The High Frontier: An Easier Way by Tom Marotta & Al Globus

Author:Tom Marotta & Al Globus [Marotta, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2018-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

How to Build Space Settlements

If you want to build a house, you’d call a contractor. If you want to build a car, you might call an automotive engineer. But who do you call when you want to build a space station? You call Russia, that’s who.

While the United States was exploring the Moon, the Soviet Union experimented with space stations. Humanity’s first outpost in space—Salyut 1—was built by the Russians in 1971[140]. Over the course of the next two decades the USSR became the undisputed world champion of space station construction, deploying over half a dozen before the fall of the Berlin Wall[141]. The Soviets accrued years of space station experience compared to the few months the US had with Skylab. In the 1990s it was smart American policy to invite the Russian Federation to participate in the International Space Station (ISS). Not only for geopolitical purposes (the primary reason[142]) but also for technical purposes. Building space stations is hard and at the time nobody had more expertise than the Russians.

Indeed, the ISS is a marvel of international cooperation as well as technological achievement. It was built using a combination of high-tech, remotely-operated robotic arms as well as good, old-fashioned elbow grease. A multinational team of space-suited astronauts performed dozens of spacewalks, or extravehicular activities (EVAs) in NASA parlance, to bolt the station together[143]. Astronauts still ‘go outside’ on a regular basis to perform maintenance.

Despite their regularity, however, spacewalks are still extremely dangerous. No one knows this better than a Sicilian fighter jock named Luca Parmitano.

Luca Parmitano: Drowning in a Fishbowl

At the time of his infamous spacewalk, Lt. Colonel Parmitano was the youngest person ever assigned to a long-duration ISS mission, being only 36 years old[144]. Despite his age, however, he had extensive experience in challenging situations. As a test pilot for the Italian Air Force he had over 2000 hours of flying time in over 40 aircraft, many of them high-performance jets. No stranger to risky situations, he was an avid scuba diver, snowboarder and skydiver[145].

On July 16, 2013 he and fellow astronaut Chris Cassidy donned their spacesuits and ventured outside[146]. Their mission was fairly routine—to repair some wiring and do a few other mundane tasks. Well, as mundane as putting on a spacesuit can be while entering the lethal vacuum of space, hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth. With nothing but a few layers of kevlar, plastic, and glass between you and total annihilation.

But Parmitano and Cassidy had trained for months for this particular spacewalk. Not only were they well-trained but they were also consummate professionals—not at all the type to panic under pressure. That’s probably why Parmitano wasn’t concerned, at first, when he started to drown inside his spacesuit.

About forty-five minutes into the EVA Parmitano radioed down to Mission Control that he felt a steady stream of water around the base of his neck. Mission Control asked him if it was perspiration—construction in zero gravity is back-breaking work and astronauts have been known to work up a sweat while bolting the ISS together—but it was not.

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