Astronaut assisted automatic rendezvous ?

In the thread "LSAM and an unmanned CEV in lunar orbit?"

In article ,

John Whisenhunt wrote:
...Can the the already mentioned advantage of having a piloted
capability for either vehicle to be the active rendezvous platform basically
trump any other lunar surface advantages?

Henry Spencer at 22 Sep. 22:31 :

Not likely, since there's nothing that hard about doing *rendezvous* by

remote control. Docking is the part that really needs local
intelligence... but there is successful experience with doing docking
by
remote control from the other spacecraft. It's not that difficult a
problem to provide most any desired level of confidence in this.

**My comment:

Then how about sending a guy over with a wire and pull the vehicle in ?
Much as Arthur C Clarke wrote way back when ?

The vehicle does rendez-vous to 100 meter distance, and the astronaut
maneuvres it in.

Regards

Carsten Nielsen
Denmark

In article .com,
wrote:
...Docking is the part that really needs local intelligence...

Then how about sending a guy over with a wire and pull the vehicle in ?
Much as Arthur C Clarke wrote way back when ?
The vehicle does rendez-vous to 100 meter distance, and the astronaut
maneuvres it in.

The modern equivalent of this is called "berthing": the vehicle maneuvers
in to a distance of a few meters, and you grab it with a robot arm and
then put it exactly where you want it. Robot arms can handle much heavier
loads than an astronaut in a suit can, and can maneuver them very
precisely, and don't need the assorted preparations and precautions that
surround spacewalks.

(The space station originally was going to use berthing throughout, but
some side effects of bringing the Russians on board dictated a switch to
docking for most things.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer skrev:

The modern equivalent of this is called "berthing": the vehicle maneuvers
in to a distance of a few meters, and you grab it with a robot arm and
then put it exactly where you want it. Robot arms can handle much heavier
loads than an astronaut in a suit can, and can maneuver them very
precisely, and don't need the assorted preparations and precautions that
surround spacewalks.

Oh, I weren't thinking of the astronaut manhandling the multi tonnes
craft.

I was thinking of pulling the rope back in with a winch, slowing down
by thrusters controlled by the astronaut.

If you put manual controls on a panel on the outside of a craft, then
launch unmanned, and let the astronaut board and fly it in.


Regards

Carsten Nielsen
Denmark