Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  The trip to orbit was anything but smooth. On Challenger’s first launch attempt, on 12 July, the shuttle’s ignited main engines shut down three seconds before scheduled launch. Fullerton later told reporters, “It was the longest three seconds I’ve ever experienced.” Checkout of the shuttle and replacement of equipment could reveal no major fault, so launch was rescheduled for late July. Prior to the second launch attempt, one of the control computers in the pallet’s igloo failed during a prelaunch checkout. Since the igloo could not be serviced at the pad, it was decided to continue launch preparations using the igloo’s two redundant computers instead. But if one of the remaining computers failed, science-gathering goals would be crippled even though engineering evaluation of the pallet-only Spacelab configuration could still take place.

  On 29 July 1985 Challenger finally got off the pad at 17:00 EDT, but its troubles were far from over. Six minutes into the flight, one of the shuttle’s main engines prematurely shut down due to the failure of two of the engine’s temperature sensors. A second engine was very close to shutting down from the same problem when an alert controller in Houston made the decision it was a sensor problem and not the engine itself. The sensor readings were bypassed, and Challenger managed to limp into a lower than planned orbit on two engines. This was the first and only abort to orbit (ATO) of the shuttle program.

  Even with the lower-than-planned orbit, the flight was able to perform most of its science experiments and tested out the IPS. The IPS developed some software-related problems during testing, and it took several days of troubleshooting by the crew as well as the engineers on the ground to get it to work properly. But the sensors mounted to the IPS returned some excellent data, including better images of the sun than were achieved from Skylab’s ATM only a decade before. The Spacelab 2 mission returned mountains of data, with only a small portion of the scientific objectives affected by the lower-than-planned orbit. The shuttle’s return to Earth on 6 August was much less dramatic than its launch, as Challenger landed safely.

  Cola Wars in Space

  One cargo that threatened to overshadow the rest of the STS-51F mission in the public spotlight was the flight of two experimental soda cans developed by the Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies. The Coke can was developed first as the company had been conducting a serious engineering study into how to make a drink container that could dispense a carbonated beverage to give it the characteristic fizz in a weightless environment. A normal cola can opened in zero gravity ran the risk of rocketing itself across a compartment, resulting in a very sticky mess of cola droplets to clean up. The challenge was to develop a can that could release its fizzy beverage only on command. The Coke dispenser was a fully approved NASA experiment, but when PepsiCo heard about it, they exerted some political pressure to get NASA to fly a Pepsi dispenser as well.

  During the 1980s the cola wars were in full swing in the United States, as each company tried their best to capture the market share. Flying beverage products in space was considered a big selling point. From NASA’s standpoint, there wasn’t much they could do to oppose this pressure, as their charter prevents them from publicly endorsing commercial products. Pepsi’s can was developed in a much quicker period, and it didn’t look all that different from a whipped-cream dispenser, yet it seemed to work fine.

  So the drink experiments were conducted. Since the shuttle had no refrigerator, the contents were “warm and frothy,” according to the astronauts, and not very enjoyable. Carbonated beverages will likely never fly in space regularly until a form of artificial gravity is developed. The reason is that while the drink can be consumed in zero gravity, built-up gas bubbles in an astronaut’s stomach can be painful and tough to get rid of. When one burps in freefall, it is not a “dry” burp as on Earth, where the gas is lighter than the liquid. Since this mission, Pepsi has not flown any other dispensers. Coke flew another version of their can to space station Mir in 1991, but the company seems to have had greater success flying Coke syrup dispensers to flavor normal water-filled drink pouches without the carbonation. They tested such a system during two shuttle flights in 1995 and 1996.

  Other Spacelab Flights

  The next flight for the Spacelab was STS-61A, aboard the space shuttle Challenger, which was the first flight of the second Spacelab pressurized module. This mission, known as Spacelab D-1 (D for “Deutschland”), was the first Spacelab flight funded entirely by West Germany, and it had two German payload specialists: Reinhard Furrer and Ernst Messerschmid. Wubbo Ockels would also fly as an ESA representative on his first space mission. The pilot-astronauts assigned were MOL veteran Hank Hartsfield as commander and Steven Nagel as pilot. The mission specialists for the mission were Bonnie Dunbar, James Buchli, and Guion Bluford. Bluford had previously flown as the first African American astronaut, on STS-8 in 1983. This was the first and only time the shuttle had flown with eight crewmembers on board.

  For this flight, instead of the PCCs in Houston or Huntsville, the German Space Operations Center near Munich, Germany, handled communications with the Spacelab crew. This meant that at least some of the crew had to have their sleep cycles adjusted to European time. As before, the crew was divided up into two teams for around-the-clock science gathering.

  German prelaunch media coverage for the mission was a bit biased against NASA, as there were still some bruised feelings that Germany had to pay NASA to fly “Germany’s Spacelab.” Even Ulf Merbold, Germany’s first astronaut, seemed to echo those comments in the press. Regardless of the public perception, NASA, the mission crew, and their German customers got along very well with one another. Spacelab D-1 launched on 30 October 1985 and returned on 6 November. The crew conducted seventy-six experiments on orbit, with a large portion being microgravity studies in biological and materials science, as well as tests of the astronauts’ vestibular systems.

  Unfortunately, this mission would be the last successful one for the space shuttle Challenger, as it was lost with all hands on its next mission, STS-51L, on 28 January 1986. The loss was primarily due to hot exhaust gases leaking from an aft field joint on one of the shuttle’s two SRBs, due in part to improper sealing by the joint’s O-rings. Challenger was launched in very cold temperatures that morning, and contractor representatives from Morton Thiokol, producers of the shuttle’s SRBs, had conducted a conference call with NASA the night before, urging them to postpone the launch due to concerns with how the O-rings would behave at low temperatures. NASA managers responsible for the SRBs wouldn’t listen and pressed ahead with the countdown anyway.

  The resulting loss of the shuttle and its seven-person crew would cause a thirty-two-month delay in the program before flights resumed in September 1988. The safety stand-down revealed many flaws in NASA’s management of the shuttle program, and many changes were made. The results would fundamentally change how the shuttle was utilized.

  No longer would shuttle missions launch commercial satellites, and no attempt would be made to try to ramp up the shuttle’s flight cycle to twelve missions a year. Planned shuttle launches of DoD payloads into polar orbits from Vandenberg AFB were also canceled. There would be other missions to fly, such as launching and repairing the Hubble Telescope; sending probes to study Jupiter, Venus, and the sun; and performing EVAs to test out construction techniques for a proposed space station. But from that point on, most shuttle missions would involve science gathering in one form or another with Spacelab hardware being used for a large percentage of it.

  The first flight of a Spacelab after Challenger’s loss was STS-35. It was called ASTRO-1, and it used two pallets and the IPS as a combined X-ray and ultraviolet telescope system. The payload flew aboard the space shuttle Columbia from 2 December to 10 December 1990, with shuttle commander Vance Brand and mission specialist Bob Parker among the seven-person crew, flying their final trips into space. ASTRO-1 would be the first in a long line of twenty science missions out of twenty-four shuttle flights that used Spacelab hardware. The vast majority of these flights i
nvolved the pressurized lab modules, but many others flew in the pallet-only configuration (some with the igloo, some without). Germany also sponsored and flew a second dedicated Spacelab mission (STS-55, Spacelab D2), and Japan even sponsored a Spacelab flight of its own (STS-47, Spacelab J).

  Funny enough, the one customer that never got to fully utilize Spacelab was the ESA. Shuttle missions can be expensive; after the decade spent in design and building the laboratory, the ESA had no desire to fund dedicated Spacelab missions, opting to focus instead on other ventures after the Challenger disaster, such as their commercial launch activities with the Ariane launch vehicles. Success with the Ariane has made the ESA one of the premier providers of commercial space launch services in the world today.

  Ultimately the ESA would take part in a support capacity and benefit from the science gathered on the flights. But it is ironic that the agency that built the Spacelab wouldn’t be one of its major users. Looking at the bigger picture, though, the production and managerial experience gained by the ESA during the Spacelab program did prove invaluable when the time came for Europe to take part in NASA’s next big project, the International Space Station.

  9

  Soviet Space Station Mir

  The Death of a Designer

  By the early 1980s there wasn’t all that much for Vladimir Chelomei to look forward to. The manned Almaz station program was canceled after Chelomei’s best ally in the military, Marshal Grechko, died from a heart attack in 1976. A state decree in 1979 called for the Almaz OPS program to fully merge with the DOS program under the control of NPO Energia. Chelomei’s bureau was still doing first-class work on their military projects, and Chelomei himself had also won a state prize in 1982. But without Almaz, his bureau’s participation in manned spaceflight activities would only be as a subcontractor at best. As a consolation prize, the TKS spacecraft finally got to fly in the late 1970s, and refined versions of the ship successfully docked with both Salyut 6 and Salyut 7. They worked as advertised, even if they never carried a crew into orbit or back.

  There was a glimmer of hope in 1984. Dmitry Ustinov had contracted pneumonia in late October and was hospitalized. He was unable to make any public appearances to fulfill his duties as minister of defense. In November he underwent emergency surgery to correct an aortic aneurysm. His deteriorating health continued through early December. There are rumors that when Chelomei heard of this, he was elated that his longtime nemesis was finally on his apparent deathbed.

  Unfortunately, Chelomei would not live to even see Ustinov’s death. Thanks to his prestige, the designer managed to acquire a Mercedes, which he drove on a regular basis. One day in early December, he pulled his car out of the garage (some reports say out a gate) and stopped it with the engine running to get out and close the garage door. While Chelomei was closing the door, the car rolled forward and crashed into him, crushing his leg between the car bumper and the door.

  Chelomei was rushed to the hospital; even with the broken leg, he was reportedly in good spirits, still talking about grand plans for the future of his design bureau without Ustinov’s interference. But it wasn’t meant to be. On 8 December 1984 Vladimir Chelomei died suddenly in the hospital while on the phone with his wife. This was the result of a blood clot from the broken leg. The clot broke loose and lodged in his lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism. Ustinov would ultimately die of heart failure in the hospital on 24 December 1984. It is unfortunate that Chelomei would not outlive Ustinov, since he might have finally been able to take public credit for his design work.

  Mir’s Launch

  In early 1986, agencies and individuals following the Soviet space program noted increased activity hinting at the imminent launch of another space station. All indications were that it would be another Salyut station and not a TKS or other type of vehicle that required a Proton booster. This was unusual, considering Salyut 7, with the TKS spacecraft Cosmos 1686, was still “operational” with the last crew abruptly leaving it in mid-November of 1985.

  Suspicions were confirmed when a Proton rocket lifted off from Baikonur early on the morning of 20 February 1986. The booster worked perfectly and injected its payload into nearly the same orbit as Salyut 7. But rather than being called Salyut 8 as many Western analysts had guessed, this space station’s name was revealed by Soviet state news as Mir. The word mir in the Russian language has multiple meanings depending on its context. It can mean “peace,” “new world,” or “community.” Most Western news agencies reported it as meaning “peace.” Given that the launch occurred less than a month after the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, it is likely that the Soviets were trying to capitalize on a stumble by NASA to grab the world’s spotlight once more. With Mir, they would do so in a big way.

  Like its Salyut predecessors, Mir was a DOS space station (DOS-7) that both inwardly and outwardly resembled its second generation cousins in general layout, but there were some key differences. When launched, the station only had two solar arrays, with one on each side, although these new arrays had almost twice the surface area of their predecessors. There were provisions for a third array in the normal dorsal location, even though none was fitted at launch. There was no large camera or telescope mount on the bottom of the station. In its place there was a small scientific airlock. Even with the exterior differences, the internal layout of Mir was almost identical to Salyut 7.

  37. The Mir core module featured four radial docking ports for other modules. Courtesy NASA.

  The docking system was upgraded. Mir had the old Igla-based rendezvous-and-docking system, but in addition to that, it also had a new system called Kurs. Unlike Igla, which required a narrow line of sight between antennae for a craft to line up with the ports, Kurs transmits signals from multiple antennae. The receiver system on the spacecraft uses the Kurs signals to interpret its position from anywhere around the station, automatically orienting itself with a proper docking port.

  The most important change Mir had was a multiple-port docking node at the front of the station that had one axial port and four radial ones set apart at ninety-degree angles. Taking full advantage of the lessons learned from the Almaz program, these new docking ports could accommodate heavy modules based on the TKS spacecraft. Design and construction of this docking node took some time to sort out since berthing something heavy on a radial docking port can produce high-torque loads, especially during orbital maneuvers such as reboosting.

  The first crew to fly to Mir launched aboard Soyuz T-15 on 13 March 1986 and consisted of cosmonaut veterans Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov, who both set EVA records during their repairs of Salyut 7’s fuel system. The Soviets had high hopes for the mission, announcing the crew before launch and covering the liftoff live on state television. The crew docked with the new station the next day and got right to work unpacking equipment and setting up the new complex.

  Salyut 7’s Final Visit

  Mir’s first crew conducted several months of normal operations, with two Progress resupply visits taking place to deliver equipment. At the end of this period, the crew returned the station to its automatic control and prepared to leave. But they weren’t returning to Earth. Instead, they had another destination in mind, Salyut 7. The plan was to undock from Mir, rendezvous and dock with Salyut 7, spend a few weeks there, and then rerendezvous and dock with Mir, to transfer over salvaged hardware from the older station. This would be the most ambitious feat of orbital rendezvous ever undertaken by any space program to date, and it would be the only time that a single crew would set up residence in two stations during one mission.

  Phase one of the plan had the docked Progress 26 cargo craft fire its engines on May 5 to drop Mir’s orbit slightly below that of Salyut 7’s in order to begin reducing the range from three thousand kilometers to a more manageable distance. The crew then loaded five hundred kilograms of supplies aboard the Soyuz, boarded it, and closed the hatch before undocking a few hours later. After a day of independent flight, they caught sight of the Sal
yut. After closing the distance farther, Kizim brought the Soyuz in for a successful manual docking.

  For the next week, the crew spent time restoring Salyut 7 to operational flight, reconditioning its systems, and then resuming Salyut 7’s Earth-observation program. At the end of the month, they donned the new Orlan suits that had been delivered by the Cosmos 1669 spacecraft the previous year to replace ones damaged by the freeze, and then they ventured out for a space walk. Their prime task was to test an experimental, folding girder segment that could expand to fifteen meters in length. The segment, also delivered by Cosmos 1669, was slated for testing by the previous crew before their mission got cut short. Next, the pair retrieved some experiment cassettes. The EVA tasks took about four hours to complete. Portions of the space walk were broadcast on television.

  Two days later, the crew conducted another space walk to perform additional girder experiments, including the use of a low-power laser to measure for any flex or distortion to the girder’s shape. A variation of the welding experiment used by Svetlana Savitskaya was also performed. The girder was jettisoned from the Salyut after the welding tests were completed. For the next month, the crew conducted a normal scientific program, which included plant cultivation, production of different compounds with the station’s furnaces, and Earth-observation studies. The Earth studies included measuring the environmental impact of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster that had taken place in April.