Table Of ContentA History of Human Space Exploration
PPAARRTTNNEERRSSHHIIPP
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The Mid to Late Nineties
Ben Evans
Partnership in Space
The Mid to Late Nineties
A History of Human Space Exploration
Other Springer-Praxis books by Ben Evans in this Series
Escaping the Bonds of Earth - The Fifties and the Sixties
2009
ISBN: 978-0-387-79093-0
Foothold in the Heavens - The Seventies
2010
ISBN: 978-1-4419-6341-3
At Home in Space- The Late Seventies into the Eighties
2011
ISBN: 978-1-4419-8809-6
Tragedy and Triumph in Orbit - The Eighties and Early Nineties
2012
ISBN: 978-1-4614-3429-0
Ben Evans
Partnership in Space
The Mid to Late Nineties
Published in association with
~Springer Praxis Publishing PR
Chichester, UK
Ben Evans
Space Writer
Atherstone
Warwickshire
UK
SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION
ISBN 978-1-4614-3277-7 ISBN 9 78-1-4614-3278-4 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-4614-3278-4
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947009
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Contents
Author's preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
1. Rise from the ashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I
The odyssey of Ulysses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I
The odyssey of the Shuttle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A difficult summer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Secret sentinels .............................................. 30
Lost mission ................................................ 43
Four powerful eyes ........................................... 54
"We're back!" ............................................... 56
How to save a 'Great Observatory' ............................... 67
Milkshakes and doggie biscuits .................................. 86
Three women or three doctors? .................................. 99
First medical research flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
"Even the girls ..." .......................................... 120
Ozone watcher ............................................. 128
Infrared eyes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2. The last Soviet citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !51
A new start. ............................................... !51
Perestroika and glasnost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !57
New arrivals, new challenges ................................... !58
"No experience necessary" .................................... 183
An extended flight .......................................... 190
End of an era .............................................. 197
3. The International Space Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 I
Journeys to the edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 I
Meeting of minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Success and failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
v
vi Contents
"Train like you fly" ......................................... 245
"Weird science" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
International mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
A glass half-empty?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Telescience on trial .......................................... 295
Under the 'veil' ............................................. 297
A changed mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
"Red lights in the cockpit" .................................... 309
"We didn't have a clue" ...................................... 326
Abort!. ................................................... 336
Long road to SLS-2 ......................................... 347
"You and the rest!" ......................................... 356
4- From foes to friends . ......................................... 375
"Pinch me!" ............................................... 375
An awkward start. .......................................... 376
Cool crew ................................................. 395
Radar love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 I
The majesty of 'Columbia' .................................... 412
"Sating in progress" ......................................... 422
Eyes on the Earth, on the stars, on the future ...................... 430
5_ Dawn of a new era .......................................... 453
A gloomy road to freedom .................................... 453
Seeds of friendship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
The partnership evolves ...................................... 468
Footsteps to the future ....................................... 480
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Iodex ........................................................ 493
About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Author's preface
When I set out to write a five-volume series to commemorate the first 50 years of our
adventure in space, it seemed a big project, though relatively straightforward and
something that I have always wanted to do. An obsessive space enthusiast for as long
as I can remember, I received my first space book at the age of five, was given a toy
Space Shuttle for a birthday present soon afterwards and by the time I reached my
seventh birthday I had watched in childish astonishment as Enterprise- mounted
atop a Boeing 747 carrier aircraft-hurtled over my primary school in Birmingham,
during sports day. It caused me to drop the egg from my spoon, unfortunately, but
the sight was so spectacular and awe-inspiring that it hooked me for life. The Moon
landings excited me - and still do - beyond compare and I began writing articles at
the age of 15, for the British Interplanetary Society's Spaceflight magazine and, later,
for Countdown and Astronomy Now. As I grew older, it became a goal of mine to
someday write a 'meaty' history of the human exploration of space, which I continue
to believe firmly is one of the greatest adventures ever undertaken by our species, but
everything I read seemed to 'lack' something. Some were overloaded with facts and
figures, others were devoted solely to the 'popular' audience, while still more simply
lacked the detail and human interest factor. I cannot promise the reader that my
series fulfils each of these gaps, but what I can say with certainty is that I have spent
an enjoyable three years researching the history of our adventure, told through news
sources, books, the memoirs of those involved, magazines, press kits and oral
histories, and have learned an immense amount. The reader may love or hate my
book - they may find it hard to put down or may simply fmd use for it as an
expensive additional castor for their sofa - but I have derived great joy from
researching and writing it.
It has been impossible to track entire decades within the pages of each volume.
The ftrst, Escaping the Bonds of Earth, had to take into account some of the
achievements of the 1950s, as a prerequisite to focusing on 'its' decade, the 1960s. In
a similar vein, the second volume, Foothold in the Heavens, needed the focus to fall in
considerable depth on some of the most remarkable achievements of the Space Age
Apollo 11 being the obvious example - at the expense of covering an entire decade.
The third instalment, At Home in Space, tackled the 1980s, the devastating tragedy
vii
viii Author's preface
of Challenger and the triumphs of Salyut 7 and Mir. Only with the fourth volume did
it become clear that I was punching above my weight. My determination to cover
each mission with the level of detail that it deserved, including biographies of each
spacefarer, turned this book into something much longer; so long, in fact, that I had
barely covered the 1980s and the extent was already rapidly approaching 600 pages.
As a result, with the approval of Clive Horwood, the series has expanded from five
into six volumes, to cover the first half-century in its entirety, whilst maintaining the
kind of depth that the reader would expect.
As the work progressed into this volume, Partnership in Space, the depth has been
easier to fulfil in some areas than others. The Russians, even in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, with the advent of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring),
and the eventnal collapse of the Soviet Union, proved notoriously secretive about
their activities and in several cases it has been impossible to offer biographies of a
handful of their cosmonauts in more than just a few words or paragraphs. That
secrecy extended to the West, too, when the Americans staged a handful of military
Shuttle missions, many of whose precise objectives remain classified to this day. I
have attempted, using the sources and contacts at my disposal, to shine a meagre
light on these shadowy flights and I fervently hope that a few years from now they
will emerge from the shadows to take their rightful place in history.
I have learned much about the human space programmes of the United States and
Russia and, equally importantly, have learned a great deal about the political events
which shaped their progress. Starting with Yuri Gagarin's pioneering voyage in
April 1961, the journey has carried me through a handful of dramatic decades,
punctuated by conflict and reconciliation, meddling and political manoeuvring, and
has seen the first men land on the Moon, the first men occupy an Earth-circling
space station, the first men pilot a reusable vehicle beyond the atmosphere, the first
men from other nations-Czechoslovakia, Poland, Vietnam and Mongolia, to name
but a few-and, of course, the first members of womankind to carry their dreams and
aspirations into the heavens. My intention has always been for something a little
more than a basic log of crewed expeditions into space, but as time has rolled on, the
project evolved into something much larger and more complex than I had envisaged.
The human side of the story has always been profoundly important to me. Take
Sergei Korolev: a man who endured so much physical and psychological trauma in
his youth - dreaming, even as he was transported to a living death in the Kolyma
gulag, of one day sending a rocket into space. Deke Slayton is another example: a
man chosen in his prime as one of America's finest, the 'Mercury Seven', whose
hopes were cruelly dashed by a devastating heart condition, yet who sprang back as
the man who guided the astronaut corps to the Moon, chose Neil Armstrong to take
the first historic steps on its dusty surface, and eventually overcame every obstacle in
his path to fly into orbit. Their remarkable stories and their individual trials and
tribulations, from childhood to the grave, carry just as much weight and drama and
excitement and adventure as the missions they flew. Yuri Gagarin pissing on the
wheel of the bus as he prepared to board his space capsule, Wally Schirra conceiving
of another legendary 'gotcha', Alexei Leonov and his love of cowboy hats and boots,
John Glenn and his competitive yearning to be first, Alexander Serebrov and his
Author's preface ix
penchant for fast cars, Christa McAuliffe and her passion to carry education to the
final frontier and Shannon Lucid and Svetlana Savitskaya, who both refused to
accept that their gender should tie them to Earthbound pursuits and who both strove
for the stars.
The story of our adventure in space is not simply about who spent the most time
there, who performed the most spacewalks or who flew the most missions. It is a
collection of stories: the stories of how a few hundred remarkable people, all of
whom achieved an uncommon goal, forever changed our perspective on the world in
which we live and fiXed our eyes and our minds and our imagination on the Universe
around us.
Ben Evans
Atherstone, May 2013
