by Von Hardesty
Looking up at the moon 50 years after Sputnik 1, any observer is awestruck by the extraordinary fact that 12 humans actually walked on its surface. In historical terms, Project Apollo represented an engineering triumph of the highest order. It ultimately achieved its lunar landing time schedule and delivered two successful round-trips to the moon each year in 1969, 1971, and 1972. What’s more, these feats were accomplished without today’s highly sophisticated computers and advanced guidance systems. Since that time space visionaries have lamented the abandonment of lunar missions with all their potential for further human exploration of the solar system. For these space advocates, the space shuttle is a pale and uninspiring alternative to the heroic past. With the collapse of the Cold War, few have forecast, at least for the immediate future, another space race that would spark a new era of space exploration. International cooperation is the norm—with all its benefits and drawbacks.
One key shift in the post-Apollo 1970s was the desire by both the United States and the Soviet Union to build avenues for international cooperation. As early as 1972, the rivals in the Cold War signed an agreement for a joint space venture. In July 1975, this pact became a reality with the celebrated Apollo-Soyuz test project. Two spacecraft were catapulted into orbit, one from Cape Kennedy and the other from Baikonur. The Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in space, marked by the handshake between Apollo commander Thomas P. Stafford and Soyuz 19 commander Aleksei A. Leonov. To achieve this remarkable thaw in the Cold War, both nations had collaborated in engineering a docking module to allow the historic rendezvous in outer space. This was the last mission to use the Apollo spacecraft. The American crew included Deke Slayton, a member of the original Mercury 7. The Soviets made their own polite bow to the past by sending up Leonov, the first person to walk in space and a veteran of the Vostok series. In a symbolic way, Apollo-Soyuz offered a fitting end to the space race. An epic rivalry had culminated in a joint spaceflight.
Before the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the United States signaled its dramatic shift to near-Earth orbital flights with the launching of Skylab, an experimental space station, in 1973. Fired into orbit atop a Saturn V rocket, a leftover from the Apollo program, the Skylab became a highly successful orbiting workstation. The concept of Skylab bore the imprint of von Braun and others in NASA committed to a permanent human presence in space. A crew of three astronauts worked in Skylab during a course of three missions. Fashioned from the third stage of Saturn V, the orbiting Skylab provided a generous 13,000 cubic feet of habitable space. Crews worked on a variety of experiments, using sophisticated instrumentation to gather a vast amount of data—a platform for both astronomical observation and the study of Earth’s weather systems. An exercise in long-duration spaceflight, Skylab was nevertheless a temporary measure, no more than an experiment presaging a future permanent space station. It was abandoned in 1974 and then met a fiery end in the Earth’s upper atmosphere in July 1979 after its orbit decayed. Fragments of Skylab fell harmlessly into Australia and the Indian Ocean.
At the same time, the United States was pursuing the development of the space shuttle, a reusable spacecraft. The launch of the first shuttle, Columbia, in April 1981 inaugurated this program. The spacecraft had been designed as a cost-effective alternative to the expendable launch vehicles of the past. As the program evolved, the space shuttles became the familiar vehicles of satellite delivery and retrieval, scientific research, and training of astronauts—now broadly recruited for their scientific and engineering specialties rather than narrowly for experience as test pilots. One near-fatal setback for the space-shuttle program came in 1986 with the breakup and fiery descent of the Challenger just 73 seconds after liftoff, with the loss of the entire crew. In February 2003, a second shuttle, Columbia, was also lost, killing the seven astronauts on board. But the space shuttle did achieve major triumphs as well. In 1990, the space shuttle Discovery placed into space the Hubble Space Telescope. Space shuttle astronauts then repaired and serviced the huge telescope riding above Earth’s atmosphere and offering fascinating details on the structure of the universe. Despite its remarkable longevity, the space shuttle has prompted many critics, who argue that the reusable spacecraft did not deliver on its promises of quick turnarounds between missions and reducing the cost of delivery of materials to orbit. Some NASA critics have asserted the United States erred in relying on the space shuttle to launch many national security, military, and civilian satellites. This was done in the absence of any national space policy review, mixing military and civilian space operations on a single spacecraft.1
The Russian space program faced its own challenges in the altered context of the 1970s and 1980s. The venerable Soyuz spacecraft continued its remarkable lifespan as one of the most reliable manned space vehicles. First launched in 1967, the Soyuz evolved over time into the more refined Soyuz T and Soyuz TM types, becoming the baseline technology for Russian orbiting missions. More than 100 cosmonauts flew on Soyuz spacecraft during its long service life. In the 1970s, the Soviets launched Salyut, their first space station. Six more Salyut stations would follow, plus the durable, if chronically troubled, Mir, which remained in orbit between 1971 and 2001. Originally designed for a five-year service life, Mir endured for an additional decade. In some ways, Mir embodied the latter-day style of the Russian space program with a stress on cost cutting, austerity, minimal repairs, and the continued use of proven technologies.
Baikonur persisted as a viable space center in spite of periods of neglect and depressed funding. Since 1955, the launch center had been a major center for the testing of intercontinental missiles. It then expanded in the golden years as the Soviet Union’s key center for manned and robotic space missions. In 1988, the Soviets launched the huge Energiya rocket with a Soviet space shuttle called Buran; this experiment was cancelled after one flight due to funding problems. After the fall of communism in 1991, the vast Baikonur facility fell on hard times, but it eventually revived in step with new trends in space. The Baikonur launch pads found new purpose with the advent of the International Space Station (ISS), assembly of which began in orbit in 1998. At this juncture, Russia has employed not only the Soyuz rockets, but the Proton, Zenit, and Tsyklon types—all mobilized for commercial purposes, including launching satellites for other nations and private corporations. At the turn of the 21st century, the Russian space program continued to respond to the growing demand by nations and telecommunications companies for new satellite launches.2
The Russian space program has taken unpredictable twists and turns in the immediate post-communist era. Most notable and controversial were experiments in what became known as “space tourism.” In April 2001 they ferried the first space tourist, California millionaire Dennis Tito, to the ISS. Several more wealthy individuals have followed. These trips have been and will remain quite expensive, with the Russian space agency charging anywhere from 20 to 25 million dollars per flight. Such launches, though, have provided a welcome source of hard currency for the Russian space program.
NASA did not receive the green light for the development of a space station until the mid-1980s, a project that eventually evolved into the ISS. When finally completed, the ISS will be a remarkable accomplishment, with the interior space equivalent to a Boeing 747 jet airliner. More than 19 nations have participated in the ISS program, including space shuttle missions delivering components of the station to orbit. Convergence and global cooperation in space has become the established norm.
If manned spaceflights beyond Earth orbit were not pursued in the decades after Apollo, vast new strides were made in deep-space probes. Important recent examples include NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers, both of which successfully landed on Mars in 2004, using a unique airbag system to cushion their impact. The rovers explored the red planet’s rocks and soil, seeking traces of the past presence of water. Sharing the rest of the world’s longtime fascination with Mars, the Russians have announced a deep-space probe to the Martian moon Phobos in 2009. The unmanned s
pacecraft will seek to obtain samples of the moon’s surface and fly them back to Earth. If successful, the three-year round-trip would be the first between Earth and the immediate vicinity of Mars.3
Several entrepreneurs in the United States have initiated projects for suborbital spaceflights, to be offered to the public as early as 2008. SpaceShipOne has attracted the most attention for its demonstrated capabilities as a non-governmental program of space travel. The design of a low-cost private space vehicle emerged from the competition for the 10-million-dollar Ansari X-Prize. In October 2004, SpaceShipOne made its dramatic debut. The futuristic spacecraft won the prize by carrying out two successful flights to the edge of outer space in less than two weeks. This remarkable flying machine was launched at altitude by its carrier aircraft, the White Knight, and then fired into the upper atmosphere by its hybrid rocket engine, fueled by a nontoxic mix of liquid nitrous oxide and rubber. The highest of the two qualifying flights, piloted by Brian Binnie, reached nearly 70 miles, the border of outer space, eclipsing the highest altitude flight of the famed X-15 rocket plane.
The interest in space travel takes more than one form. The voters in New Mexico have approved a tax increase to finance construction of America’s first commercial spaceport, expected to open in 2010, near the Army’s White Sands missile test facility. The spaceport is intended to provide facilities for space tourism ventures, and a number of other states—and foreign counties including Canada and Australia—are actively considering development of similar spaceports.4
Recent trends suggest a growing commercial interest in space. Aviation Week & Space Technology, a highly respected and influential aerospace trade publication, has observed: “A private spaceflight industry…is steadily emerging from the dusty desert hangars and closely-guarded office-park bays that incubated it, ready to leap off launch pads across the globe.” More than half of the estimated 180 billion dollars in worldwide revenue generated by space-related activities such as building, launching, and operating commercial communication satellites is from privately funded activities, with the remainder from government.5
The number of “space-faring” nations continues to grow. The monopoly once enjoyed by the United States and Russia has ended. Seventeen members now participate in the European Space Agency (ESA), which markets itself as “Europe’s gateway to space.” At the turn of the 21st century no less than a dozen nations were active in satellite launches. Communication satellites alone have been a transformative force in reshaping modern life and giving expression to the idea of “globalization.” The opportunity to offer commercial launch services for communications and other satellite types has been a driving force in pushing nations to develop and market their own launch complexes. China has emerged as a major player in the growing diversity of space exploration. China has been joined by two other Asian nations, Japan and India. Japan has launched its own interplanetary space probes, and India has developed satellite-delivered educational, medical, and weather services to its rural villages.6
Although the United States continues to be a dominant player in space, the American space program must contend with its own challenges in the coming decades. Around 2010, the space shuttle will fly its final missions, in support of the ISS and then be retired. NASA will then face a gap of at least five years without any manned spaceflight capacity until its next generation of spacecraft comes on line around 2015. During that time America will have to depend on Russia—and pay hundreds of millions of dollars—for any manned missions to the ISS.7
In addition, China has announced its intention to be a major space power in the 21st century, an initiative that will be long-range and aggressive. Both military and civilian programs will define the Chinese space activities in the new century. China already has demonstrated a capacity for manned spaceflight, launching its first manned space mission on October 15, 2003—Yang Liwei completed a 14-orbit mission in a Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. In October 2005, China sent two astronauts, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng, on a five-day orbital journey on board the Shenzhou 6 spacecraft. China has since announced ambitious plans to send its astronauts to the moon. One consequence of China’s debut as a space-faring nation may be a new race with the United States to return to the moon.
In early 2004, President George W. Bush sounded a national call for Americans to return to the moon as early as 2015 with the ambitious goal of building a permanent lunar base. This same blueprint for the future also made reference to a future mission to Mars. Space visionaries greeted the call with enthusiasm. However, the Bush call for a bold future in space failed to arouse public enthusiasm, at least for the near term.
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted in 2004: “It has been almost a third of a century since human beings took a step on the moon—rather as if no intrepid mariner had bothered after 1492 to follow up on Christopher Columbus. Yet 500 years from now (if humans have not blown up the planet), the 20th century will be remembered, if at all, as the century in which man began the exploration of space.”8
In humankind’s race to explore the cosmos, much is still to come….
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. Walter Dornberger, V-2, New York: Viking Press, 1958, p. 8.
2. Ibid., p. 12.
3. Wernher von Braun and Frederick I. Ordway III, Rockets’ Red Glare, New York: Anchor Press, 1976, p. 147.
4. Dornberger, p. 52.
5. Ibid., p. 17.
6. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, New York: Colliers Books, 1981, p. 367.
CHAPTER 1
1. James McGovern, Operation Crossbow and Overcast, New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1964, pp. 99-101.
2. Von Braun and Ordway, Rockets’ Red Glare, p. 136f.
3. Ibid., p. 140.
4. Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century, New York: Walker & Company, 2001, p. 52.
5. William E. Burrows, The New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, New York: Random House, 1998, pp. 101-102.
6. Ibid., p. 102.
7. “Eyewitness Accounts of V-2 Bombings,” BBC (audio recordings), November 1944, Voices of World War II, edited by Richard Lidz and Marc Goldbaum, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1975.
8. T. D. Dungan, V-2: A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile, Yardley, Penn.: Westholme Publishers, 2005, pp. 192-193, 201-204.
9. Charles A. Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1978, p. 345.
10. Ibid, p. 346.
11. Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy, The Battle for the Spoils and Secrets of Nazi Germany, London: Michael Joseph, 1989, p. 110.
12. Boris Chertok, Rakety i lyudi, Vol. 1, 2nd Edition, Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1999, pp. 141-160.
13. Ibid., p. 92.
14. Boris Chertok, Rockets and People[English translation], Edited by Asif A. Siddiqi, Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2005, p. 213; Dorogi v kosmos, Vospominaniya veteranov raketnokosmicheskoi tekhniki i kosmonavtiki, Vol. 1, edited by Yu. A. Mozzhorii, G. S. Titov and others, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo MAI, 1992, pp. 156-158.
15. Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 1, pp. 239-241.
16. Ibid., p. 281; Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974, Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, History Division, 2000, p. 28f.
17. Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 1, p. 289.
18. Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945-2000,
19. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo, pp. 32-39.
20. Ibid., p. 30.
21. Gröttrup, Irmgard, The Rocket Wife, London: Andre Deutsch, 1959, as quoted on website www.russianspaceweb.com.
22. Leonid L. Kerber, Stalin’s Aviation Gulag, A Memoir of Andrei Tupolev and the Purge Era, edited by Von Hardesty, Washington, D.C.: 1996, pp. 166-167.
23. Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 1, pp. 329-332.
24. Deborah Cadbury, S
pace Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space, New York: HarperCollins, 2005, p. 103; Asif Siddiqi, “The Rockets’ Red Glare: Technology, Conflict, and Terror in the Soviet Union,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 44, Number 3 (July 2003), pp. 470-501.
25. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo, p. 54.
26. Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005, p. 70.
27. Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, pp. 42-43; Ward, pp. 152-155.
28. Cadbury, pp. 105-106.
29. Daniel Lang, The New Yorker, Vol. 24(July 24, 1948), pp. 40-46.
30. Ernst H. Krause, “High Altitude Research with V-2 Rockets,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 91, No. 5 (December 3, 1947), pp. 430-446.
31. Burrows, p. 135.
32. “A Brief History of Animals in Space,” National Aeronautics and Space Administration, see http://history.nasa.gov/animals.html.
33. Steven J. Zaloga, V-2 Ballistic Missile, 1942-52, New York: Osprey Publishing, 2003, p. 39.
34. Ward, p. 74.
35. Ibid., p. 75.
36. Frederick L. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, Burlington, Canada: Apogee Books, 2003, p. 249.