A document from the CQ Researcher archives: Report Outline
Coping with Disaster
New Economic Frontier
Space Station and Beyond
Special Focus Coping with Disaster Uncertainty Over Space Problem's Future Dick Scobee, commander of the ill-fated shuttle Challenger, knew it would happen. “One day one of these things is going to blow up,” he once told a reporter in a private moment. It was a gut feeling widely shared by America's elite astronaut corps, and even by those who worked behind the scenes. “Anyone who has had any connection with the shuttle program has felt someday this would come,” said Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, one of America's astronaut heroes. No one was prepared, however, for the grim eventuality when it struck Jan. 28 at 11:39 on a cloudless south Florida morning. One moment Challenger, the most technologically advanced machine every built, arched toward the heavens as flawlessly as the 24 shuttles that had gone before it. The next moment, it disintegrated in a powerful explosion, killing the crew of six astronauts and a guest passenger, high school teacher Christa McAuliffe. The craft flew for only 73 seconds. After 56 previous manned missions over the past 25 years, these were America's first deaths in flight, although others occurred on the ground. Scobee had said he hoped such a disaster would not end the shuttle program. President Reagan told the nation in a televised address that evening that the shuttle loss, while painful for all Americans, did nothing to diminish his faith in the U.S. space program. A week later in his State of the Union message to Congress, Reagan said: “We're going forward with our shuttle flights. We're going forward to build our space station.” From Capitol Hill to Main Street, Americans seemed to share the president's commitment to push ahead into the “last frontier.” What also continues, certainly now with more intensity, is the longstanding debate over whether the United States has invested too much money—nearly $30 billion on the shuttle alone—and pride in manned space travel, While no one has suggested that the shuttle be scrapped, many question whether it was wise for the nation to stake its entire space program on the shuttle. Without it, the U.S. space exploration is grounded. None of the remaining three shuttles will fly again until it is determined what happened to Challenger and the problem is fixed. Reagan on Feb. 3 appointed a 12-member independent commission to take over the investigation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and to report its findings within 120 days. William P. Rogers, a former secretary of state and attorney general, was named chairman of the panel and Neil A. Armstrong, the former astronaut, co-chairman. The right-side solid booster rocket is the prime suspect in the tragic explosion, William R. Graham, NASA's acting administrator, revealed after four days of intensive agency investigation. Agency photographs, released for the first time Feb. 1, showed an abnormal plume of fire and smoke coming from the right booster rocket 13.5 seconds before the explosion. Investigators are considering a number of explanations for the flame, including a ruptured seam where two segments of the booster are joined, a hole burned through the booster's steel casing, poorly packed fuel or fuel exposed to ground temperatures below the recommended 40 degrees. The discovery of the flame led some NASA officials to speculate that corrective actions could be taken quickly enough for shuttle missions to resume as early as June. Meanwhile, NASA has no unmanned rockets to send scientific or commercial satellites into orbit. Companies interested in human-tended space manufacturing are stranded on Earth. Nor can the Pentagon, the shuttle's biggest customer, readily switch to unmanned rockets. Nearly all military satellites have been designed for shuttle launch. Although the Air Force has 42 booster rockets on hand, most satellites would require expensive refitting for rocket launch. While the shuttles are grounded, the Pentagon also has no way to orbit secret payloads for the president's space-based anti-missile defense system, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Nowhere will the policy debate over manned-vs.-unmanned space flight be more thoroughly aired than in Congress, the source of funds for the civilian space program. NASA cannot maintain its ambitious shuttle schedule, 12 more launches this year and 24 a year by 1988, with the three remaining $1.2 billion vehicles. Some congressional leaders already are saying they support building a new shuttle, projected to cost $2 billion. “I favor a fourth orbiter,” said Rep. Edward P. Boland, D-Mass., head of the subcommittee that handles appropriations for the space program, “I don't think NASA can meet its requirements for space flight without it.” As an alternative, it may be time to accelerate plans for a new expendable launch rocket to handle satellites and experiments not requiring human tending, said Thomas O. Paine, chairman of the National Space Commission and a former NASA administrator. The presidential commission was appointed to develop national goals for space exploration over the next 20 years. It already had planned to recommend development of a new, expendable launch rocket for delivery in the mid-1990s. Congress, however, will find itself in a fiscal bind no matter what course it takes. Even before the shuttle explosion, NASA's budget, like most federal spending, was in jeopardy of deep cuts because of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction law mandating a balanced federal budget by 1991. Although the president has proposed to increase NASA's fiscal 1987 budget by $400 million, from $7.3 billion to $7.7 billion, the budget does not reflect the effects of the shuttle disaster nor does it account for the potential impact of Gram-Rudman-Hollings, according to a NASA spokesman. Despite the overall increase, the proposed budget cut NASA's request for space station development by $190 million, to $410 million. But Graham, the acting NASA administrator, has said the agency still has a chance to launch the space station by 1994. While America mourns the loss of Challenger, one possible beneficiary of the tragedy is the rival European space program. The French-developed Ariane rocket has been in stiff competition with the shuttle for satellite launches since 1982. A delay in the U.S. space program may steer additional customers to Ariane. Europeans may also choose to hasten development of a French-designed mini-shuttle, called Hermes, and a heavy-lift rocket to put it into orbit. Shattered Plans for Vintage Year in Space The explosion of the space shuttle has marred what was to have been a vintage year for United States space science. “All in all, if we achieve our objectives for 1986, it will probably be the most important year of our space program, the most important year since the space age began,” NASA Administrator James M. Beggs said last fall. Already this year the Voyager 2 spacecraft has sent back more information about Uranus, the third-largest planet, than scientists had collected since its discovery 205 years ago. The agency's $7.3 billion budget for 1986 included funds to launch several other major scientific projects. Now they almost certainly have been set back. The missions included three deployments and retrievals of the Spartan free-flying space telescope that was lost in the Challenger explosion. The $10 million mini-observatory was to have transmitted important data on Halley's comet as it reached its closest approach to the sun on Feb. 9. The two most important interplanetary missions of the year were scheduled for May with the launch of the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft. The flights were scheduled for shuttle liftoff within six days of each other. They would have been the first “deep space” probes launched from the shuttle. Missing the May launch means the missions must be postponed until June 1987, when Jupiter again is in proper alignment. Ulysses is a predominantly European spacecraft designed to study interstellar space and the north and south poles of the sun. The 814-pound craft was due to arrive in polar orbit around the sun in late 1989 after first traveling to Jupiter. The detour is necessary because there is no launch rocket powerful enough to send the craft directly over the sun's poles. Scientists have calculated a course that will take advantage of Jupiter's powerful gravity field to sling the spacecraft out of the plane in which the Earth orbits the sun and turn the craft back toward the sun's polar region. Galileo is a NASA project to put a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter and send an instrument-laden package from the craft into the planet's atmosphere. The 5,622-pound craft was scheduled to arrive at the solar system's largest planet in December 1988. About 150 days before the rendezvous, the instrument probe was to separate from the spacecraft and continue separately. Upon reaching the planet's upper atmosphere, the probe would deploy a parachute and descend for about an hour through three weather-producing zones before being crushed by gravity and eventually vaporized in the planet's intense heat. Below the atmosphere, scientists believe the planet is principally liquid hydrogen and helium and has no solid surface. The spacecraft was designed to make 10 orbits of the planet over a two-year period and transmit a constant stream of data on Jupiter's atmosphere and several Jovian satellites. On the way to Jupiter, scientists had hoped to direct Galileo to fly by a large asteroid. The Hubble Space Telescope was to climax the year for the U.S. space program with its launch in August or September. NASA's $1 billion telescope will usher in a new age in astronomy, allowing astronomers for the first time to be free of the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. The 43-foot-long cylinder holds a 94-inch mirror that will afford a view almost to the edge of the universe—an estimated 14 billion light years. Decision to End Unmanned Rocket Launches Nasa's scientific projects depend upon the shuttle today because of policy decisions made more than a decade ago. By the end of 1972, U.S. astronauts had made eight successful lunar landings, and NASA was struggling to set new goals. But the nation was distracted by domestic problems—urban decay, crime, failing confidence in the schools and a divisive anti-Vietnam War movement, among others. It was in this context that President Richard M. Nixon announced in January 1972 that he favored giving NASA $5.5 billion over the next six years to build a space shuttle. A primary motivation was the presumed savings offered by a reusable space “truck,” Nixon said it would “take the astronomical costs out of astronautics.” A NASA cost-effectiveness study based on 500 projected shuttle missions between 1979–1990 concluded that shuttle launch costs would total $5.2 billion compared with $11 billion for conventional rockets. Congress agreed to the space shuttle plan and to phase out unmanned rocket launchers as the shuttle became operational late in the decade. Critics called the shuttle plan wasteful and an example of misplaced priorities. They argued that the unmanned flights were cheaper and safer, and could accomplish almost any goal. The leading congressional opponent was then-Sen. Walter F. Mondale, D-Minn., who angrily charged that “this administration can squander $6.5 billion to fly four people in orbit, while refusing to invest less than one-third of that amount to provide desperately needed day care and development programs for millions of preschool children…” 
The debate over manned-vs.-unmanned space exploration has ebbed and flowed ever since. Planetary scientists in particular have complained that cost overruns in the shuttle program have nearly squeezed them out of NASA's budget. The Office of Technology Assessment, an arm of Congress, reported in September 1982 that “recent budget cuts have now called into question the continuation, survival and future viability of the U.S. planetary science program. In the view of planetary scientists, the program is in danger of complete collapse.” The shuttle program at that point had cost more than $20 billion, and was years behind schedule. The first test flight came in April 1981, followed by the first operational mission in November 1982, Total shuttle costs today have reached nearly $30 billion. Gerald Griffin, former director of the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. Texas, vigorously defends the shuttle's cost. “The total NASA budget represents seven-tenths of one cent of each dollar spent by the federal government,” he said. “And the shuttle gets less than half of that. If less than one-half of one cent is too much, then what is enough?” Questioning the Emphasis on Manned Flight Costs aside, some critics argue that NASA has put too much emphasis on manned flight when unmanned rockets would do the job. Manned flight is great for NASA public relations, said Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University and a longtime critic of manned flights. But, he continued, “To use men to take unmanned satellites into orbit, I personally think it's crazy.” Former astronaut David Scott sharply disagreed. “I think we are on the right track” in space exploration, he said. And he thinks most of the nation's scientific community would concur. “I've worked very closely with the scientific and technical communities for about 25 years.…And I think the vast majority of them would disagree with Professor Gold's opinion.” A poll conducted by ABC News after the disaster suggests that it may bolster support for a program that was becoming so routine it was beginning to bore the public. Among the 507 people polled, 79 percent said they supported the shuttle program, 16 percent opposed it, and 5 percent had no opinion. Seventy-two percent said they favored continuing to put non-astronauts on the shuttle, while 22 percent opposed and 5 percent had no opinion. While the administration intends to continue the shuttle program once the cause of the disaster is discovered and corrected, it is not clear whether private citizens will be bumped from future trips. McAuliffe, 37, was to become the first “ordinary citizen” in space. President Reagan announced in August 1984 that a public school teacher would get the coveted assignment. McAuliffe was chosen from 11,146 teacher applicants. About 1,700 journalists have applied for the next citizen's ride. In the wake of the shuttle disaster the selection process has been put on hold. The final choice was to have been announced April 17 for a Sept. 27 Challenger flight. Critics of the program say NASA is conducting a public relations operation to promote public support for the space program. “We might as well recognize it's a PR gimmick and go along for the ride anyway,” wrote New York Times science reporter Phillip Boffey in the December 1985 newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers. Alan Ladwig, a NASA official who works with the citizen program, objects to calling it a gimmick. “It was a legitimate educational activity,” he said of the teacher program. “Space is not reserved for test pilots. A teacher has as much right to be in the shuttle as anybody else.” Even when the shuttle has performed flawlessly, it has had trouble meeting its launch schedule. The Columbia mission completed Jan. 19, for example, was delayed seven times before liftoff and three times before landing. The delays caused NASA officials to postpone the Challenger launch three days until Jan. 25. And that date was further delayed until Jan. 28. Delayed launches cause more than embarrassment. Precise launch dates are critical for some scientific payloads. NASA officials have denied, however, that they rushed the launch. Nor is the shuttle as cheap for commercial users as NASA planners projected just six years ago. At the time, they figured the space agency would have launched 50 shuttles by now. On that basis, they calculated relatively low payload costs. But the shuttle has flown successfully only 24 times, and payloads cost between $1,500 and $4,000 a pound. “In the long run, we have to reduce costs, said William Rector, vice president of the General Dynamics Corp. “We need, say $250 a pound,” be added. The National Space Commission agrees and plans to recommend that payload cost cuts be the first priority of the U.S. space program in the 1990s, said Paine, chairman of the commission. He said the nation should develop a “railroad to space,” using manned and unmanned rockets to reduce payload costs to as little as $200 a pound. Go to top New Economic Frontier Attracting Entrepreneurs to Space Business Just 25 years after the first man ventured into space, hundreds of corporations in the United States and abroad are jockeying for position in a race to transport private enterprise into Earth orbit. The Challenger disaster at least temporarily sets back their plans for advancement. But the long-term effect may be slight, according to industry analysts. “It's been a setback psychologically; a brutal reminder of the risks involved,” said Wolfgang Demisch, an aerospace analyst for First Boston Corp. in New York. “But, practically, this is the kind of setback we've had developing any kind of technology. Airplanes crash. Trains collide. You have to minimize the risks, but go on.” The shuttle is the only available means of launching and retrieving space-based products. With faith in NASA now shaken, space entrepreneurs expect greater difficulty in raising venture capital from skittish investors. “It [Challenger's explosion] will create a chilling effect in the financial community in terms of how they view space as an investment, “said Dean Porter, a principal of Sconset Group, an investment banking concern that has been involved in financing several space ventures. Even so, the shuttle's previous successes already have fueled high expectations for space industry. President Reagan declared in July 1984 a national policy to accelerate the growth of business in space. He proclaimed: “We can produce rare medicines with the potential of saving thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars; we can manufacture superchips that improve our competitive position in the world computer market; we can build space observatories enabling scientists to see out to the edge of the universe; and we can produce special alloys and biological materials that benefit, greatly from zero-gravity environment.” Reagan's predictions are buttressed by experts who forecast that space products already planned will generate over $65 billion in sales by the end of the century, “Taking into account other space products that are sure to be developed, space commerce by the end of the century could reach more than $200 billion a year,” writes Milton Copulos, a senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a politically conservative Washington-based think tank, The pace of this development will depend to a large extent on what governments do to underwrite research and development while encouraging private enterprise to step in to exploit technological advances made at public expense. Many analysts see similarities between space “commercialization” and the way the government encouraged opening the American West—an adventure as fraught with danger as it is irresistible. Of four key industries associated with space enterprise, only one, satellite communications, is already a mature business. It will generate revenues of approximately $700 million this year from transmission of telephone calls, television and radio broadcasts, electronic mail and business data, according to Shearson Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment banking and securities company. The second industry, known as remote sensing, has been around for a number of years but has developed only a fraction of its commercial potential. Remote sensing satellites are robot photographers that send back pictures of everything from cloud formations for weather forecasters to geological formations that lead oil companies to new deposits. The third industry, still in its infancy, is regarded as holding the most potential for profit. It involves zero-gravity manufacturing of high-value products such as ultra-pure drugs or supercrystals for computer memories. To cash in on space manufacturing, entrepreneurs are busy developing the fourth industry, support facilities and services. Competition from Europe, Japan for Markets U.S. leadership in all these areas is being challenged by space programs under way in Europe and Japan, Any reduction in U.S. efforts in the wake of Challenger would only spur competitors on, Porter warned. “And that would only hurt us as a national power, and our defense.” The most vulnerable U.S. program is remote sensing. NASA sent up the first of five Landsat satellites in 1972 and since then they have provided invaluable information in mapping remote areas, locating minerals and crop forecasting. But the United States currently “is in danger of losing its world leadership” in remote sensing, warns the Space Applications Board of the National Research Council. The program has been in disarray during the Reagan presidency as officials maneuvered to put the service on the auction block. Congress finally agreed in 1984 to mandate Landsat's sale to the private sector. Then last Sept. 27 a deal was signed transferring Landsat to Eosat, a joint venture of RCA Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co. The agreement stipulates that federal funding will be phased out over five years, that Eosat will receive a maximum of $250 million in federal funds during that time, and that the company must build and operate two new remote sensing satellites. While the future of U.S. remote sensing was in limbo, France forged ahead with development of its own advanced SPOT remote sensing satellite, using American technology. It is scheduled for launch later in February and will compete directly with Eosat for commercial business. The SPOT Image company has signed marketing agreements with 38 countries but expects about 40 percent of its business to come from U.S. firms. In fact, Eosat may become one of its prime customers in mid-1987 when the company is expected to be an operator without a satellite. The last Landsat satellite will be nearing the end of its functional lifetime by then, and Eosat will not have another ready until December 1988. Encouraging Development of Space Industry While space manufacturing holds great promise, return on most investments is thought to be years away. The weightless space environment makes it possible to produce products of greater purity or altogether new characteristics than those influenced by Earth's gravity. Most firms still are in the research and development phase. Products must be identified and techniques perfected before full-scale manufacturing can take place. The shuttle's enormous expense remains a harrier to all but the largest companies. NASA had hoped to speed space commercialization along by offering companies free rides on the space shuttle in exchange for access to experimental results and equipment. Fewer than a dozen companies had signed by the end of 1985. The U.S. lead in space industry remains firm at this early state of development. The first products manufactured in space were microscopic spheres, which NASA made in 1984 for the National Bureau of Standards. The bureau sells the spheres to firms that calibrate sensitive instruments or measure microscopic components. The next space product probably will come from McDonnell Douglas, a major U.S. aerospace company, currently engaged in testing a drug, erythropoietin, that has the ability to stimulate the production of red blood cells. It may have a commercial value of several hundred million dollars. Before the Challenger failure, McDonnell Douglas had hoped to have the drug ready to market in 1988, pending Food and Drug Administration approval. The company also has been negotiating with a French pharmaceutical firm to manufacture a second drug in space. Several companies have been conducting pioneering research in production of crystals for use in computers, lasers, fiber optics switches and an array of other high-tech products. Crystals grown in zero gravity are not flawed by imperfections caused by gravity on Earth. Space crystals made from gallium and arsenic, two soft metals, conduct electrons 10 times faster than silicon, the material from which most computer memory chips now are made. Gallium arsenide crystals may revolutionize the computer business in years to come, making it possible to build computers far faster than those manufactured today. Other U.S. firms are conducting research on metal alloys, collagen fibers to repair or replace human connective tissue, bubble-free glass products and organic compounds. A number of European nations and Japan also are conducting research in space manufacturing and intend to become strong competitors to U.S. firms. The multinational European Space Agency already has used its Spacelab laboratory, carried aloft by the U.S. space shuttle, to conduct basic research. A German-Italian company called Intospace was established last year to match potential European users of space products with companies that develop them. In Japan, government-backed consortiums have been formed to study electronics and pharmaceutical products suitable for space industry. A thriving space industry probably will require orbiting robot platforms where manufacturing can take place on a long-term basis. The first private-sector attempt to attract customers for an orbiting “industrial park” proved, however, to be ahead of its time. Fairchild Industries last fall canceled its $100 million Leasecraft program to rent platform space for commercial ventures because no private customers came forward. In addition, the company could not obtain insurance. Despite Fairchild's failure, the European Space Agency is proceeding with a similar idea, a reusable platform that will be launched by the space shuttle, released for free flight for six to nine months, then retrieved by the shuttle and returned to Earth. The European Retrievable Carrier (Eureca) is scheduled to fly its first payload of experiments in 1988. The Europeans hope to attract customers eager to develop space products. Launching Satellites with European Rockets Eureca is an outgrowth of Europe's determination not to be left behind in space exploration. The Europeans already have developed the Ariane rocket to compete with the space shuttle for commercial launch services. The French began pushing the program in 1972. When the multinational European Space Agency formed a year later, one of its first actions was to endorse the Ariane project. The go-ahead was influenced by the U.S. decision to phase out use of unmanned rockets by the end of the decade and depend instead on the manned space shuttle for all satellite launches. The first Ariane was launched in 1979 from a facility in French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. The success led a year later to the formation of Arianespace, a private corporation owned by the French government, European banks and aerospace companies. Since then, Arianespace has succeeded in attracting about half of the non-communist world's commercial launch contracts. Between 1982 and 1987. Arianespace has booked launches for 31 communications satellites, compared with 34 for the U.S. space shuttle. Ariane has suffered only one failure in nine commercial launches. That came last Sept. 12 when a malfunction in the third-stage booster caused the destruction of two communications satellites valued at $85 million apiece. Some industry analysts say the shuttle's failure will make Ariane more attractive now to U.S. firms. NASA supporters note, however, that unmanned rockets cannot retrieve or repair damaged satellites. In contrast, shuttle crews have retrieved two satellites that failed to reach proper orbit and repaired a failed booster rocket on a third. The current Ariane 3 series rockets, which carries a payload of two satellites, will be replaced at mid-year by a more powerful Ariane 4 capable of lifting heavier loads into space. Design work has already begun on an Ariane 5 rocket that will compare in power with the giant Saturn 5 booster that put U.S. astronauts on the moon. The vehicle will is tentatively scheduled for service in the mid-1990s. Japan also has developed its own rocket-launching capability, demonstrated by its twin probes headed for a mid-March rendezvous with Halley's comet. China announced last summer that it plans to develop a commercial space program using its own launchers and satellites. The Chinese have launched 16 successful spacecraft since 1970. India, too, has launched a satellite, and Brazil has stated its intention to build a rocket center to become the first South American nation with launch capabilities. As competition increases, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to maintain its competitive edge in commercial launch services. Arianespace officials already have complained that the U.S. government unfairly subsidizes commercial customers by charging them less than the actual cost of launching satellites from the space shuttle. Arianespace charges roughly $25 million per launch, divided proportionally between the two satellites onboard. At present, NASA charges $71.4 million dollars for use of a full shuttle cargo bay and proportionally less for smaller cargoes. Beginning Oct. 1, 1988, the full cargo bay price goes to a minimum of $74 million. Shuttle pricing policy also has come under attack in the United States. Entrepreneurs who want to offer private rocket launch services in competition with the shuttle argue that the shuttle price should he much closer to actual mission costs, estimated at $150 million. They contend that shuttle pricing is in conflict with President Reagan's commitment to facilitate private-enterprise rocket operations, including allowing companies to use NASA launch facilities. The General Dynamics Corp. would like to operate its Atlas-Centaur rockets as a commercial venture, and a new company, Transpace Carriers Inc., wants to offer launch services with Delta boosters. Both rockets have been phased out of government service. Martin Marietta also has studied getting into the launch business. But neither company has attracted customers because of competition from the shuttle. The Heritage Foundation called shuttle pricing “the greatest barrier to development of a private sector space industry.” “No private system can evolve as long as it has to compete with…subsidies.” The Office of Technology Assessment took a different view in a report it issued last July on international space competition. The report concluded: “The United States can meet the challenge of competitive foreign launch services by favoring either the shuttle or private expendable launch vehicles for commercial payloads. If the demand for launch services were to increase dramatically, both types of vehicles might successfully offer commercial launch services; but since a dramatic increase seems unlikely in the 1980s, the United States must choose which course it intends to follow.” It is too early to know, however, whether Challenger failure may spur new interest in private launch services in Congress or among U.S. companies. Go to top Space Station and Beyond Making Space Station a National Priority The 20th century opened with history's first flight of a power-driven aircraft and likely will end with the first permanently manned space station orbiting the Earth. President Reagan, regarded as the most ardent space booster to occupy the White House since John F. Kennedy, committed the nation to that goal during his 1984 State of the Union address to Congress. He directed NASA to launch the station within a 
decade, if possible by 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival on the shores of the New World. It seems certain that the Challenger mishap and the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction law will at least delay the space station, perhaps for a number of years. Reagan endorsed the space station over the opposition of space scientists, the Department of Defense, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and his own science adviser. Astronomers and planetary scientists figured the $8 billion project would siphon off scarce resources needed to conduct their experiments. The Defense Department, which maintains its own extensive military space program, said it saw no military value in a space station. George A. Keyworth II, then the presidential science adviser, argued that NASA should fully explore the space shuttle's potential before embarking on another major program. And David A. Stockman, the OMB director, said it was too expensive. In response, Reagan is said to have remarked that it was fortunate his budget chief was not present to advise King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on funds for Columbus' voyages. Beggs, who generated more political clout for NASA than any administrator since the 1960s, sold the idea to the president as the nation's “next logical step” after the space shuttle. The apace station would be an orbiting laboratory, a permanent observatory for astronomers, a service station to repair satellites, a building site to assemble structures too bulky for launch from Earth, and a storage depot for spare parts, fuel and food. Of all the station's potential uses, Reagan seems to have been most fascinated by the commercial potential for space. NASA has spent the past two years studying design recommendations submitted by aerospace firms, scientists and potential business users. The agency had planned to award the first construction contracts in 1987. Preliminary designs envision a modular station orbiting 250 miles above Earth. One module would provide living quarters for six to eight astronauts, and two or more modules would be outfitted as laboratories. Additional modules would carry power-generating equipment and provide storage for supplies. The modular “building block” design would allow for the addition of modules. The space shuttle would regularly deliver fresh crews and supplies. To defray costs, the United States has secured commitments from Japan and Western European nations for financial and engineering support. The European Space Agency has agreed to supply a laboratory module it calls Columbus and an attached supply module. In addition, the agency has proposed providing free-flying space platforms, service vehicles and ground facilities for a total cost of $1.8 billion. Japan's National Space Development Agency also has agreed to provide a laboratory module that is projected to cost up to $1.2 billion. Orbiting Station's Threat to Space Science Even with considerable aid from abroad, many planetary research scientists fear that the gigantic expense of the space station program will confine their projects to fiscal purgatory for years to come. Critics contend that, just as with the shuttle, total development costs will far exceed the space station's projected $8 billion price tag, leading to drastic cutbacks in other space programs. It will cost billions more to operate and maintain the station in orbit. In an argument reminiscent of those used to oppose the shuttle, the noted Iowa University physicist James A. Van Allen contends that the expense is unnecessary, “The burden of experience is that, apart from serving the spirit of adventure, there is little reason for sending people into space,” he wrote in Scientific American magazine. Van Allen maintains that robot spacecraft can accomplish scientific and commercial missions at a fraction of the price of manned spacecraft. 
The shuttle failure and the federal budget crunch may have strengthened the position of those in Europe who favor abandoning the American effort and backing a European unmanned space platform, according to Space Business News, an industry newsletter. The platform could be serviced by the French spaceplane Hermes, now under development. The Hermes will be significantly smaller than the space shuttle, seating two to six passengers. It may be operational in the mid-1990s, coinciding with planned development of the powerful French Ariane 5 rocket booster, Europeans also are talking of building their own space station early in the next century. Shuttle Disaster's Effect on Pentagon Plans The Pentagon also will feel the repercussions of Challenger's explosion. The military is the space shuttle's biggest customer, paying $55 million for each flight. The Defense Department had booked space on four shuttle flights this year. And under a directive signed by President Reagan in February 1985, the Air Force agreed to use at least eight of the 24 yearly flights that are set to begin in 1988. Military payloads include communications, weather and spy satellites, and experiments for the president's Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars.” With the shuttle program at a halt, military officials are studying other ways to send their satellites into space. They have long been concerned about over-reliance on the shuttle for launch services. Air Force officials said in congressional testimony last year that depending solely on the shuttle was an unacceptable national security risk. Pentagon pressure persuaded Congress to approve the modification of 10 Titan boosters as they are taken out of silos and deactivated as nuclear weapons launchers. In addition, Congress agreed to fund the Pentagon's $2 billion plan to procure 10 new heavy-lift rockets. But the new rockets won't be available until 1988. Among the 42 Air Force launch rockets currently available, most can carry satellites weighing no more than 3,000 pounds. The largest military satellites weigh three times as much. The Challenger explosion also means a delay in the first two launches from the new shuttle facility at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. The new facility is important because it will enable the military to put satellites in polar orbit, something that cannot be done from Cape Canaveral. Despite its interest in developing an alternative launch capacity, the Pentagon has no plans to abandon its support for the shuttle, said Donald C. Latham, assistant secretary for defense in charge of command, communications and intelligence-gathering satellites. “The Defense Department is the biggest customer and always has been, and that's not going to change,” he said. Space-related expenditures are a major part of the Pentagon's budget. Spending came to $11.7 billion in fiscal 1985—nearly twice NASA's budget—and will reach $11.9 billion in 1986. Joining Soviets for a Manned Trip to Mars The Soviet Union also spends large sums on space exploration, but the lines between military and civilian spending are not as clear as in the United States. U.S. military spy satellites have provided photos indicating that the Soviets are proceeding with a program to develop a space shuttle comparable to NASA's shuttle and a booster comparable to the Saturn 5 moon rocket. Some analysts believe the Soviets plan to launch a space station with room for 12 cosmonauts by the end of the decade. A 1983 Office of Technology Assessment report concluded: “The Soviet space station program is the cornerstone of an official policy which looks not only toward a permanent Soviet human settlement of their people on the moon and Mars. The Soviets take quite seriously the possibility that large numbers of their citizens will one day live in space.” While pursuing their own space station, the Soviets vehemently oppose Reagan's Star Wars program, charging that it will militarize space and escalate the nuclear arms race. In the United States, vigorous debate continues within the scientific community over whether the Star Wars system would work. Some opponents have suggested an alternative that would cost far less and could lessen tensions between the superpowers: a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to Mars. Just 11 years ago, the two nations conducted a historic joint mission: the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft linked together in flight and orbited the Earth for two days. In a 10th anniversary reunion last year, the astronauts and cosmonauts from that mission called for a joint Mars mission. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who in January became the second member of Congress (after Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah) to ride the shuttle, raised the subject in Moscow last October. He led a 39-member delegation to discuss U.S.-Soviet space cooperation. And President Reagan proposed bilateral space ventures as part of his list of proposed scientific exchanges he delivered to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the November summit in Geneva. Concern that the Soviets would unfairly gain access to superior U.S. technology generally is exaggerated, according to Bernard F. Burke, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist. Burke, who served as chairman of an Office of Technology Assessment workshop on U.S.-Soviet space cooperation, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1984 that in certain scientific areas “we may now have more to gain from the Soviets than they from us.” All this could set the stage for Reagan to announce his support for a joint U.S.-Soviet voyage to Mars, Earl W. Foell, editor in chief of The Christian Science Monitor, observed in a recent commentary. The next summit meeting with Gorbachev would provide a suitably dramatic setting, “A case can be made that Mr. Reagan may find it irresistible to become the president who launched a program that would eventually send a joint Soviet-American Mars mission on a super-Columbian voyage in the next century,” Foell wrote. Such dreams make it seem entirely possible that the Challenger tragedy one day will be only a sad footnote in the history of manned space exploration. Go to top Bibliography Books Ezell, Edward Clinton and Linda Neuman Ezell, On Mars, Exploration of the Red Planet 1958–1978, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985. Osman, Tony, Space History, St. Martin's Press, 1983. Washburn, Mark, Distant Encounters, The Exploration of Jupiter and Saturn, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Articles Covault, Craig, “Burgeoning Space Launch Capability Is Leading Toward Economic Competition,” Commercial Space, fall 1985. Johnson, Julie, “The Space Business,” The Baltimore Sun, three-part series, Dec. 22–24, 1985. Osborne, David, “Business in Space,” The Atlantic, May 1985. “Rumor Mill Churns on Gramm-Rudman,” Space Business News, Pasha Publications, Jan. 13, 1986. Van Allen, James A., “Space Science, Space Technology and the Space Station,” Scientific American, January 1986. Waldrop, M. Mitchell, “The Selling of the Space Station,” Science, Feb. 24, 1984, and selected issues. Wilford, John Noble, “To the Edge of the Universe, The New Age of Astronomy,” The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 15, 1985. Reports and Studies Copulos, Milton R., “Government Obstacles to the Commercial Use of Space,” Backgrounder, The Heritage Foundation, March 4, 1985. Editorial Research Reports: “American Options in Space,” 1983 Vol. I, p. 129; “Changing U.S. Space Policy,” 1978 Vol. II. p. 823: “Space Shuttle Controversy,” 1972 Vol. I, p. 211. Froehlich, Walter, “Spacestation, The News Logical Step,” NASA, U.S. Government Printing Office. National Research Council, “Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space: A Program in Crisis,” National Academy Press. 1985. National Research Council, “Practical Applications of a Space Station,” National Academy Press, 1984. Office of Technology Assessment, “Salyut: Soviet Steps Toward Permanent Human Presence In Space,” U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1983. Office of Technology Assessment, “International Cooperation and Competition in Civilian Space Activities,” U.S. Government Printing Office, July 1985. Space, Shearson Lehman Brothers and The Center for Space Policy, January 1986. Graphics; Photos by AP (cover) and NASA (p. 85); illustrations by NASA (p. 99) and Assistant Staff Art Director Robert Redding (pp. 89. 101). Go to top Footnotes Go to top Special Focus The Challenger crew members were: Francis R, “Dick” Scobee 46, flight commander, a veteran Air Force combat and lest pilot; Navy Cmdr. Mike Smith. 40, the pilot, also a combat and test pilot, was on his first shuttle mission; Physicist Ronald E. McNair, 36, a civilian expert in laser research; Air Force Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, 39, who flew a secret shuttle mission for the military in January 1985. Also Judith A. Resnick, 36, a former research scientist, was a mission specialist on a 1984 shuttle flight, becoming the second American woman in space: Gregory B. Jarvis, 41, a Hughes Aircraft Co. engineer and shuttle payload specialist making his first trip into space; Sharon Christa McAuliffe, 36, a Concord, N.H., social studies teacher, was to be the nation's first private citizen in space. The Challenger explosion came 19 years and one day after the only other fatal accident in the U.S. space program. A fire killed astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White, It engulfed the Apollo I spacecraft Jan. 27, 1967, as they prepared for a flight to the moon. The Russians also lost four cosmonauts in two separate accidents. The first death of a man in space came in 1967 when Vladimir Komarov's Soyuz 1 parachute failed to open on landing and the spacecraft crashed in Russia's Ural Mountains, In June 1971, cosmonauts Gregory Dobrovolsky. Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev died when their spacecraft lost pressure during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. The shuttle is attached to an external fuel tank containing more than half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen at liftoff. The liquids separately are converted to gases to power the shuttle's three main rocket engines. The engines provide about 20 percent of the thrust needed for liftoff. The remaining 80 percent comes from two reusable solid-fuel rocket boosters attached to the external fuel tank. Each solid-fuel booster arrives at Kennedy Space Center in four sections. They are assembled with one-inch steel pins placed two inches apart around the rocket. A hollow channel runs the length of each booster. At ignition, fuel begins burning at the top, spreads down the length of the fuel, and burns from inside out. After slightly more than two minutes, the fuel is depleted and the steel casings are jettisoned into the Atlantic, where they are picked up for reuse. Fuel from the external tank powers the shuttle the remainder of the way into orbit. It then detaches and falls into the Indian Ocean. A leading theory of what happened to Challenger is that solid fuel burned through the right booster casing and spewed 6,000-degree flames on the external fuel tank. The intense heat melted a hole in the tank's casing, causing the hydrogen to explode. Satellite malfunctions and launch failures have cost the insurance industry $607 million over the past two years, creating a crisis for underwriters and aerospace businesses even before the shuttle Challenger exploded. Premiums already had risen from roughly 5 percent of insured value to over 20 percent, forcing some satellite owners to contemplate self-insurance or the possibility of seeking federal-assisted insurance. The crisis was triggered with the loss of three satellites valued at $235 million within a two-week period last fall. An $85 million Hughes Leasat 4 communications satellite, carried aloft by the space shuttle, failed on Aug. 29 to reach proper orbit. On Sept. 12, a third-stage failure of a European Ariane rocket caused the destruction of satellites owned by GTE and the European Space Agency, respectively. Challenger carried a $100 million NASA communications satellite and a $10 million NASA observatory, but neither was privately insured. Nonetheless, the shuttle failure has shaken the insurance industry's confidence in the shuttle program and is expected to cause further hikes in premiums and reduced availability of insurance at any price. Small companies that want to manufacture products in space may not he able to afford the new. higher premiums. Those that can pay will encounter significantly greater expenses. Lloyd's of London has proposed to insure a new Japanese communications satellite for 31.5 percent of its value. That is about as high as rates can go before companies stop buying insurance, analysts say. The RCA Corp. bought no insurance on a satellite launched by the shuttle last November. NASA announced last October a new program to help offset higher insurance costs. If a satellite launched from the space shuttle fails for any reason within the first 90 days, NASA will launch a replacement at half price. Go to top
Document APA Citation
Thompson, R. (1986). Space decisions after Challenger. Editorial research reports 1986 (Vol. I). http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1986020700
Document ID: cqresrre1986020700
Document URL: http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1986020700
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