November 5, 2007--Space Junk
Those who still follow NASA’s work were riveted to news reports last week about the efforts to repair the International Space Station’s solar panel. It involved the most dangerous spacewalk yet because the astronaut assigned to do the work needed to roam further away from the safety of the airlock than anyone in history; and if he touched the wrong electrical connection with his space pliers, there was a good chance that he would be electrocuted. (See linked NY Times article for all the details.)
I admit to not paying much attention for many years to things involving the Space Station. I tuned out after the first Mars Rover inched its way across the surface of the Red Planet. But I did take brief note of this latest space crisis—it appears that if they weren’t able to fix the solar panel it might be curtains for the Space Station. And while thinking about what that might mean—among other things, since it’s in very low orbit, what would happen to us on earth when it plunged to earth in a fireball—I came to wonder about the purpose of the Space Station itself, and beyond that most of NASA’s work, including the Space Shuttle.
What we seem to hear about these days involves these dangerous kinds of repairs, who’s on board the Space Shuttle or Station (especially if a woman or foreign national is in command), and how likely is it that the returning Shuttle will burn up on reentry because some of the heat shield tiles were damaged on liftoff. And, yes, how many millions NASA is charging billionaires to take a joy ride in orbit.
Pretty much absent from discussions about space exploration is the purpose of all the effort and the value of all the expenditures.
When serious space exploration began back in the 1950s much of the rationale involved not letting the Russians beat us. They launched the first Sputnik; they placed the first gerbil, dog, chimp, and then man in orbit: and it was looking very likely that they would beat us to landing a man on the moon. The implication of all of this was that there was a “missile gap” (satellites were launched on modified military missiles) and unless we closed that gap the next thing we’d face would be nuclear-tipped rockets raining down on Times Square and the White House. Thus, the Space Race, was yet another Cold War surrogate, but potentially a much more dangerous one than who could field a stronger Olympic team—the USSR or the USA.
But then there was détente and shortly after that the collapse of the Soviet Union. One way to show that former enemies could now be friends was to find ways to explore space together. The most dramatic example of that cooperation is the International Space Station, with an emphasis on the international part.
Beyond the symbolism embodied in the joint Russian-American partnership, the best case for the program involves carrying out “scientific experiments,” especially in human biology. When one looks at the NASA website to learn about the experimentation than can only be carried out in a weightless environment (that after all is pretty much the one unique feature of a lab in space), one finds that much of the experimentation is scheduled to begin in a few years (even though we have been assembling the Space Station for about a decade) and much of it will involve studies about the effects of weightlessness on the human body. In other words—space experiments about more space experiments.
And I always thought that the justification for the many billions spent by NASA was that they were up there in orbit searching for a cure for cancer. That they needed the pristineness of space to develop that vaccination. I didn’t realize it was so much about self-justification and an expensive version of Coney Island’s Astro Land.
I admit to not paying much attention for many years to things involving the Space Station. I tuned out after the first Mars Rover inched its way across the surface of the Red Planet. But I did take brief note of this latest space crisis—it appears that if they weren’t able to fix the solar panel it might be curtains for the Space Station. And while thinking about what that might mean—among other things, since it’s in very low orbit, what would happen to us on earth when it plunged to earth in a fireball—I came to wonder about the purpose of the Space Station itself, and beyond that most of NASA’s work, including the Space Shuttle.
What we seem to hear about these days involves these dangerous kinds of repairs, who’s on board the Space Shuttle or Station (especially if a woman or foreign national is in command), and how likely is it that the returning Shuttle will burn up on reentry because some of the heat shield tiles were damaged on liftoff. And, yes, how many millions NASA is charging billionaires to take a joy ride in orbit.
Pretty much absent from discussions about space exploration is the purpose of all the effort and the value of all the expenditures.
When serious space exploration began back in the 1950s much of the rationale involved not letting the Russians beat us. They launched the first Sputnik; they placed the first gerbil, dog, chimp, and then man in orbit: and it was looking very likely that they would beat us to landing a man on the moon. The implication of all of this was that there was a “missile gap” (satellites were launched on modified military missiles) and unless we closed that gap the next thing we’d face would be nuclear-tipped rockets raining down on Times Square and the White House. Thus, the Space Race, was yet another Cold War surrogate, but potentially a much more dangerous one than who could field a stronger Olympic team—the USSR or the USA.
But then there was détente and shortly after that the collapse of the Soviet Union. One way to show that former enemies could now be friends was to find ways to explore space together. The most dramatic example of that cooperation is the International Space Station, with an emphasis on the international part.
Beyond the symbolism embodied in the joint Russian-American partnership, the best case for the program involves carrying out “scientific experiments,” especially in human biology. When one looks at the NASA website to learn about the experimentation than can only be carried out in a weightless environment (that after all is pretty much the one unique feature of a lab in space), one finds that much of the experimentation is scheduled to begin in a few years (even though we have been assembling the Space Station for about a decade) and much of it will involve studies about the effects of weightlessness on the human body. In other words—space experiments about more space experiments.
And I always thought that the justification for the many billions spent by NASA was that they were up there in orbit searching for a cure for cancer. That they needed the pristineness of space to develop that vaccination. I didn’t realize it was so much about self-justification and an expensive version of Coney Island’s Astro Land.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:44 AM
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