The Need For Propellant Depots For Space Travel

By Linda Sullivan


Refueling has come of age for space and its need is very vital to all sorts of flights or travel. The actual need is provided by automated systems that will not usually involve human crews to service. Most needs in this way is automated and this applies to a lot of space or rocket flights that may not even have astronauts or cosmonauts.

The majority of work needed in space is answered by robots and automated flights, from provisioning orbiting stations crewed by humans to satellite repairs. All the needed flights will have a vital service that provides them fuel, and this is answered today by propellant depots. These maintain geosynchronous orbits at certain strategic points on near earth space.

These might be something like satellites providing fuel. They will have similar operant principles as weather satellites. The big difference is in how they will have large containers of propellant attached, and the refueling services could even be the jump offs for travel through longer distances to other planets in the near orbits.

The flights that are made today are even farther than the ones made in earlier eras. The Chinese, French, British, Russians, Indians and Japanese have their own space programs. ESA and NASA are also cooperating with any of these nationalities, and many nations in fact are all developing their own programs in this field.

These programs might be ones addressing needs for weather monitors and communication, although the loading or transport modules could need refuels. Propellants however will not be needed for keeping this maintained and working in orbit, since there are integral minimum energy platforms at work. Only the moving objects really need propellants.

Trips to Mars or to the moon, the experimental tourist services which still remain exclusive, and other concerns need the depots to work. These are things that are shipped out from earth launch pads, either fully constructed and ready for orbiting or set up at orbit point. The most efficient are those which could be transported as a full package.

But these might need a depot to have proper deployment. To reiterate, one concern for automation is that it all makes perfect work when setting up in the heavens. Deployment might simply be about extending arms and other platforms for energy from solar panels, while the lock mechanisms are reliable with all their programmed digital control processes.

The monitoring could be done on ground stations, since the remote connections available are strong and reliable enough. Even the docking and the boom and jib process for transferring the fuel is now run by machines. These are precisely programmed and when correctly maintained or serviced, will work perfectly.

The accidents nowadays are not connected to refueling and the depots. Perhaps later on if its use becomes intensive and cosmic travelers are the norm, some security installations may be needed to protect them. Currently, there really is little use for these since those who travel through the heavens are highly trained and vetted personnel even as more humans can cause accidents.




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