Space flight is risky business. But the level of risk that now exists aboard Mir, the crippled Russian space station, suddenly has made the final frontier more forbidding.
Jinxed by a series of near-disasters in the last six months that include two fires, the first collision in orbit, loss of oxygen and several power failures, Mir is suffering crises that raise serious questions about the future of manned space flight.
Foremost among the concerns is whether Mir’s problems will sink future cooperation with the Russians in space.
The U.S. has paid Russia more than $400 million to allow seven astronauts long-term access to Mir. Four Americans already have flown on the station, and one is presently on board.
But it is growing increasingly unlikely that the remaining two astronauts will ever step foot on Mir, especially if the bus-sized station cannot be repaired adequately.
Acknowledging Mir’s precarious situation last week, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin told the Senate Commerce, Space and Transportation Committee that the next astronaut, Navy scientist Wendy Lawrence, won’t be sent up until he determines it is absolutely safe.
In an unprecedented move, NASA set up three separate teams to assess Mir’s safety.
Mir’s troubles even may jeopardize U.S. plans to build a spanking new space station by 2003 in conjunction with 13 other countries, particularly Russia.
“People in both countries who think this cooperation is a bad idea will use Mir’s problems to try to torpedo the international space station,” predicted John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists.
Furthermore, Mir’s near collapse emphasizes the dangers of space travel and that the planned multibillion-dollar international space station likely will experience serious accidents.
“American proponents assume there’s a contrast between the junky, old, ratty Russian station that’s having all these problems and the new, bright, shiny, clean American station that isn’t going to have any problems,” Pike said.
“In the real world, space stations have problems,” he said. “I can guarantee that we’re going to get a year or two into the next space station, and it’s going to have all kinds of problems.”
Construction of the 290-foot by 356-foot, 470-ton international space station is expected to start next year. Nineteen billion dollars already has been spent on the station, and another $30 billion is likely to be spent before it is completed.
Although it seems that the international space station has solid support in Congress–primarily because NASA made sure that almost every congressional district has a space station contractor–that support could evaporate quickly.
It has happened before.
When the American public lost interest in the Apollo program after the first few flights to the moon, NASA canceled the remaining three moon landings.
The $11 billion Superconducting Super Collider, a gigantic atom smasher under construction in Texas, fell victim to a lack of interest and budget cutting after $2 billion had been spent.
The drama unfolding aboard Mir sends chills down the spines of most people.
The latest snafu, an accidentally disconnected power line, caused the station to lose its orientation and begin drifting. The crew scrambled into the Soyuz module to prepare for an escape if they lost control of Mir.
Although an emergency escape vehicle is ready to take the crew to safety, Mir has flirted with catastrophe. “This is not the sort of thing that you want to have happen, even though you know it will happen,” Pike said.
On the positive side, the incredible teamwork displayed by the revolving teams of Russian cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts in dealing with Mir’s many problems suggests that NASA and the Russian space agency may be able to get along.
“What we have found is that, working together, we can address a major problem, stabilize it, and develop a plan to fix it,” said John Logdson, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.
But fixing Mir has proved to be too much for the current crew members. Physically exhausted and psychologically drained, the two Russians aboard are to be replaced by a new team that is training to make the repairs. The American aloft, Michael Foale, will remain to finish his stint.
Some observers wonder whether the situation aboard Mir really is more dangerous than officials are willing to admit. After all, it is the nature of the Russian space program, as well as NASA, to downplay troubles.
It wasn’t until a month after a fire aboard Mir earlier this year that U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger revealed that the conflagration had blocked one of two escape vehicles.
At the time, six crew members were aboard. If one of the escape Soyuzes had been knocked out, three members would have been stranded in orbit in a burning ship.
The fire was extinguished quickly, but it already had filled Mir with thick smoke and left the crew shaken.
Many space experts, moreover, share growing doubts that Mir can be fixed up to lend itself again to good science.
“We must make sure that we don’t characterize the situation on Mir as an opportunity when it may be a higher risk than it’s worth,” said Roberta Gross, NASA’s inspector general, at last week’s Senate meeting.
Yet Mir remains important to Russia and the U.S., and both countries will try to get it back in operation. Russia is desperate to salvage Mir to maintain its reputation as a major figure in space. The U.S. wants to keep Russian rocket scientists busy building space stations instead of missiles for rogue countries.
The U.S.-led international space station will require more than 40 shuttle flights to ferry equipment and crews into orbit and more than 900 hours of spacewalks to put the pieces together.
But whether the pieces ever will be put in place depends on what Congress and the American public make of Mir’s perils and what kind of spin NASA can put on them.
The most serious question arising from the trouble-plagued craft is whether the U.S. can trust Russian technology. Has the breakup of the Soviet Union and consequent economic woes so eroded the Russians’ ability to perform safely in space that it would be unwise for the U.S. to count on them as a partner?
“If we weren’t entirely secure about their technology before, when the Soviet Union was seemingly strong, how much more wary must we be over counting on Russian cooperation and risking our own systems?” said Walter McDougall, a space historian at the University of Pennsylvania.
“That’s going to be something that NASA is going to have to talk around, or somehow persuade Congress–that the Russians can still be trusted in terms of their technology,” McDougall said.
Mir’s vulnerability also generates doubts about the advisability of building a big space station at all. Is it too dangerous? Is it too expensive.
“A 2003-year space station will be several generations more sophisticated than the old Russian Mir, but how can we be sure that this huge investment on our part is not going to suffer the same high accident risk as Mir?” McDougall noted.
The Russians once bragged that Mir would become the core of a “cosmograd,” a huge space city that would shine well into the 21st Century.
Today, the 11-year-old station’s future doesn’t look very bright. Despite two years of bookings from paying foreign customers, Mir is likely to be abandoned in a few years. Eventually it will fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up.
Yet, powerful reasons exist for going ahead with the international station.
One is bragging rights. The U.S. gains in the eyes of the world for being No. 1 in space.
Another reason is money. Building the station will create high-tech jobs and help boost the economy.
A third reason is that the station will require the development of new technology that will help the U.S. maintain its lead in a booming world. America’s entrance into the space race four decades ago, for instance, greatly accelerated the development of computers.
And, finally, space is still the new frontier. From an orbital vantage point there is a lot that can be learned about the Earth below and the universe above.
