ISS Rendezvous (and some) Docking
I started thinking about how docking might work with an inflatable station such as the Goodyear one that I discussed here. I have been trying to think about how spacecraft might dock to such a station and how crew might transfer from one vehicle to the other. While I don’t have an answer yet, I thought I would share some videos I watched to ignite my mind. I found the following one by Destin Sandlin to be a nice intro to rendezvousing with the ISS:
The below video is a quick video showing the Space Shuttle (Atlantis) docking to the International Space Station.
The video below is similar to the one by Destin Sandlin in that it gives some insight into the orbital mechanics. However, it gives a lot more insight into Soyuz-related launch from Baikonur and its high-level structural design (I just decided to toss in the Soyuz image from the video).
The voice of the narrator is a bit annoying, though.
Obviously, the above videos are not directly related to inflatable space stations but they do give some perspective on how docking is affected by structural aspects of the spacecraft (e.g., we see how the Shuttle is different from the Soyuz) and the station.