 200. Just doing a Gagarin-style single orbit and return would give the passengers an hour or so of zero-G plus a second adrenalin rush – besides the minutes-long launch and ascent – in the form of the pitch-up, stall and fall, then powered landing. All this in about the same two hours as a VG SpaceShipTwo ride and waaaay longer than an NS ride.
Will SpaceX do this? If there proves to be money to be made on low-six-figure thrill rides, I think they will. Precedents are Starlink and the upcoming rideshare offerings. In both cases SpaceX went for markets its investigations demonstrated to be big potential moneymakers. Orbital thrill rides on Starship would also be a good way to gain experience directly applicable to SpaceX’s notional future point-to-point service. SpaceX does love it those two-fers.
Rich thrill-seekers are fickle. They’ll go to whichever “theme park” has the hairiest “coaster.” With Starship, I think SpaceX can stay atop that “pyramid” for a long time.
You are correct. He will not make 20. OTOH, he will have put the most tonnage into LEO, as well as the most launches in the west. Only China will have beaten SX.
Russia too.
Actually, with the original ISS, America forked out the vast majority of money for it.
We forked out $ to Russia to build things.
We paid with launch services for ESA to build modules to attach to the ISS.
A lot of that was to bring up the rest of the partners to a certain level of space readiness.
Now, these nations are building their own and contributing on their own dime.
While I am not wild about gateway, there is some use to it. In particular, it gives a lifeboat, could have emergency stores. And ideally, it would help serve as a foundation for comm, GPS, network. Heck, maybe even allow for building LEO-LLO crafts, as well as more landers by other nations. After all, we need redundancy through out the chain.