Life in orbit is expensive, but well worth the cost - space shuttle missions - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 17, 1994 | by Al Rossiter, Jr.

The Endeavour crew members who fixed the Hubble Space Telescope during five meticulous space walks should have removed any lingering doubts about the usefulness of people in space and the value of the shuttle as an orbital service station.

Moreover, the overhaul of the orbiting observatory in the cargo bay of the shuttle should give a needed boost to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's newly revised space station plans. The international lab will require extensive space walk construction and servicing from shuttles later this decade.

These recent accomplishments, however, are not likely to silence those in the scientific community and in Congress who believe a space station and other megaprojects in space are just not worth their enormous price tags. Much of what shuttles have done since Columbia first flew in 1981 could have been achieved, in retrospect, by unmanned rockets at less cost and no risk to human life. But there are some jobs only a craft like a shuttle can do, and the Endeavour astronauts proved it.

The four spacewalkers and the three members of their support crew showed that with enough training and planning, "routine" service calls and intricate repairs can be accomplished with apparent ease. But this mission was not a demonstration flight or a public relations stunt. It initially was planned as a regular servicing flight that took on extra importance when it was discovered shortly after Hubble's launch in 1990 that the telescope had fuzzy vision and the jitters every time it went through a sunset or sunrise. Repairs for these problems, and other ones that followed, became the primary focus of the Endeavour mission.

There have been bold space repair missions before. Astronauts saved Skylab 20 years ago, for example, by freeing a stuck solar wing generator during a risky space walk and eracting a crude sunshade to keep the lab from baking in the sun's rays. And there has been daring improvisation, such as in 1992 when three spacewalkers grabbed a crippled communications satellite by hand because they couldn't capture it with the shuttle's robotic arm.

But none of those space missions matched the complexity and multitude of jobs performed by Endeavour's crew in overhauling Hubble. If the telescope's views of the universe in the weeks ahead are not significantly improved, it won't be the astronauts' fault. They did everything they were asked to do, and more.

NASA's spacewalking prowess did not come easily. Early attempts to do something outside a spacecraft cabin, as part of the Gemini program in the mid-1960s, produced one rude surprise after another. Astronauts wearing bulky space suits found it difficult to move about and became fatigued before they could accomplish relatively simple tasks. Gemini 9 astronaut Eugene Cernan had to cut short a test of an astronaut maneuvering unit in June 1966 because his visor fogged up, and three months later Richard Gordon in Gemini 11 returned early because he became fatigued trying to attach a tether to a docked rocket section.

Gemini 12 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, who later went to the moon, became the first spacewalker to use a water tank to simulate weightlessness. He had a successful space walk in November 1966, evaluating new hand-and footholds and performing various basic tasks. NASA had learned that the success of a space walk was proportional to the quality of training and planning.

The four astronauts who repaired Hubble had spent hundreds of hours in water tanks rehearsing every detail, using equipment virtually identical to the real things. And Hubble was designed from the outset for astronaut servicing. The satellite has 225 feet of handrails and 31 footholds to give astronauts the stability they need when there is no gravity.

Three decades of experience and years of planning and training paid off. NASA has taken a major step toward assuring continued work for people in space.