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What I had in mind for camera mounts is provide several mounting locations with data ports around the module interior and exterior. The camera will mount on a lightweight 6-degree-of-freedom robotic arm, with a tilt/pan head at the end of the arm, and a zoom lens for the camera.
Elbow #2 Camera Lens
Pitch Elbow #1 __ Roll ______ /|
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|| |(+)===========|__| Tilt/Pan
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Wall Mount (provides power, data, control)
Someone will have to put more brainboning on it to figure out if this is the best arrangement for the camera boom. It also gives us some redundancy since we can have an electric motor on each side of the interface. (Lesson learned from Shuttle and Space Station.) I think this configuration will allow us to position and point the camera anywhere within rather crowded confines. The offsets in the elbow allow the boom to fold back on itself.
We'll use identical mounting interfaces throughout all spacecraft, interior and exterior. (Lesson learned from Apollo.) Leave some capability for expanding the function in the future by multiplexing the control signal.
The cameras will be linked to the space-to-ground loop so they can be controlled by a director on the ground as well as by the crew. We'll run a simulation in parallel on the ground so the director can make sure the camera is going where it ought to and looking in the right direction.
We might use similar units for setting up lights and reflectors.
This approach has the advantage that the only intervention we need from the crew is to move the cameras from attach point to attach point. The ground crew can experiment with angles and even monitor the ship while they're asleep or busy with something else.
The reason we can do this, and Apollo couldn't, is the amount of computer power we can put on board for very little money. The controller in every joint of that boom will probably have more computer power than the entire Apollo spacecraft, and it's all off-the shelf electronics.
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