Table Of ContentSpace 2000
Meeting the Challenge of a New Era
Space 2000
Meeting the Challenge of a New Era
Harry L. Shipman
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Shipman, Harry L.
Space 2000.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Outer space-Exploration. I. Tide. H. Tide: Space two thousand.
TL790.S49 1987 919.9'04 87-2401
ISBN 978-0-306-42534-9 ISBN 978-1-4899-6054-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-6054-2
© 1987 Harry L. Shipman
Originally pub1ished by Plenum Press, New York in 1987
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1987
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
Spaee is the next frontier. It was not until the 1950s that the explora
tion of spaee began with the dramatie launeh of Sputnik 1. Sinee then,
the spaee program has taken people to the moon, shown us the exotic,
fascinating beauties of the near and distant universe, and ereated a
global village by weaving a eommunieations net over the earth.
Human aetivities in spaee range from planetary exploration to star
wars, from mapping to spying, from astronomy to spaee-based mate
rials-proeessing.
What we are doing, and will do, in spaee will determine where we
go next. The Ameriean spaee station, initially inhabitable in the
mid-1990s, will open the door to a wide range of applieations. At first,
those pioneers who have already reaehed toward the heavens, who
have begun to use the spaee environment for various purposes, will
remain as the major plaY,ers in the spaee game. Others will soon
follow. Their wants and needs will determine the next major goal
beyond the spaee station.
The explosion of the spaee shuttle Challenger in 1986 sent re
sounding shoek waves through the entire spaee program, and the ef
feets of this tragedy will be feit for the better part of a deeade. In the
short run, NASA and the spaee eommunity will have their hands full
rebuilding the shuttle fleet, eonstrueting the spaee station, and main
taining a balaneed program of spaee scienee and applieations so that
Ameriea and its partners ean do something with the spaee station onee
it is built. The next ten years will be diffieult, but we ean look beyond
them to a fron tier of opportunity.
v
vi Preface
The focus of this book is on the enormous variety of past and
future human activities in space. Before America made the initial
symbolic step of landing humans on the moon in 1969, the space
program was a single race toward a single goal. In the 1970s and
1980s, the space programs of the United States, the Soviet Union, a
consortium of European nations, Japan, and other countries then began
to simultaneously compete and cooperate with each other as they
sought to make use of the space environment in a much broader way.
Private companies have become heavily involved in space activity.
The military presence in space has grown considerably, especially in
the wake of Star Wars, the popular name for the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI). As a result, what we do in space is more significant
than where we go.
I've been involved with the space program in one capacity or
another since 1974, and my purpose in writing this book is to give the
general reader a perspective on the breadth of our activities in space. I
have been a guest investigator on many different satellites operated by
NASA and by the European Space Agency, and I have served on
various review panels as a NASA consultant (including a stint on a
team negotiating with the European Space Agency on a future satellite
mission). However, I am only a NASA grantee and consultant and
have never been an employee of the agency. The views I present here
are my own, based on my experience and my reading of the open
literature. The discussions of military space programs presented in this
book are all based on unclassified material; I have no security clear
ance.
Many people have helped me as I have worked on this book.
Andrea Dupree, Nancy Evans, Paul Evenson, Don Kent, Vic Klemas,
Norman Ness, John Nousek, Ron Pitts, Martin Pomerantz, and Rich
ard Wasatonic read preliminary drafts of particular chapters. Cheryl
Thompson of the University of Delaware library was always able to
chase down the most obscure govemment publications; Henry
Fuhrmann of JPL, Paul Maley, and Jeff Rosendhal of NASA helped
provide photographs and other material. I've received grants from
NASA, from the National Science Foundation, from the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and from the Research Corpora
tion over the years; those grants have helped keep my research pro-
Preface vii
gram going and have given me the perspective that I'm sharing with
you, the reader, in this book. Linda Regan, my editor at Plenum, has
the patience and the persistence necessary to keep an author not too far
behind schedule. My children, Alice and Tom, and my wife, Wendy,
have had to put up with my spending many weekend and evening hours
on this book; it is only now that Tom has an answer to his question:
"How many more pages, Daddy?"
Contents
PART I: VOYAGING INTO ORBIT AND BEYOND 1
1 Challenger 3
2 NASA and Its Foreign Competitors in the 1980s 23
3 Highways to Heaven 43
Summary of Part I 65
PART 11: THE PRACTICAL USES OF SPACE 67
4 Communications Satellites 69
5 The Orbital High Ground: Weather Watching, Spying,
and Star Wars 89
6 Earth Science: AGIobai View of a Green Planet 118
7 Materials Processing in Space: Making Pie in the Sky,
or the Next Industrial Revolution? 141
Summary of Part 11 159
PART 111: EXPLORING THE NEAR AND DISTANT
UNIVERSE 161
8 The Golden Age of Planetary Exploration 163
9 Earthlike Planets and the Magnet That Is Mars 194
10 Voyage to the Land of the Giants 223
ix
x Contents
11 Exploration of the Distant Universe 247
12 Intelligent Life in the Universe 281
Summary of Part 111 305
PART IV: THE FUTURE 307
13 The Human Roles in Space 309
14 Permanent Stations in Space and on the Moon 336
15 Space in the Twenty-First Century 358
Summary of Part IV 391
Reference Notes 393
List of Acronyms (LOA) 419
Index 423
PART I
Voyaging into Orbit and Beyond
"Five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... ignition!" The
space vehicle rises on a pillar of fire and brimstone. The ascent into
space begins, first slowly, and then rapidly as the tremendous force of
the rocket engines pushes the payload faster and faster, ever closer to
the speed needed to huri it away from the powerful grasp of the earth's
gravity. In aminute or so, the powerful first-stage rockets drop away,
having done their job, and the smaller second-stage rockets take over.
These, too, bum out, and in a few minutes the powerful roar of rocket
engines is only a memory, to be replaced by the silence of outer space.
During most of the thirty-year history of the space program, get
ting into orbit or some other particular destination was the primary
focus of effort. Although more and more of our effort in space involves
a special activity-be it building space stations, growing crystals, or
using telescopes-the technology that is available to launch astronauts
or equipment is still a major factor in determining what kinds of space
ventures are feasible. The development of the space shuttle was a
major technological achievement of the 1970s, a dramatic increase in
our capability to take heavy payloads into orbit and, what is more
important, back down to earth again. The tragic explosion of the space
shuttle Challenger and its aftermath demonstrated that the shuttle was
not the space truck that NASA had claimed it to be, however.
The effects of Challenger and the central role of space transporta
tion technology suggest that a book about the present and future state
of the space program should begin with a discussion of rockets, space
shuttles, and other space vehicles of the present and future. The Chal-
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