57
votes
Accepted
What's the baseball bat for? (seen in CRS-8 berthing NASA TV broadcast)
The baseball bat is for "Attitude adjustment", apparently :)
Source: Arstechnica photos of ISS control room
(ADCO=Attitude Determination and Control officer)
Here's a better pic of the bat from the ...
- 5,148
20
votes
Accepted
Can X-37B dock with the ISS
Yes and no. The current X-37 as flown by the US Air Force is not equipped with any docking ports (PMA, CBM or APAS) as described by @geoffc, nor does it have an attachment for the SSRMS (aka Canadarm) ...
- 6,073
14
votes
Why is the Pressurized Mating Adapter slanted?
The main 'throat' of the PMA is not slanted -- it is a 31.5 inch passageway that is straight as an arrow. However, the throat has to have a bit more open room on one side because the hatch of the ...
- 141
11
votes
Accepted
Why is the Pressurized Mating Adapter slanted?
The drawing in user10795's answer is not an accurate design drawing of the PMA design and thus the conclusions flawed.
In this document the ISS redesign history is discussed and the PMA design existed ...
- 126
8
votes
Can X-37B dock with the ISS
The ISS has 3 basic docking port types.
2 PMA's - used by Shuttle. With addition of LIDS adapter (coming on SpaceX CRS-7 in June 2015) the CST-100 and Dragon Crew will dock to it.
2 CBM ports - HTV, ...
- 76.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Dragon berthing - Is the orientation specific to the orbital conditions, or always the same?
So far it has always been the same
CRS-1
CRS-2
CRS-3
CRS-4
CRS-5
- 157k
4
votes
Why is the Pressurized Mating Adapter slanted?
The slant is to allow big payloads to be taken out with adequate clearance:
Meanwhile, the ISS design had to accommodate the shuttle. It needed to provide a zigzag tunnel mechanism (the Pressurized ...
- 1,788
3
votes
What's the baseball bat for? (seen in CRS-8 berthing NASA TV broadcast)
Besides being the "Attitude Control Device" in MCC-Houston, the bat belonged to one of out top ADCOs who is a big baseball fan.
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2
votes
Accepted
How does one refer to the "port port" on the ISS?
They would most likely use a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) instead of the noun "port". In the example you give, they would say the "port CBM" (Common Berthing Mechanism).
Here's an example from the STS-...
- 157k
2
votes
Why is the Pressurized Mating Adapter slanted?
Maybe they say it here on page 81
:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110013394.pdf
“Pressurized Mating Adapters
The Pressurized Mating Adapter was a transition structure ...
- 21
1
vote
What are the masses of the docking / berthing mechanisms used by the ISS?
Partial:
Apparently, APAS-95 had a mass of 286 kg
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Twenty_first_Century_in_Space/BH7ZBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
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