tethered satellite

[mrspacely]

in reference to this unsuccessful deployment:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-75.html

would anyone want to design one that could be deployed from the ISS in orbiter to simulate harnessing electricity for the ISS?

heres a video with the satellite in view during the first part:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-wYmFYb3I"]YouTube - UFO NASA's unexplained tether overload incident[/ame]

yes i know its a ufo video but the technology is impressive and it would be cool to simulate a successful deployment without any aliens!

 

[n0mad23]

Tblaxland and I are doing something with this same technology, though we're using our tether (eventually and currently in development) to utilize the ionosphere to create ED propulsion.

The various potential orbital tether applications are really interesting, and I agree the above would make a very interesting addon.

 

[tblaxland]

Ah yes, nothing like a bit of FUD (Flying Unidentified Debris, in this case) to panic the masses

n0mad23 beat me to the reply about our project, but since I am not afraid of flagrant self-promotion I will also include links to:

1. The development thread (and in particular this post).
2. v0.1 download thread.

I will also make a some technical points:

An electrodynamic tether would not make a very good way of supplying power to the ISS. Guess where the energy comes from? The ISS's kinetic energy. So while you are happily generating all that power you are also rapidly decaying your orbit. Consider an induction type generator - if you don't keep applying power to the shaft (eg from a steam turbine) the rotor will slow down and eventually stop. Of course, on STS-75 any energy lost to the tether could be made up from the OMS.

The main idea behind the TSS-1R experiment on STS-75 (and earlier on STS-46) was to characterise the behaviour of the tether in the ionosphere for potential electrodynamic propulsion applications instead of generating electricity. To refer to the induction machine analogy above, if you can understand how the machine works in generator mode you will gain a reasonable understanding of how it will behave in motor mode (ie, when you drive current into it instead).

NASA was studying Momentum eXchange Electrodynamic Reboost (MXER) tethers at the time. Our humble project draws on these studies along with those done by Tethers Unlimited.

We do plan to simulate the electrodynamic propulsion in our tether at some stage.