Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Duggins Pat

Author:Duggins, Pat [Duggins, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2011-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Macy’s Meets Gimbels, NASA Style

NASA would be working with the Russians for the first time since Apollo-Soyuz in 1975, and not everyone was comfortable about it. By docking the shuttle to Mir as a test bed for building the International Space Station, NASA appeared to be giving the shuttle the true mission it had lacked for years. Still, critics in the United States complained that space policy was becoming foreign policy and that joint missions with the former super-power were little more than foreign aid with spacesuits.

Concerns over the joint space station project were also being voiced in the former Soviet Union, but they were a bit different. Support for the Russian space program was fading as well. The new joint space station was seen as a way to preserve both aerospace jobs and aerospace technology following the fall of communism.16

Most Russians could be counted on to know how long the Mir station had been in orbit, but enthusiasm among Russian youth wasn’t what it once was. “If you ask young men, they would not remember Yuri Gagarin,” observes Roald Sagdeev. “John Lennon and Paul McCartney maybe. The Beatles left a bigger impact on the minds of young people than Sputnik.” Plans were made for joint missions, and space shuttle flights were scheduled to take the baby steps leading to the construction of the International Space Station.

NASA had a general idea of how the new outpost would be built in orbit. The cluster of crew modules and other pieces had to be prefabricated, built in chunks that could fit in the cargo bay of the space shuttle. The design had a long spinelike framework where the crew cabins would be attached. The new station would need electricity, and that meant long winglike solar power panels to convert sunlight into energy. Those parts would have to be bolted to the station’s frame as well.

Spacewalkers in 1985 had tried to float outside the shuttle and assemble a practice frame by hand, which didn’t work. The actual structure would need power and computer data cables and coolant lines running through it like spaghetti, and that would be too complicated for people to do while in orbit. All of these parts would have to be fully built on the ground and taken up on successive shuttle flights.

None of this would be possible if the shuttle couldn’t rendezvous and dock with the orbiting complex, and that’s where the joint flights aboard the Mir station proved invaluable. Shuttle crews could practice many of the skills they needed by docking with Mir. Then NASA could build the new outpost. Baby step number one was a rendezvous in early 1995 by space shuttle Discovery.

Veteran astronaut Jim Wetherbee led the six-member crew, which included the first woman to act as copilot of the shuttle, Eileen Collins. Michael Foale, Janice Voss, and Bernard Harris, also veteran astronauts, rounded out the crew along with cosmonaut Vladimir Titov. Titov’s job was to operate the radio during the close approach and to speak with his colleagues aboard Mir in rapid-fire Russian.

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