Few Humans Make It To the Final Frontier in 1999, As China Prepares to Join Astronaut Club
By Paul Hoversten
Washington Bureau Chief
space.com 27 December 1999 WASHINGTON -- The dreamers and visionaries of the 1960s were convinced that the new adventure called space would mean hotels on the moon and humans routinely flying off to other planets by the end of the century. At the very least, the thinking went, astronauts would establish a permanent place in the cosmos aboard an Earth-orbiting space station as the year 2000 dawned. It hasn't quite worked out that way. If 1999 is any example, getting to the final frontier isn't much easier now than it was 38 years ago when humans first soared into orbit. This year saw a paucity of people in space from the world's two leading space-faring nations even as a third country -- China -- prepared to join the manned space club. Just 19 American astronauts on three space shuttle flights made it into orbit in 1999, owing to a shuttle fleet that was grounded for a quarter of the year because of technical problems. That's the fewest Americans in space since 1988 when nine men went aloft on two shuttles in NASA's return to flight after the 1986 Challenger disaster.Few Russians in space, as well
Russia this year fared worse. The aging Mir space station was mothballed late this summer, ending a 13-year run as the world's only orbital outpost capable of supporting life. From late August, when the last crew left Mir, until late December, when the shuttle Discovery was finally launched, there were no humans in space at all. Alarming as that might seem, it's all part of the learning curve, space observers say. "It's a small bump in the steep road to space," says John Pike, space policy chief at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. "Since the beginning of human space flight, you've had ebbs and flows in the level of human activity and the general trend in the last 15 years has been in an upward direction. If you're thinking in terms of the stock market, this year would be a minor technical correction rather than a recession or a depression." Pike and others look ahead to a much busier time next year aboard the U.S.-led International Space Station. The station is awaiting a Russian-built component called the Service Module that will be capable of housing people. "I'm not sure what difference it would have made to have more people in space this year, whether that would have equated to more public support for NASA," says Marcia Smith, a space analyst at the Congressional Research Service. "I'm not sure how significant it is in the long-term picture. You had them up for 10 years (on Mir) and we've had a lot of people in space over the decades accumulating a lot of data." Whatever data comes in the years ahead, it won't be gathered aboard Mir.Transition from Mir to ISS
Since its last crew left in August, the 140-ton Mir space station has been losing about 200 yards of altitude each day. Now circling about 200 miles above Earth, the station is expected to be brought down to a fiery end in the atmosphere sometime next year. NASA is now in transition between Mir and the International Space Station, "and transitions are always hard," says Lori Garver, NASA associate administrator for policy and planning. "We knew this year would be difficult. But we are gearing up for a permanent human presence which will dwarf human time on orbit so far." The new year may find a new player in the space scene. While Mir floated empty, China put the world on notice that it soon intends to put its own citizens into space.China joins the space crowd
In late November, the Chinese launched and recovered an unmanned test spacecraft in a breakthrough mission that could mean a manned flight as early as next year. The bell-shaped capsule, similar to Russia's Soyuz module, was launched atop a Long March rocket from Jiuquan in China's northwest Gansu province. Called Shenshou or "God ship," it was in space for 21 hours and orbited Earth 14 times. It used braking rockets and a parachute to land as planned in central Inner Mongolia. "You're starting to get some folks moving into the neighborhood," Pike says. "I'm assuming not only will we see some activity out of the Chinese but it's going to be an eventful year with the station because once it achieves permanent occupancy we will have established a toehold in space and we will not retreat from it." The only problem, as some see it, is that the station's fate is linked with Russia's ability to deliver the all-important crew quarters. No crew quarters, no permanent presence in space.'Tough situation right now'
"Human space exploration is in a real tough situation right now," says Rich Kolker, a space analyst in Merritt Island, Fla., with the non-profit Clear Lake Group. "It's tied completely to the International Space Station and the station is in a no-win scenario," he said. "They can't go any further until the Russians launch the Service Module and the Russians seem unable or unwilling to launch it," Kolker said. "A year from now, we may be where we are today, waiting for the Russians to launch the Service Module. Next year could easily be no more active than this year was." Was it hopelessly naïve to think three decades ago that space travel at the close of the 20th century would be as routine as hopping aboard an airliner? NASA's Garver doesn't think so. "If you look at where we were less than 100 years ago, we measured the Wright brothers flight in yards. Now, in under 100 years, we went to the moon, sent out robotic probes that have mapped every planet but one and we have humans going to space on a fairly regular basis," she says. "The futurists who look 10 to 15 years in the future almost consistently overestimate what can happen. But if they look 50 to 100 years out, they almost always underestimate things."Remember Christopher Columbus?
If opening the space frontier seems to be taking a lot longer and moving a lot slower than people thought, Pike says, the public should recall the experience of explorer Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World. "People tend to forget how slowly things moved," Pike says. "It took the Europeans several decades to figure out what the New World was good for. More than a century passed between Columbus discovering the New World and the first settlements. It's not as though the Pilgrims jumped on the first ship out." The same is true of space exploration, he adds. "It's important to keep in perspective the magnitude of the undertaking. Humanity is small and the cosmos is large and people seriously underestimated the difficulty of the problem," Pike says. "We made a bizarre amount of progress in the first 15 years of the space age and if people took that rate of progress as being normal, then all these predictions about hotels on the moon were realistic," he said. "But it turns out, of course, that space is much more difficult than people think," Pike says. "Just because NASA makes the difficult look easy doesn't mean it is easy." Copyright ©1999 space.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
