Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of Human Spaceflight
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22785-looking back cover 11/20/02 1:42 PM Page 1 Looking Backward, ofU.S.Years LookingForward—Forty HumanSpaceflightSymposium National Aeronautics and Space Administration Looking Backward, Looking Forward Stephen J.GarberNASASP-2002-4107 The NASA History Series forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations NASA History Office Washington, DC 2002 NASA SP-2002-4107 Edited by Stephen J. Garber 22785-looking back cover 11/20/02 1:42 PM Page 2 About the cover illustration: “T + 30 Seconds” by Vincent Cavallero is a powerful abstract view of a space launch. NASA Image 74-HC-402. 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page i Looking Backward, Looking Forward forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium 8 May 2001 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page ii 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page iii NASA SP-2002-4107 Looking Backward, Looking Forward forty years of u.s. human spaceflight symposium Edited by Stephen J. Garber The NASA History Series National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations NASA History Office Washington, DC 2002 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page iv Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S. Human Spaceflight Symposium / edited by Stephen J. Garber. p. cm. -- (The NASA history series) (NASA SP-2002-4107) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Astronautics--United States--History. 2. Manned space flight--History. I. Garber, Stephen J. II. Series. III. NASA SP-2002-4107. TL789.8.U5 L66 2002 629.45’009--dc21 2002014550 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page v Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments—Stephen J. Garber . .1 Foreword Introduction—John M. Logsdon . .15 Opening Remarks—Daniel S. Goldin . .19 Keynote Address Human Spaceflight and American Society: The Record So Far—Charles Murray . .25 Perspectives on the Past Forty Years of Human Spaceflight The Spaceflight Revolution Revisited —William Sims Bainbridge . .39 Mutual Influences: U.S.S.R.-U.S. Interactions During the Space Race—Asif Siddiqi . .65 Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible—Frederick D. Gregory . .73 What If? Paths Not Taken—John M. Logsdon . .81 The Experience of Spaceflight Apollo and Beyond—Buzz Aldrin . .91 Breaking in the Space Shuttle—Robert Crippen . .101 Going Commercial—Charles Walker . .107 Science in Orbit—Mary Ellen Weber . .117 Training for the Future—T. J. Creamer . .123 v 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page vi Looking Backward, Looking Forward Perspectives on the Next Forty Years of Human Spaceflight Expanding the Frontiers of Knowledge —Neil de Grasse Tyson . .127 Pushing Human Frontiers—Robert Zubrin . .137 About an Element of Human Greatness —Homer Hickam . .149 The Ethics of Human Spaceflight—Laurie Zoloth . .165 Future Visions for Scientific Human Exploration—James Garvin . .189 The International Space Station and the Future of Human Spaceflight Preparing for New Challenges—William Shepherd . .203 About the Authors . .217 The NASA History Series . .235 vi 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 1 Preface and Acknowledgments—Stephen J. Garber 1 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 2 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 3 Preface and Acknowledgments Human spaceflight is the driver for most activities that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under- takes. While NASA certainly has a rich aviation research heritage and has also done pathbreaking scientific and applications work using robotic spacecraft, human spaceflight is a difficult and expensive endeavor that engenders great popular enthusiasm and support for NASA. Much of this public interest stems from pushing boundaries of adventure, by exploring the unique and challenging physical environment of space. Humans can also perform tasks in space that machines cannot. We can think, analyze, and make judgment calls based on experience and intuition in real time. In little more than forty years, we have gone from thinking, planning, and hoping that humans will enter space to having rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts permanently living aboard an International Space Station (ISS). We have moved from the Cold War, which set the historical context for super- power competition in space during the 1960s, to joint ISS missions involving over a dozen cooperating nations. Not only have humans proved that it is possible to survive in the harsh physical environment of space, but astronauts and cosmonauts have conducted important scientific and engineering feats in space. We’ve discovered that microgravity is a unique labo- ratory setting that is potentially useful for scientists in a broad array of disciplines such as pharmacology, materials science, and physics, as well as more obvious fields such as astronomy. The pool of people who have flown in space has also broadened tremendously in the past forty years. We have moved from a group of seven handpicked men that were trained as military 3 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 4 Looking Backward, Looking Forward test pilots to men and women of many national and professional backgrounds. Diversity has become an avowed goal of most fed- eral agencies, including NASA, so that people of many ethnici- ties and personal backgrounds not only fly in space but serve in key roles on the ground. Older astronauts in their sixties and even seventies have flown in space. Beyond pilots and com- manders, NASA now trains scientists and engineers as payload specialists to fly in space. Even more than the payload specialists who are not “career astronauts,” NASA has tried to bring other civilians, such as teachers, into space. The issues of diversity in general and of civilians in space in particular have ebbed and flowed in importance over time but continue to be relevant. In recent history, the subject of paying tourists in space has come to the forefront. This obviously relates to the ongoing topic of commercial- ization. Spaceflight has always been expensive, but in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, the federal government began looking at ways to privatize certain space activities. Different individuals in the commercial sector have expressed varying degrees of interest in making human spaceflight a profitable endeavor. While robotic applications satellites such as remote sensing and com- munications have been significant ventures since the early 1960s, both the government and the private sector have warmed to commercialization of human spaceflight somewhat later. In the mid-1990s, NASA turned over certain key operational activities of the Space Shuttle to the private United Space Alliance in an attempt to lower the government’s costs for “routine opera- tions.” Recently, NASA has also entered into several high-profile 4 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 5 Preface and Acknowledgments joint agreements with private companies that are interested in conducting specific experiments, selling data, or targeting mar- keting opportunities in space. Whether these activities will turn out to be profitable or otherwise worthwhile remains to be seen, but commercialization efforts certainly have been an important force in space history. The history of human spaceflight has also been shaped signif- icantly by technologies that were initially developed outside the aerospace sector. The computer and biotechnology revolutions have had major impacts on how space operations are planned and executed. In addition to exponential increases in computing power, the advent of digital microelectronics has made fly-by-wire technology possible, which in turn has improved safety. Like computers, advances in biotechnology enable new experiments, knowledge, safety, and health in space; space research also syn- ergistically benefits the biotechnology industry. One technology that thus far has proved elusive is an inex- pensive, reliable launch vehicle to improve human access to space. There are many reasons this has proved problematic. Perhaps the first is that escaping Earth’s gravitational pull has continued to be an inherently difficult task technically. Secondly, many knowledgeable people would argue that the government has not provided sufficient financial resources to address this problem after the end of the space race and Cold War. While commercialization still looms large in the space context, no pri- vate companies have devoted truly significant resources to address this problem because they typically believe that their investment will not be rewarded any time soon, and because they 5 22785-looking back book final 2 11/20/02 1:13 PM Page 6 Looking Backward, Looking Forward often view such research problems as the government’s domain. Some people even contend that the real cost of launching humans into space is the unnecessary redundancy in personnel costs of having a “standing army” to launch spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle. According to this controversial line of thinking, the launch technology per se is not unduly expensive, but we need a different paradigm for ensuring that we can launch people into space with reasonable safety and cost factors. Safety has always been and always should be a primary concern of any program that puts people in a dangerous envi- ronment such as space. Nevertheless, our views of safety have evolved historically. Hopefully we have learned to be more “proactive” in preventing accidents, but what does this mean, and how is this actually implemented in practice? Over the past several decades, a growing body of social science literature on risk assessment and management has emerged, but few scholars have seriously analyzed risk in spaceflight from such a perspective. What qualifies as an acceptable risk for a robotic spaceflight may obviously be totally unacceptable in the human context.