U.S. back in the space race
With success in the first stage of the SpaceX mission to the ISS, the US is on the cusp of launching its astronauts into space again.
“We’ve got NASA ‘rocking’ again. Great activity and success,” a buoyant Donald Trump tweeted yesterday.
Like some of the US President’s most sweeping claims, it was also premature because the mission he is talking about — the test-run for the US’s return to its human spaceflight program — has yet to finish and the most dangerous phase lies ahead.
But the historic launch of billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which docked late on Sunday at the International Space Station, has been a stunning success.
“Everything looks great,” said NASA astronaut Anne McClain, who greeted the capsule when it docked at the ISS. “Ripley and Earth both look like they enjoyed their trip up here.”
Ripley is the name of the crash test dummy in the SpaceX suit who took a ride on the capsule along with a plush toy, dubbed “Earth”.
If all goes well for the capsule’s return journey to Earth at the end of the week, Ripley will be replaced as early as July by two real NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Together they will undertake the first US manned mission in a US spacecraft since the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011.
“It was super exciting to see it,” Behnken says after watching the docking. “I know you heard the applause and all the clapping that went along with the accomplishment today … It’s just one more milestone that gets us ready for our flight coming up here.”
For NASA and the US’s space program, an enormous amount is riding on the ability of two private companies: Musk’s SpaceX and aircraft giant Boeing, which will launch its own space capsule, Starliner, next month.
Their success would finally allow the US to regularly transport astronauts to the ISS rather than rely on hitching expensive rides on Russian rockets.
But more than that, it will mark the start of NASA’s attempts to reassert America’s space program after a troubled decade in which it was plagued by funding cuts, by a lack of political support and even by a lack of imagination.
NASA’s decline
Trump has vowed to reverse this decline and bring America’s space program back to something like its former glory.
He has promised to send Americans back to the moon and wants a manned mission to Mars as quickly as possible.
“The directive I am signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery,” Trump said in December 2017. “It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints — we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”
According to a new book, Team of Vipers by Cliff Sims, one of Trump’s communications officials, the President privately mused inside the White House about the need to revive the US space program.
“We don’t capture people’s imaginations anymore,” Trump is quoted as saying. “We used to do big things — incredible things. No one could do the things we could do. You have to inspire people. They went to the moon.”
The current SpaceX mission to the ISS was conceived in 2014 when the US government offered SpaceX $US2.5 billion and Boeing $US4.2bn to each design and build separate cost-effective reusable spacecraft to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the ISS.
The program was part of NASA’s new Commercial Crew Program, which invited in US private aerospace companies to co-develop the next generation of spacecraft. The program was a reluctant admission by the space agency that it could not afford to fund the next generation of spacecraft alone.
The agency had run the 30-year space shuttle program with mixed success. In 133 missions the program achieved much in the way of research but it failed in its aim to provide cheap access to space. It was also marred by two disasters — the loss of the Challenger and its crew when it exploded after takeoff in 1986, and the disintegration of Columbia in 2003 as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts.
When the last space shuttle mission ended in 2011, the US was left without a vehicle to transport astronauts to the ISS.
Bowing to Russia
In what many observers still see as a symbol of NASA’s decline, US astronauts have been forced to hitch a ride on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
This requires NASA’s astronauts to pay homage to Russia’s space heroes, their one-time enemies in the Cold War space race.
NASA astronauts join the Russians in their nationalistic pre-flight rituals, including visiting Star City near Moscow to pay homage at the memorial of Soviet space hero Yuri Gagarin and watching the 1970 patriotic Russian movie White Sun of the Desert.
Then they are blessed by a Russian orthodox priest and en route to their launch site in remote central Kazakhstan, they urinate on the right rear tyre of their bus, just as Gagaran reputedly once did.
Of more concern to NASA than these theatrics is the price. It costs $US81 million per seat to take an US astronaut to the space station.
When SpaceX and Boeing were granted their contracts in 2014, it was envisaged that their spacecraft would begin ferrying astronauts to the ISS in 2017.
But technical and developmental difficulties have delayed the SpaceX and the Boeing vehicles.
Two SpaceX rockets exploded, one in 2015 while flying cargo to the space station and one in 2016 on the launch pad.
NASA cites four “key risk items” in its latest annual report. It says Boeing’s Starliner has a structural vulnerability when its heat shield is deployed. For SpaceX it expresses concerns about the process of fuelling the rocket with the crew already in the capsule, as well as the “parachute performance” of the capsule on re-entry.
NASA has reportedly been worried also about aspects of the safety culture at SpaceX after Musk was seen smoking marijuana on a podcast.
But SpaceX vice-president for build and reliability Hans Koenigsmann says the company has put safety first and that it has done “an incredible amount of testing to make sure that everything is safe and ready to go”.
NASA associate administrator William Gerstenmaier says NASA is confident the SpaceX vehicle is in “good shape”.
“I’m very comfortable with where we’re headed with this flight,” he says. “I fully expect we’re going to learn something on this flight. I guarantee you that everything will not work exactly right. And that’s cool. We want to maximise learning so we can get the stuff ready so when we put crew on, we’re ready to do a real crew mission.”
During this current mission, the crash-test dummy Ripley — named after the Sigourney Weaver character in the Alien movies — is wired with sensors to measure the stresses and strains real astronauts will experience.
The Dragon 1 capsule has made 16 missions to take cargo to the ISS but this is the first mission in which the capsule has been configured to take astronauts. The capsule has been reprogrammed to dock remotely with the ISS. Previously, robotic arms from the ISS reached out and pulled the capsule into the station.
Danger ahead
The most difficult part of the SpaceX mission comes on Saturday (AEDT), when the Crew Dragon capsule ignites its engine and takes itself out of orbit to descend to Earth. A parachute system will deploy as the capsule lands in the Atlantic Ocean.
Says Musk: “Actually, hypersonic re-entry is probably my greatest concern.”
Both SpaceX and Boeing, which plans to send astronauts up in its Starliner in August, say their schedules remain on track.
This is important because NASA has been told by Russia that its access to seats on Soyuz flights will run out in early 2020, meaning the US would have no way to send astronauts to the ISS, despite having invested about $US100bn to build the space station.
The US Government Accountability Office says: “If NASA does not develop options for ensuring access to the ISS in the event of further Commercial Crew delays, it will not be able to ensure that the US policy goal and objective for the ISS will be met.”
Reviving glory
Every day, when NASA employees arrive at the Johnston Space Centre in Houston, they pass by a park full of rockets and spacecraft to remind them of the agency’s glory days.
There is a Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo moon program and a Mercury-Redstone rocket, the same type that Alan Shepard travelled in to become the first American in space, on May 6, 1961.
As Shepard was strapped into his capsule awaiting lift-off, he became frustrated by yet another delay and told the control room: “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”
Those words, immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff, spoke to a different era when John F. Kennedy pointed to the moon and the original astronauts — known as the Mercury Seven — were as famous and recognisable as Hollywood celebrities.
But during the space shuttle era, being an astronaut became just another job. In Houston, the shuttle astronauts would gather at the Outpost Tavern, a rustic wooden drinking hole with pictures of space heroes on the wall. But they were anonymous and largely ignored by other patrons.
Trump’s ambitions for NASA won’t turn its astronauts back into celebrities, but it may succeed in firing up the imagination of the public after a bleak decade.
NASA is doing what it can to attract public interest in its new programs, even conducting the SpaceX blast-off at the historic Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Centre, which was used in the Apollo moon program.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who has been charged with making Trump’s vision a reality, says the agency wants to establish a permanent human presence around the moon by 2023 and to go on to Mars in the 2030s.
“The case we have to make (to US congress), which is absolutely true, is that the quickest way to get to Mars is to use the moon and to use the Gateway,” Bridenstine says.
“It will reduce risk. It will reduce cost, because anything you can do that ultimately can be tested around the moon is going to lower our cost to go to Mars.”
The current SpaceX mission has none of the same romance as the moon or Mars but if it succeeds, the US will once again have a viable way to send astronauts back to space.
That’s a small victory compared with past glories, but it is a long-overdue step in the right direction.
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