2000 April 11, SPS 1020 (Introduction to Space Sciences) - Reading: today was Pale Blue Dot, by C. Sagan, Chs. 6 & 13 - Read PBD Chs. 15 & 16 for Thursday, April 13. - Read PBD Chs. 19, 21, & 22 for Tuesday, April 18. --------------- Spaceflight Past (continued) ---------------------------- 1968: the most violent year of the `60s, among the worst in U.S. history. - Tet Offensive convinces most Americans that Vietnam War is unwinnable; - Violent anti-war protests explode nationwide, especially at universities; - U.S. presidential candidate Robert Kennedy assassinated; - Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated; - The ensuing race riots make the 1992 Los Angeles riots look small; - Soviets send tanks into Czeckoslovakia to stop freedom movement. Time magazine, for its "Man of the Year" issue, considers running a faceless character, "The Dissenter." U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, formerly John F. Kennedy's V.P. and also a staunch space supporter, declares he will not seek re-election. This is primarily because his escalation of the Vietnam War---and his misleading the American public about it---have gone so badly. His "Great Society" domestic social programs also spend lots of money, but have little effect on poverty in America. Johnson, overwhelmed, leaves all the decisions about what to do in space after Apollo to his successor---who turns out to be Richard M. Nixon. Two of the few issues of confidence are the economy and the space program, back on its feet after a 21-month delay, after the Apollo 1 fire. 1968 October: Apollo 7 Earth-orbit test has a "101% successful" flight, despite all 3 astronauts having head colds (and being grouchy!) 1968 December 24: Apollo 8 astronauts become first humans to orbit the Moon. They read Bible's Genesis 1 to the largest TV audience ever. HUGE public impact. Photos of Earth make even bigger impact, to this day. Time picks Apollo 8 crew as "Men of the Year." This was NASA's most daring mission ever. This was the first time astronauts flew the Saturn V anywhere, and the first time a Saturn V had ever left the Earth's sphere of influence (including test flights). It was also only the second-ever manned flight of an Apollo spacecraft! 1969 March: Apollo 9 Earth-orbit test of Lunar Module & Apollo moonsuit 1969 May: Apollo 10 "dress rehearsal", mission includes all but landing. Lunar Module flies within 9 miles of lunar surface. 1969 July 20: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Alden Armstrong and Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. become the first humans to walk on the Moon. HUGE TV audience. HUGE public impact, despite the 500,000 American troops in Vietnam and the Rev. Abernathy's "Poor People's Protest" at KSC. EVERYONE makes lyrical speeches about "the unity of humankind." Nearly everyone marvels; it really does feel like "one Earth." This goes on for 3 weeks. Then the Woodstock Festival happens, all the reporters go to upstate New York to cover it, and life goes back to "normal." (This is how I think the public will respond to a real SETI detection, too.) 1969: Wernher von Braun proposes ambitious post-Apollo space program. It assumes a budget twice that during the height of the Apollo project. Apollo cost $24 billion in the 1960s. Now, that would be $75-100 billion. At its height, NASA took 5% of the federal budget; now, it takes < 1%. NASA's current budget is $14 billion/year. (Each year of the Vietnam war, over 1965-1973, cost more than all of Apollo.) Von Braun's proposal includes his program from Collier's, including: - A space station, with a space shuttle to get to it. The station would rotate to produce the sensation of weight (often wrongly called "artificial gravity"). By 1980 it would have 60 astronauts aboard. - A space tug, or Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), for piloted low-Earth-orbit (LEO), geosynchronous orbit (GEO), and lunar operations. - Follow-on Moon landings, with a Moon base by 1978. - A nuclear-powered deep-space vehicle, based on the NERVA nuclear rocket that had been tested in the Nevada desert in 1968. With this, a human expedition to Mars would take place in 1981-1983. Nixon would have none of it, all being too expensive for him. The times were changing: the riots and sentiment against the Vietnam War were causing America to turn inward. 1969 November: Apollo 12: Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land near Surveyor 3, bring back parts, including that colony of bacteria that had lived on the Moon for 31 months. 1970 April: The Beatles break up 1970 April: Apollo 13 "successful failure". Moon landing canceled due to on-board explosion; astronauts barely return to Earth with their lives. 1971 January: Apollo 14. Alan Shepard hits golf balls on the Moon, does a lackluster job at geology. (Gets lost looking for rim of Cone crater.) The golf balls would be looked upon as frivolous by the American public, who by this time had become bored with space. As had been said in 1970: "I believe it would be unconsciable to embark on a project of such staggering cost when many of our citizens are malnourished, when our rivers and lakes are polluted, and when our cities and rural areas are dying. What are our values? What do we think is more important?" -- Senator Walter Mondale EVERYWHERE you heard the refrain: If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we...? (Discuss: What's the logical fallacy here?) 1971 July: Apollo 15, first of the "J" series Apollo missions, with more capable Lunar Module, 3-day stays, Lunar Rover car, more emphasis on science. 1969-1971: Soviet N-1, their Moon rocket, blows up four times. They cancel it, and claim they never were in a race to the Moon. 1971: The Soviets orbit the first space station, Salyut 1. All goes well for the 3-week mission, and the crew breaks the duration-in-space record. However, just prior to re-entry, a vent valve in the Soyuz spacecraft opens. All the air leaks out in seconds. Soviets on ground were getting ready to have a parade: instead, they had a funeral. This was the most traumatic event in the Soviet Union that generation. The three cosmonauts were the first fatalities in space: pulmonary embolism (the bends) was the cause of death. 1972 April: Apollo 16. When John Young and Charlie Duke are walking on the Moon, they are told Congress has just passed a resolution to develop the Space Shuttle. It nearly didn't because NASA wanted to couple it to a space station. The Shuttle would be developed for $5 billion, half that of what NASA had asked. 1972 December: Apollo 17, the last human flight to the Moon. Jack Schmitt becomes first and only geologist sent. (Discuss: Why has no one ever been back to the Moon?) 1973-1974: U.S. Skylab space station, made of leftover Apollo hardware, inhabited by 3 crews for 1, 2, and 3 months. 1975: Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The last Apollo docks with a Soyuz, in a temporary thaw in the Cold War. Late '70s to mid-'80s: Soviet cosmonauts do not abandon space. Series of successful space stations, especially Salyut 6 and Salyut 7. Long-duration space flights of over a year; impressive in-flight repairs and improvisation, including replacing the main propulsion system of a Soyuz, then riding it to Earth. Late '70s to mid-'80s: the Golden Age of Planetary Exploration. Viking and Voyager missions to the planets. 1978: Soviet nuclear-powered satellite, Cosmos 954, accidentally re-enters over Canada. Canadians stuck with most of the radioactive cleanup bill. 1979: Skylab's orbit decays, and it crashes to Earth. This scares many people, since it was NOT a controlled event. Large parts (> 1 ton) strike Western Australia, but no one is hurt. 1981 April 12, 20 years to the day after Gagarin's flight: >>> STS-1, launch of the first Space Shuttle, Columbia <<< 1982: U.S. military space budget becomes larger than NASA's budget. 1982: 1000th launch of the R-7 (nickname "Semyorka", or "Old Number 7"), still in use today. 1983 March: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the "Strategic Defense Initiative", or "Star Wars" program, a space-based plan to shoot down incoming Soviet ICBMs. While deeply technically flawed, the program does produce its desired effect: it scares the hell out of the Soviets, who know their technology can't come close to matching what the U.S.'s still can't do (but they didn't realize that). 1984 January: Reagan calls for NASA to construct "a space station, and to do it within a decade." NASA spends all the original $8 billion budget by 1992 before constructing any hardware. 1984-1985: Spectacular operations by the Space Shuttle (formally the Space Transportation System), including repair of the Solar Max satellite, retrieving and re-launch of wayward satellites, untethered flights with Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). 1986 January 28, 19 years and 1 day after the Apollo 1 fire: Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch, killing all 7 crew, including "Teacher in Space" Christa McAuliffe. Shuttle grounded until 1988 October. Again, as in 1967, there are calls for the U.S. to end human space flight. 1986 February: Mir (= "Peace") space station launched by Soviets. For a while they go back to beating the hell out of us in space. The urgency of the 50s/60s isn't there, though. By then, there are no doubts that the Soviet economy, run in a Communist system, can't match the U.S.'s. The military advantage isn't as clear, either. 1989 July 20: President George Bush announces the "Space Exploration Intitiative", a plan to return to the Moon, and go to Mars by 2019. Over the next 3 years, SEI dies from weak leadership and conflicting priorities of NASA and Congress. Also fatal: 30-year timescale too long for U.S. political system. Also: $500 billion price (!) they were asking. 1990: First paying customer (in other words, tourist) to fly in space, aboard Mir for $10 million in yen, Japanese journalist Toyohiro Akiyama. He's very motion sick and does not have good time... 1991 September: Breakup of the Soviet Union, formally ending the Cold War. From now on, we call them "Russians," not "Soviets." 1992 February: Russian program has severe money trouble. Riot and looting at the primary launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the now-sovereign country of Kazakhstan. 1992: George Bush and Boris Yeltsin agree to launch a joint space program. This becomes a key diplomatic tie between the two countries. 1992: Public trust in the U.S. government is running very low, partly because it is running a huge budget deficit. NASA is seen as "part of the problem," because of many billion-dollar failures: Challenger disaster, Hubble's optical problems, Mars Observer loss, Galileo antenna problems. 1992: Dan Goldin becomes NASA Administrator. Begins his agenda of making NASA "faster, cheaper, and better." 1993: Hubble Space Telescope repair by Space Shuttle astronauts becomes the most-watched space mission since the Moon landings. Tide is turning again for NASA. 1995: First Space Shuttle missions to Russian Mir space station. $400 million from U.S. keeps Russian program going. Much public interest in U.S. 1995: "Apollo 13" becomes a hit movie. Tom Hanks lionized by Congress. Many in NASA wonder why an actor playing an astronaut has more clout than a real astronaut, but what the hey. 1996: David MacKay announces "tentative evidence" for life on Mars, in SNC meteorite ALH 84001. 1997: Mars Pathfinder lander, the first spacecraft to land on Mars since 1976, makes a big hit with the American public. 1997: Commercial space budgets become larger than government space budgets, including both military and NASA. Over 600 communications satellites planned for next decade, about 1 launch/week. 1997: Fire and collision aboard Mir, which nevertheless keeps going. (Actually, fire, near-miss, leaks, computer problems, and collision.) 1998 June: Last U.S. mission to Mir. 1998: A 77-year-old John Glenn flies in space again, aboard Space Shuttle; great public interest. Walter Cronkite (veteran news man, "the voice of space") comes out of retirement to cover it. 1998: First components of International Space Station, Zarya (Russian-built, American financed) and Unity (U.S.), joined in orbit.