The History of Space Stations
By Adam Tanner
MOSCOW, Nov 20 (Reuters)
The new International Space Station, the first module
of which was launched on Friday, is only the latest in
a series of manned outposts which have kept humans in
orbit on and off since 1971.
The U.S. space agency NASA dates the first proposal for
a manned station to 1869, when a U.S. science fiction
writer described a "Brick Moon" orbiting Earth to help
ships navigate at sea. In 1923, Romanian Hermann Oberth
was the first to use the term "space station" for his
wheel-like facility that would help launch astronauts
to the moon and Mars.
After World War Two German rocket scientist Wernher von
Braun helped popularise space stations, publishing his
vision of a spinning wheel-shaped station, much like that
used in the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." (Webmasters'
note: This movie is based on a book by the same name, by
renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke.)
The Soviet Union launched the world's first space station,
Salyut 1, in 1971, a decade after Moscow put the first man
into space. The first crew arrived several days later but
could not get the hatch to open properly and returned home
a few hours later. The next crew of three succeeded in
getting on board and spending 22 days in the cramped module,
with Soviet television highlighting their adventures on the
evening news. But tragedy struck after they entered their
capsule to return home when air leaked out and they died.
Moscow sent up a series of subsequent Salyut stations in
the 1970s and early 1980s, gradually increasing the amount
of time cosmonauts spent on board.
"The most important thing about these flights is that they
proved the overall possibility to increase the duration of
flights progressively," said Oleg Gazenko, who worked in
the programme at the time as director of the Institute of
Medical and Biological Problems. "During the Soyuz-9 mission
(in 1970) a flight of about 16 days, this crew did not feel
very well, so there were doubts as to whether the unpleasant
effects of weightlessness could be overcome," he said in an
interview. "The orbital station showed that it was in fact
possible."
The United States sent its first space station, the larger
Skylab, into orbit in 1973, but it hosted just three crews
before it was abandoned in 1974. It fell to Earth five years
later, killing a cow in Australia upon landing.
As the United States moved its efforts to short-term
shuttle flights, Russia continued to focus on long-duration
missions, and in 1986 launched the first module of the Mir
space station. Since that time cosmonauts have continuously
manned the station except for two brief periods, and from
1994-95 cosmonaut Valery Polyakov set the human space
duration record with 438 days in orbit.
Russia continued adding modules to Mir until the arrival
of the seventh component, Priroda, in 1996, and it hosted
a series of American and other foreign astronauts. But a
Russian-American crew nearly died in 1997 when Mir collided
with a resupply ship. Intensive repairs in the months
following the collision nursed the station back to health,
but NASA would like Russia to retire the record-breaking
station so Moscow can focus its meagre resources on the
new station.
Russia has pledged to bring down the Mir station in June
1999, but in recent weeks officials, proud of their own
station and saying Mir still has a few good years left, have
stepped up efforts to keep it flying.
REUTERS
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