Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

shuttle and Unity



From what I can get from the NASA WWW pages, an empty Space Shuttle
has a
mass of about 8.0 X 10^5 kg while the current piece of the space
station, Unity, has a
mass of 1.1 X 10^5 kg. That is, they're the same mass within an
order of magnitude.
If you apply Newton's 3rd law to the action of the shuttle's crane
moving the Unity
module into position, this means the movement is quite tricky. If you
want to move the
Unity module 1m closer to the Russion module, extending the arm 1m does
not quite
cut it. (This is ignoring relative velocities and torques!)

That is, of course, unless the shuttle has some sophistacated
stablization system
involving computer controlled rocket thrusters that will hold it steady
relative to some
object. Does anyone know if it has such a system? If so, can you point
me to a
reference to it?

We've recently been talking in class about the acceleration of the
center of mass of a
system of objects. I thought this "Shuttle-Crane-Unity" system would
make a real nice
example, but I don't want to pass out any bum information.

Thanks.

tom

Dr. Tom Carter
College of Dupage
(630)-979-1834