MONDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2013 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside In small Ford CAMPUS Fiesta, a • Back to school for Aspire Academy’s grand illusion student-athletes P | 5 P | 11 MARKETPLACE • 70 movies every month in OSN’s new season P | 6 HEALTH 2013: A SPACE • Looking for lessons in cancer’s ‘super responders’ CONUNDRUM P | 7 FILM • Woody Allen to be honoured at Golden Globes The space station P | 8-9 is widely praised as an engineering marvel, but it TECHNOLOGY didn’t come cheap. • 50 best Android apps for kids $100bn has been from 2013 poured in to set up the programme. P | 12 The United States and its partners Learn Arabic need to make a • Learn commonly tough call: Keep used Arabic words the station flying? and their meanings Or bring it down? P | 13 2 PLUS | MONDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2013 COVER STORY SPACE STATION: To keep or destroy By Joel Achenbach as an engineering marvel, but it didn’t that do zero-gravity experiments also laptop computers everywhere and come cheap. The United States has need to know soon whether “there’s a tools Velcroed to the walls. It’s clut- ong ago, in a dreamier era, poured close to $100bn into the pro- horizon for the station beyond 2020,” tered. New crews famously have to go space stations were imagined gramme and is contributing about he said. on treasure hunts to find things that as portals to the heavens. In $3bn a year to the station’s operation. As the decision makers in the US have vanished. Lthe 1968 movie 2001: A Space Space policy experts warn that, with- government discuss the fate of the Mundane problems such as clogged Odyssey, the huge structure twirled in out a significant boost in budget, Nasa orbital laboratory, they face tough filters and mold formation provide orbit, aesthetically sublime, a relaxing will not be able to keep running the questions about the future of Nasa lessons for an eventual human mis- way station for astronauts heading to station and simultaneously carry out in a broader sense. The dean of space sion to Mars. On a Mars voyage there the moon. It featured a Hilton and a new, costly deep-space missions. policy analysts, John Logsdon, former would be no way to turn back half- Howard Johnson’s. The United States and its partners director of the Space Policy Institute way, so engineers have to understand The international space station of need to make a tough call: Keep the at George Washington University, said in advance what could go disastrously the 21st century isn’t quite as beauti- station flying? Or bring it down? of Nasa: “It was not given a strate- wrong. ful as that movie version, and it’s not a Boeing, the prime contractor, is gic purpose after Apollo. Why does it The Apollo model of spaceflight puts gateway to anywhere else. It’s a labora- trying to prove that the station’s exist? What do you want to do?” the emphasis on destination; the space tory focused on scientific experiments. components can hold up through at Although it’s true that the interna- station model puts the emphasis on Usually there are six people aboard. least 2028. Three years ago, Congress tional space station (ISS) never strays simply living in space, in that alien When they leave, they go back home, extended funding for the station far from Earth, cosmically speaking, environment. down to Earth. Three came home through 2020, and Nasa’s international it has the virtue of showing what life “For folks like me, who consider Wednesday, landing in Kazakhstan. partners — Russia, Japan, Canada and in space is really like. The PowerPoint Apollo a poor model for the future The space station circles the planet the European Space Agency — have version of space travel is always easier of human exploration, the ISS is the at an altitude of about 250 miles. Faint made a similar commitment. But than the real thing. There are things essential demonstration site and step- traces of atmosphere exert a drag on behind the scenes, Nasa officials are that reveal themselves only in zero ping stone for a sustained future in it, so the station must be boosted reg- working to persuade the White House gravity. space with humans,” senior Nasa sci- ularly to stay in orbit. In the grand to make a decision, pronto, to keep the “Stiction,” for example — the way entist Harley Thronson said. scheme of things, the space station orbital laboratory flying after 2020. delicate materials stick together with- Space is perhaps the most danger- simply isn’t very far away. The station The alternative is to crash the mas- out gravity to tug them apart. There’s ous place that people have ever lived has a phone number with a Houston sive structure into the South Pacific. no way to replicate that on Earth. continuously. A stray pebble or piece of area code. The decision needs to be made in Dust has no urge to settle down, and space junk could puncture the shell of Advocates for human space explora- 2014, said William Gerstenmaier, the so it clogs air filters faster than engi- the structure and lead to rapid depres- tion insist that Nasa must think big- top Nasa official for human spaceflight. neers had once anticipated. Bacteria surization. Day in, day out, ammonia ger, developing missions beyond Low Companies such as SpaceX and grow in odd corners and crannies. is a concern. It is critical to the sta- Earth Orbit, into deeper space — per- Sierra Nevada, which are competing Mysterious disks of zinc oxide have tion’s cooling system, but it is also haps back to the moon, or to an aster- for a Nasa contract to carry astro- stopped up a water line, defying highly toxic. oid, and certainly to Mars eventually. nauts to the station, need to know that explanation. “Ammonia will kill you in one But Nasa has been struggling for their market isn’t going to vanish in In theory, equipment has its own breath,” said Chris Hadfield, perhaps years to square ambitions with budg- 2020, he said. Scientists, pharmaceuti- storage space. But that’s not how the most famous astronaut of the 21st ets. The space station is widely praised cal companies and other organizations the place looks in real life. There are century. PLUS | MONDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2013 3 Hadfield knows that most people aren’t paying attention to the men and women passing by overhead. That’s another striking feature of life in space: It’s relatively anonymous. You can go around the world 16 times a day, but few of the 7 billion people down below will ever know your name. Many astronauts do their best to connect to the earthlings. Astronauts tweet and update Facebook pages. A few months back, Hadfield made a humdinger of a music video — cover- ing David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity” — that has more than 17 million views on YouTube. Hadfield also made videos about eve- ryday life in space. Bodily fluids go in strange directions. Your vision blurs, your nose feels stuffy, and you lose your sense of taste. Water is so dominated by surface tension that it can migrate around your scalp and over your face, as if seeking a hole to invade. In zero gravity, a flame burns spheri- cally — a ball of fire. Experiments on the ISS have touched on fluid dynamics, crystal for- mation and changes in bacterial viru- lence. Next year, 20 to 60 rodents will come aboard as research subjects. And the astronauts themselves are under the microscope, revealing the effects are baby wipes,” astronaut Doug one, too. In his 1984 State of the Union 100 rocket and space shuttle launches of weightlessness and space radiation. Wheelock said. Address, he vowed to build a space to ferry components to orbit, and Nasa and the Russian Federal Space He also likes the Russian towels. station within a decade. “We can follow an astonishing 160 spacewalks, the Agency plan to send astronauts to the They have a lot of texture, ideal for our dreams to distant stars, living and orbital laboratory — as broad as a ISS for an entire year, starting in the rubbing down a body. Without a working in space for peaceful, economic football field, including end zones — spring of 2015. shower, dead skin stays put and grows and scientific gain,” Reagan said. was finally finished in 2011. The ISS Astronauts talk about the tran- itchy. Early estimates put the construction is modular, with one main truss lined scendent experience of seeing the world “A towel with some texture on it is cost at $8.8bn, but the government with protruding elements and framed without political borders, with the thin like heaven, because you can get all the spent roughly that much simply by symmetrical solar arrays, the whole blue line of the protective atmosphere. dead skin off you,” Wheelock said. “It designing the laboratory on paper thing rather insectoid, like something Hadfield would often know where the feels so good, psychologically.” while Congress debated whether to that would make a buzzing sound if a station was over the surface, simply Astronaut Mike Fincke spent his build it, said Howard McCurdy, an tiny version flew by your ear. by checking out the colour of the light down time reading science fiction, American University professor of During a deployment of solar arrays shining up through the cupola, the nest including the Arthur C Clarke novel public affairs and author of The Space in 2007, one of the arrays suffered a of windows facing the planet.