Do We Still Have the Right Stuff?
July 13, 2009
We went to the moon 40 years ago flying by the seat of our pants.
The years from 1968 -1972 to will be remembered as the pioneering days when fearless humans barnstormed the moon in spacecraft comparatively as fragile as the biplanes of WWI. The Apollo lunar lander was so lightweight that an astronaut could kick a hole in the side of it, if not careful.
The Apollo Command Module navigated to the moon using a high-tech sextant. The landing computer on the Lunar Module -- far less powerful than an Iphone – was so overwhelmed with tasks it kept rebooting during the critical moment Eagle’s descent on July 20, 1969. Commander Neil Armstrong, who must have been born without a nervous system, adroitly took manual control to skirt by a dangerous crater and boulder field, with just a few seconds of propellant left.
Back then we had the national will to achieve success at any cost.
Could we do it today? Or have we become such a risk-adverse society that hurting humans across the cold dark vacuum of space to other worlds will never be fully realized?
Let’s fast forward to 2004. In the shadow of the tragic Columbia space shuttle accident that killed the entire seven-person crew, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe cancelled the last scheduled servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope as “too dangerous.” The brave astronaut crew was ready to go, but for all practical purposes was silenced under the NASA bureaucracy.
Now, Hubble is only 350 mile up, no quite 1/1000th the distance that we leapfrogged to the moon. The issue was that the orbiter would not have a safe haven to dock -- the International Space Station -- should its thermal tiles be damaged on launch to Hubble.
Under pressure from Congress and the public, the following NASA administrator, Mike Griffin, reinstated the Hubble servicing mission with the proviso that a second “rescue shuttle” be located on a launch pad. The Hubble mission came off as a spectacular success last May thanks to the perseverance and skills of the STS-125 crew.
Forty years ago there were no Project Apollo rescue vehicles. The White House had a protocol and PR plan in place should an Apollo crew be stranded on the moon and die. That was all. The near fatal Apollo 13 was on its own to make a hasty return to Earth before the oxygen ran out. (Contrary to urban legend astronauts did not carry “suicide capsules” in the event they were stranded. The idea was discussed but never implemented.)
The Apollo missions were so meticulously planned and executed, that in hindsight it’s hard to believe that we lost two full astronaut crews in the history of the shuttle program due to a bloated NASA bureaucracy, mismanagement, and, as always, incredibly bad luck (a specific string of non-fault tolerant events had to happen in sequence to cause the Challenger and Columbia disasters).
In the broader sense, any loss of crew should not come as a surprise when you look all the crashes and deaths that accompanied the history of aviation over the past century.
Two spectacular zeppelin crashes, the Hindenburg being the most noteworthy, brought a hiatus to transoceanic air travel. Bolstered by the aeronautic technology developed during WWII, transoceanic flight became commonplace in the 1950s.
However, the end of the zeppelin era was not due to timidity. The realization that zeppelins were costly, that they required huge ground crews, and that they were weather sensitive, led to their downfall. This has parallels to the space shuttle fleet. As I’m writing this piece the headline popping up on news feeds is “Shuttle launch delayed due to lighting strikes.”
The bottom line is that space travel will be inherently dangerous for a long time to come. At least until we build the space elevator, as long dreamt of by engineers and science fiction writers.
Despite that, space supporters are ebullient over the Virgin Galactic plan to send tourists on trips to the fringe of space aboard the popular Space Ship One, that made the first privately funded successful suborbital flight in June 2004.
Their website blurb reads like a Caribbean cruise pamphlet – but with emphasis on safety:
“Virgin's vast experience in aviation, adventure, luxury travel and cutting-edge design, . . .will ensure an unforgettable experience unlike any other available to mankind. With safety at the forefront, our unique spacecraft is being designed at Rutan's base in Mojave, California alongside a concerted research and development program.”
Hawaii is now considering spending $500,000 to apply for a spaceport license from the federal government as a first step toward allowing commercial space travel from the islands.
Tourists would pay $200,000 for a weeklong package including spaceflight training, resort accommodations, and short test flights to simulate weightlessness. Five tourists would then board a rocket plane on the big island of Hawaii, accelerate to 3,500 mph to zoom to an altitude of 60 miles above the Earth. The spaceplane would then flip over and barrel down to Honolulu on the island of Oahu.
Now, these flights are glorified roller coaster rides rather than real space travel. Passengers are not going into Earth orbit, which requires far more power and is proportionally more dangerous. (Most the energy expelled to get you into orbit has to be dumped, as aerodynamic frictional heating, to bring you back to the ground.)
But if space tourism blooms, what will happen when the first rocket-load of tourists dies in a tragic mishap. Will commercial space travel go the way of the zeppelin, or will our pioneering tenacity – which built the United States – continue?
On Apollo 11’s 40th anniversary, I feel very uncertain about our future in space. Are we as a society up to the challenges, and do we have the political will?
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