10 thoughts on “Canada Joins The Gateway”

  1. Without reading; I guess they are going to put an arm on it to do precision docking, when probe and drogue docking would work just fine?

    1. Why wouldn’t it have both berthing and docking like the ISS?

      It seems to me that an external robot arm is useful for all kinds of things and that when SLS gets cancelled, Canada will have no problem using the new robotic arm on some other station.

    1. Yes, Gateway would have been great 15 years ago but the launch capabilities on the near term horizon should cause NASA and everyone else to rethink what can be done in space.

    2. Yep, that graphic pretty much sums it up.

      BTW, Dragon Crew Demo-1 had a successful orbital insertion with a stuck landing for the booster. I guess no delays as was feared…

  2. I see that idiot boy, the former drama teacher, is trying to distract us from multiple federal government legal and financial scandals by pointing at shiny things.

  3. $1.4 billion over 24 years? That’s a rounding error in NASA budgeting.

    And who thinks this thing is really going to still be “a thing” in 24 years?

  4. I think Canada’s joining the gateway project is a splendid opportunity!

    Of course, to make it more accessible to Canada, Gateway needs to go in a slightly different orbit, though one that’s every bit as useful for lunar research and access as the currently proposed distant retrograde lunar orbit. I’m thinking low-altitude geosynchronous would be best… around 58 degrees north latitude (A likely candidate is Churchill, Manitoba – which already bills itself as a gateway). One of the advantages is this would provide easier access from Kennedy Space Center, due to being reachable via suborbital launches, which would vastly increase SLS’s deliverable payload mass. Or, they could just ship supplies and crew by train instead.

    I think this makes more sense than the currently proposed gateway location.

  5. Yes, I’d like to talk about the currently-proposed Gateway location. I know the logistical advantages of EM L-1. I have yet to see anyone list the greater logistical advantages of near-rectilinear halo orbit (or indeed any advantages at all). Are there any? Or has this proposal become so unmoored from useful space development purposes that we’re going to go with an orbit which is perhaps just interesting to mathematicians?

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