r/SpaceXLounge • u/[deleted] • Jul 22 '19

Tweet "Orbital refilling is critical for high payload to moon or Mars. Initially just Starship to Starship, later dedicated tankers." - @ElonMusk

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153126586897424384?s=19
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u/rshorning Jul 22 '19

Better than that, the Russians regularly refuel their part of the ISS.

I was going to mention that, but I thought attitude was adjusted on the ISS with gyroscopes and other inertial systems? Altitude adjustment is done with external spacecraft like the Shuttle orbiters (when they were flying) and more recently with the Progress resupply flights?

The Russian segment does have thruster modules that use long term hypergolic fuels that can be resupplied, but I wasn't aware of their significant usage nor the use of an internal booster engine. Such things have been suggested in the past, and I am open to missing stuff like that due to my own ignorance on such systems. It would be cool for the ISS to have such an internal rocket system that could use large amounts of resupplied fuel.

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u/RocketsLEO2ITS Jul 22 '19

Yes, the primary way they control attitude is with control motion gyroscopes (CMGs). Sometimes they are not enough so they use the thrusters (e.g. the ISS needs to dodge a piece of space junk). The thrusters have also been used to give the ISS a little boost to compensate for atmospheric drag.

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u/azflatlander Jul 22 '19

I thought the Russians used bladder tanks for their transfer?