Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: joth In Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech. Once again, if
Speaker 1: I sound different from this episode than normal episodes, it's
Speaker 1: because I'm in our studio in Atlanta, not at home.
Speaker 1: But we are continuing our story about space stations, which
Speaker 1: just gets longer within free episode I caught. I thought
Speaker 1: originally this was gonna be maybe a two partter. Turns
Speaker 1: out it's gonna be a four partner and this is
Speaker 1: part three. So in our last episode in this series,
Speaker 1: we looked at the history of Mirror, the first modular
Speaker 1: space station, and there are a couple of things that
Speaker 1: I really need to cover before I move on, stuff
Speaker 1: I didn't talk about in the Mirror episode for one
Speaker 1: reason or another. One of those is that Mirror really
Speaker 1: was an amazing achievement, but it was also kind of
Speaker 1: a show, at least according to some reports. Astronauts who
Speaker 1: visited mir mentioned that parts of the space station were
Speaker 1: littered with rubbish because the Russians hadn't really come up
Speaker 1: with a way to store that stuff effectively. I mentioned
Speaker 1: how the Quant one module sort of became a container
Speaker 1: for floating rubbish after the various instruments in that in
Speaker 1: that UH module went to put and there was no
Speaker 1: real need to use it anymore. But that's not to
Speaker 1: say that garbage just continued to accumulate over the fifteen
Speaker 1: years span that Mirror was in service. The crew would
Speaker 1: actually unpack incoming cargo ships that would dock with Mer.
Speaker 1: Then they would shove garbage into the cargo ships that
Speaker 1: went back to re enter Earth's atmosphere and then break
Speaker 1: apart on re entry, so that garbage was sent hurtling
Speaker 1: back to Earth. But you know it's okay because most
Speaker 1: of it just burnt up on the way back. At
Speaker 1: least I guess it's okay. And in the last episode,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that a cargo ship once I did with
Speaker 1: the Specter module on Mirror. As the cargo ship was
Speaker 1: going through this experimental docking procedure with the Quant one
Speaker 1: module nearby, that collision punctured Specter's hole, forcing the crew
Speaker 1: to seal the Specter module off from the rest of
Speaker 1: the station in order to prevent the full station from
Speaker 1: depressurizing the Specter module's power. Generation capabilities were similarly cut off.
Speaker 1: That had some solar arrays. But you know, sealing it
Speaker 1: off meant that the astronauts, the cosmonauts, I should say,
Speaker 1: had no more access to it. However, uh, there were
Speaker 1: some some e v A s some spacewalks that the
Speaker 1: cosmonauts conducted in order to restore at least some connectivity
Speaker 1: with Specter's power generation, though the module itself remained sealed off.
Speaker 1: Specter had been where American astronauts had lived up to
Speaker 1: that point. Obviously, it could no longer serve that function.
Speaker 1: It had been in service for just two years when
Speaker 1: this collision brought it offline. There was speculation that the
Speaker 1: whole reason that this happened may have been that that
Speaker 1: cargo ship that collided with Specter had actually been overpacked
Speaker 1: with garbage ahead of that experimental docking procedure, and that
Speaker 1: the problem was that because of all that extra garbage,
Speaker 1: the ship had more mass than the control crew thought
Speaker 1: it was gonna have, so they weren't able to bring
Speaker 1: it to a stop the way they thought they would.
Speaker 1: Because it's remember that it's you know, it's pretty hard
Speaker 1: to judge how much to pack into a ship because
Speaker 1: it's really hard to figure out how much stuff weighs
Speaker 1: in microgravity because you can't, you know, put it on
Speaker 1: a scale or anything. So you you could easily pack
Speaker 1: too much mass in a cargo ship and not realize
Speaker 1: it when you're in microgravity because there's no easy way
Speaker 1: to keep track of that with precision. And as we know,
Speaker 1: you know, the more massive something is, the harder it
Speaker 1: is to change that object's momentum. A heavy object needs
Speaker 1: more energy to get it to start moving than a
Speaker 1: lighter object needs, and a heavier object also needs more
Speaker 1: energy to bring it to a stop than a lighter
Speaker 1: object would. So that might have been why the cargo
Speaker 1: ship failed to use enough thrust to avoid the collision
Speaker 1: during that docking procedure. That the ship itself was just
Speaker 1: loaded down with garbage. Jean Pierre Agnier and I know
Speaker 1: I've butchered his name, so I'll just call him Jean
Speaker 1: Pierre from now on, a French astronaut and pilot, spoke
Speaker 1: with New scientists about what it was like to live
Speaker 1: and work aboard Mirror. He said that the station smelled
Speaker 1: kind of like burnt coffee and that the fans on
Speaker 1: board the ship the fans that you know, we're circulating
Speaker 1: the air aboard the ship generated sixty seven decibel's worth
Speaker 1: of noise on average, making it sound like a noisy
Speaker 1: engine room all the time. He said it was actually
Speaker 1: hard for him to get used to silence when he
Speaker 1: left the station. He said there was no privacy aboard
Speaker 1: the station, that the crew were required to engage in
Speaker 1: two exercise sessions a day to counteract the effects that
Speaker 1: microgravity can have on the human body, and that on
Speaker 1: average they would get two sessions of five minute daily
Speaker 1: contacts with Earth and otherwise they were just stuck with
Speaker 1: each other. Jean Pierre said that he felt Mirror was
Speaker 1: error resistant, that the station itself was resistant to serious errors,
Speaker 1: and pointed out that while the station had experienced two
Speaker 1: separate emergencies like real emergencies, and one was the onboard
Speaker 1: fire and the other was the cargo ship collision, no
Speaker 1: one was harmed in either of those, and so while
Speaker 1: these accidents happened, the ship or the space station itself
Speaker 1: was resistant to catastrophe. He did criticize the procedures that
Speaker 1: were followed by the Russian Space Agency, said they weren't
Speaker 1: really sufficiently careful or detail oriented and that things could
Speaker 1: have been much worse had the tech not been as
Speaker 1: a you know, tough. Also, towards the end of Mirror's service,
Speaker 1: the crew aboard the station conducted a study on the
Speaker 1: microbes that were inhabiting the station. The climate control system
Speaker 1: had been leaking slightly, and the crew found that behind
Speaker 1: an inspection panel they found orbs of water floating back there,
Speaker 1: murky water. Each orb was about the size of a
Speaker 1: soccer ball. So these are pretty sizable, you know, groups
Speaker 1: of water. And the microbes inside included fun guy mites
Speaker 1: and bacteria. And along with that, the crew found that
Speaker 1: there were microbes that were feeding off the rubberized seals
Speaker 1: around the windows. Now, when you have to be in
Speaker 1: a pressurized station in outer space, that's a serious risk.
Speaker 1: And it's not just like these microbes hitched a ride
Speaker 1: aboard all the equipment. The station had come together in
Speaker 1: clean rooms on Earth. So clean rooms are facilities that
Speaker 1: use powerful air filtration systems to remove particulates and contaminants
Speaker 1: from you know, the atmosphere and not have them interfere
Speaker 1: when you're building the stuff. So all the grossy stuff
Speaker 1: didn't come from the equipment. It came up courtesy of
Speaker 1: the cosmonauts and astronauts who visited the Mere space station.
Speaker 1: You know, because people are gross. All people are gross,
Speaker 1: You are gross, I'm gross. Tari is gross grossness. Aside,
Speaker 1: Mirror served many purposes. There were a lot of scientific
Speaker 1: studies and experiments on Mirror, including mostly the effects of uh,
Speaker 1: what it's like for human beings to be in space
Speaker 1: for extended stays. That was really important. It also served
Speaker 1: as a test bed for international cooperation with regard to
Speaker 1: space science and exploration. You know, a lot of visiting
Speaker 1: cosmonauts were from different countries who got to stay aboard Mirror,
Speaker 1: and this was an important stepping stone. And now for
Speaker 1: one last Mirror story. But it's a heck of a story.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a bit more about cosmonaut Saragei Krikolev.
Speaker 1: I mentioned him in the previous episode, but this is
Speaker 1: a big part of his story. He had joined the
Speaker 1: Soviet space program in the nineteen eighties. He was selected
Speaker 1: to be a cosmonaut in nineteen eighty five and he
Speaker 1: completed his training the following year and he was assigned
Speaker 1: originally to the Brand program that was the Soviet equivalent
Speaker 1: of the Space station. Ultimately, the brand never flew beyond
Speaker 1: an unmanned test flight, but later he was selected to
Speaker 1: fly to Mirror, which he actually did a couple of times.
Speaker 1: The first time he did it was in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: He was up there for a hundred fifty two days,
Speaker 1: but it was during his second visit that I really
Speaker 1: want to you know, cover here. He returned to Mirror
Speaker 1: on the mission in May of nineteen one with Anatoly
Speaker 1: arts Sabarski and Britain's first astronaut, Helen Sharman. Now, the
Speaker 1: way Mirror missions were is that you would have cruise
Speaker 1: come up and intermingle with cruise from previous missions, so
Speaker 1: there would be you know, some some carry over and
Speaker 1: some of the folks who were previously a board Mire
Speaker 1: would then board the Saya's capsule that had just docked
Speaker 1: with the station and then they would leave, they would
Speaker 1: go back to Earth and others would stay aboard. And
Speaker 1: you couldn't just leave Mere unattended, so there was always
Speaker 1: you know, a crew aboard there. Soya's capsules had very
Speaker 1: limited capacity, so there wasn't any real way to get
Speaker 1: everyone back unless you were to abandoned ship and take
Speaker 1: the one escape capsule that was docked with the station
Speaker 1: and take that back to Earth, but that would leave
Speaker 1: Miror unattended. So Kricolev found himself in a tricky situation
Speaker 1: because he was up on Mirror when the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: ceased to be. The space program responsible for taking cosmonauts
Speaker 1: to and retrieving them from the space station no longer existed,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't space in the capsules that were scheduled
Speaker 1: to go up and come back for a Crica left
Speaker 1: to go along with it. So he was left in
Speaker 1: limbo on this space station, not knowing when or even
Speaker 1: if he would ever be able to come back to Earth.
Speaker 1: And he got the nickname the last Soviet Citizen because
Speaker 1: when he went up the Soviet Union was still a thing.
Speaker 1: He was a flight engineer. He was stuck keeping Mirror
Speaker 1: and working order, and he did ask that one crew
Speaker 1: that was going to visit him, but they weren't going
Speaker 1: to be able to take him back because again the
Speaker 1: says capsule didn't have the capacity for it. He asked
Speaker 1: them if they could maybe bring him some honey which
Speaker 1: could help lift his spirits. They weren't able to get
Speaker 1: hold of any honey, so instead they brought him lemons
Speaker 1: and horseradish, which I think is insult to injury personally. Now,
Speaker 1: fortunately rescue did come and after more than three hundred
Speaker 1: thirty days in space, which was twice the length of
Speaker 1: his planned stay, he was able to return and to Earth.
Speaker 1: His landing spot was originally part of the U S.
Speaker 1: S R, and his space suit even still had USSR
Speaker 1: stitched on it, but now that same landing spot was
Speaker 1: part of Kazakhstan. Uh. In fact, his hometown had changed names.
Speaker 1: When he went up it was called Leningrad. When he
Speaker 1: came back down it had a new name St. Petersburg,
Speaker 1: and because of massive inflation issues with Russian currency, his
Speaker 1: salary for being a cosmonaut was now about half of
Speaker 1: what a bus driver would have made. Yawsa he would
Speaker 1: later serve as the guest cosmonaut on the Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: program that was part of the Shuttle mirror missions. I
Speaker 1: mentioned that in the last episode, and he wasn't even
Speaker 1: done with space after that, Like, even after all that,
Speaker 1: he was still going to go up into space again,
Speaker 1: because he was the first Russian cosmonaut to be a
Speaker 1: crew member aboard the International Space Station, which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about more in the next episode, but his
Speaker 1: is a really cool story. Okay, So let's switch over
Speaker 1: and briefly talk about the space Shuttle program in the
Speaker 1: United States because that program would in turn shape the
Speaker 1: development of future space stations and have massive effects on
Speaker 1: the progress of space station development as well. After the
Speaker 1: Apollo missions, with the exception of the Apollo Soyo's mission,
Speaker 1: in which an Apollo capsule and a Soyo's capsule docked
Speaker 1: in orbit in n well, NASA was looking at what
Speaker 1: the future of space flight would be all about. There
Speaker 1: was this desire to develop a spacecraft that could go
Speaker 1: up into orbit, returned to Earth in a way that
Speaker 1: would allow pilots to guide the spacecraft to a landing strip,
Speaker 1: then land safely, and then be you know, repaired and
Speaker 1: prepared for a subsequent launch so you could reuse it.
Speaker 1: A reusable spacecraft would cut way back on expenses because
Speaker 1: NASA wouldn't have to commission a brand new spacecraft for
Speaker 1: every single mission, although the launch system was a different story.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this program got started in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: But developing a new spacecraft takes a lot of time.
Speaker 1: You have to design things, you have to propose things,
Speaker 1: you have to settle on which proposal is best. You
Speaker 1: have to you know, award contracts. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: And as we're covering the in this series, NASA regularly
Speaker 1: changes as well due to lots of different reasons from Congress,
Speaker 1: you know, shifting budgets year over year, two changes in
Speaker 1: presidential administrations that affect the leadership in NASA. So the
Speaker 1: hope was to have the Shuttle program up and running
Speaker 1: in time to dock with sky Lab and boost the
Speaker 1: orbiting laboratory to a higher orbit and extend its useful lifespan.
Speaker 1: But the space Shuttle program delays meant that that just
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna happen. That's why NASA had no choice but
Speaker 1: to allow sky Labs orbit to decay to the point
Speaker 1: where it re entered our atmosphere and then broke apart
Speaker 1: into pieces, some of which hit Australia. By ninety seven,
Speaker 1: NASA was testing a glider called Enterprise to verify that
Speaker 1: the basic designs for the space plane would work, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be until nineteen eighty one that the agency
Speaker 1: would have a space Shuttle capable of going into orbit
Speaker 1: and returning, and that space Shuttle was Columbia, and it
Speaker 1: launched for the first time in April of nineteen one.
Speaker 1: Sky Lab, by the way, had already come crashing down
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. Now, the reason I even bring
Speaker 1: up the space Shuttle is that this would become the
Speaker 1: primary means of bringing astronauts up to the space station
Speaker 1: and back down again. The Russians would continue to rely
Speaker 1: on the Soyuz capsule to take cosmonauts up to Mirror,
Speaker 1: but the Space Shuttle would be the main vehicle used
Speaker 1: to you know, shuttle crews and experiments to and from
Speaker 1: space stations. And that meant that the design of the
Speaker 1: Shuttle itself would inform the design of future space stations.
Speaker 1: You want your station to be compatible with your method
Speaker 1: of transportation. Makes sense anyway. In nineteen seventy nine, plans
Speaker 1: had begun in NASA for a new space station like me.
Speaker 1: This one was planned to be modular, with pieces brought
Speaker 1: up on separate Space Shuttle missions and then constructed in orbit.
Speaker 1: And as a stepping stone toward that, NASA formed a
Speaker 1: strategic partnership with the European Space Agency. One of the
Speaker 1: early examples of this in the Space Shuttle era were
Speaker 1: these things called space labs. The e s A, the
Speaker 1: European Space Agency, created these laboratories which would be loaded
Speaker 1: into the payload cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, and
Speaker 1: they would serve as lab space for specific experiments. There
Speaker 1: were lots of different space lab missions. In fact, there
Speaker 1: were more than twenty of them throughout the Space Shuttle program. Now,
Speaker 1: the space labs were not space stations themselves. They remained
Speaker 1: connected to the shuttle, but their development would lead to
Speaker 1: advancements in the E s A, and they would serve
Speaker 1: as the foundation for space station modules down the line
Speaker 1: in the future. There were also plans to have the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle visit Saliott stations in partnership with the then
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. This gets into politics a bit so. Beginning
Speaker 1: in the late sixties, the U s s R. And
Speaker 1: USA started to work toward more cooperation and everything from
Speaker 1: space exploration to pumping the brakes on the arms race
Speaker 1: around the world. It wasn't always a super happy, fun friendship,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as adversarial a relationship as the two
Speaker 1: had experienced in the nineteen fifties and early sixties. This period,
Speaker 1: called the Detante, lasted from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, but it ended right around the time the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle program was making real progress. We'll pick up
Speaker 1: with more about how the political situation affected the space
Speaker 1: exploration industry after we take this quick break. The reasons
Speaker 1: for the breakdown and dissolution of the Detant are pitty
Speaker 1: complicated and obviously well beyond the parameters of this show.
Speaker 1: But things were already tense before the Soviet Union invaded
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in nineteen seventy nine. What followed would be increased
Speaker 1: tension between the two nations, with a resurgence in arms
Speaker 1: development and deployment to follow. So, yeah, that was my childhood.
Speaker 1: That was a childhood in which there was this omnipresent,
Speaker 1: vague thread of nuclear annihilation simpler times, man. Now what
Speaker 1: this means for our podcast is just that any plans
Speaker 1: to have the Space She will be part of the
Speaker 1: Saliot program. We're put on ice and by then the
Speaker 1: USSR was focusing on Mirror as well. Things would change
Speaker 1: later after Gorbachev worked to re establish a more friendly
Speaker 1: relationship with Europe and the United States. So in nineteen two,
Speaker 1: NASA formed a special group, the Space Station Task force.
Speaker 1: This group started to put together a plan for a
Speaker 1: space station. Further, the plan was to involve the international community,
Speaker 1: opening up the whole process, from development to construction to
Speaker 1: operation to other nations. In nineteen three, NASA hosted a
Speaker 1: workshop focusing on space stations. The following year, US President
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan specifically called for the development of a space
Speaker 1: station during his State of the Union address. NASA subsequently
Speaker 1: created the Space Station Program Office to go from the
Speaker 1: kind of brainstorming phase and the buy in phase to
Speaker 1: a more formal planning phase. NASA also issued an RFP
Speaker 1: that's a request for proposal, and this RFP went out
Speaker 1: to various companies in the aerospace industry to submit proposals
Speaker 1: as to the design of space station components like modules
Speaker 1: and such. The plan for what the space station would
Speaker 1: look like and thus how designers would arrange all the
Speaker 1: components changed a few times. One of the early designs
Speaker 1: got the nickname the Power Tower, which makes me think
Speaker 1: of like a pro wrestling team. But the power Tower
Speaker 1: space station design was a pretty darn long one. The
Speaker 1: main structure would have measured one twos once fully assembled,
Speaker 1: that's around four feet. That is a long space station. Now,
Speaker 1: not all of that length was habitable. It wasn't all
Speaker 1: like modules where astronauts could you know, float around. The
Speaker 1: design actually included a truss or scaffolding from which components
Speaker 1: like radio telescopes and solar arrays could hang. In fact,
Speaker 1: extending out to either side from the center mass of
Speaker 1: this power tower would be forty one worth of solar
Speaker 1: arrays on either side. That's about a hundred thirty four
Speaker 1: and a half feet of solar rays sticking out to
Speaker 1: either side of this thing. The structure would have articulated
Speaker 1: attachment points for various payloads, allowing NASA and the E
Speaker 1: s A and other partners to create scientific experiments that
Speaker 1: could do all sorts of different kinds of research, from
Speaker 1: Earth's studies to astronomical observations. It would be a massive undertaking,
Speaker 1: or I should say it would have been a massive undertaking.
Speaker 1: Assembly would have required twelve separate shuttle flights, as estimated
Speaker 1: by NASA in order to get all the components into
Speaker 1: orbit and then connected to one another. NASA's projected schedule
Speaker 1: for doing that would span nineteen nine two to nine.
Speaker 1: Not keep in mind, this is a plan that's being
Speaker 1: proposed in Night and parts of the station, according to
Speaker 1: this plan, would be ready for astronauts actually inhabited by three,
Speaker 1: So while the station would not be complete till starting
Speaker 1: in ninety three, there would be enough there for astronauts
Speaker 1: to go there and work and live aboard the space station. However,
Speaker 1: there were some external issues that would mean that this would,
Speaker 1: you know, be the space station that never was, and
Speaker 1: the reason for that was primarily related to budget. Even
Speaker 1: go into a decade before the station would have been
Speaker 1: completed if things had gone as planned, Reductions in NASA's
Speaker 1: budget meant there just was no viable way for the
Speaker 1: agency to stay on target with a plan to go
Speaker 1: this direction. But in addition to budgets, there were criticisms
Speaker 1: about the design. Oliver Harwood, who had been a space
Speaker 1: station engineer, said that he felt the various contractors had
Speaker 1: all submitted pretty similar designs for the station, and that
Speaker 1: these designs showed that the contractors weren't actually looking to
Speaker 1: find the best way to solve engineering problems. Instead, they
Speaker 1: were trying to make sure that their design looked a
Speaker 1: lot like NASA's original proposed design, just in an effort
Speaker 1: to win a contract. So, in other words, he's he
Speaker 1: was saying that these companies were saying, this is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the best way, but it might be the best
Speaker 1: way to get paid. And that's not necessarily great if
Speaker 1: you're looking to build something that's supposed supposed to support
Speaker 1: people in space and you know, be a platform on
Speaker 1: which you do a lot of science. Another criticism was
Speaker 1: that the sections of the inhabited power tower depended upon
Speaker 1: a construction approach in which modules were stacked one on
Speaker 1: top of another in a linear fashion, but some engineers
Speaker 1: worried that this could lead to dangerous situations. So imagine
Speaker 1: you've got a space station made out of you know,
Speaker 1: like seven modules, and they're all arranged in a line
Speaker 1: end to end. So you have module one on one end,
Speaker 1: you've got modules seven on the opposite end, and you
Speaker 1: know two through six are in between. Now, let's say
Speaker 1: there's a point where maybe module modules four and six
Speaker 1: catch on fire, and someone happens to be in module five.
Speaker 1: So you seal off modules four and six so that
Speaker 1: the fire doesn't spread. But now you've got an astronaut
Speaker 1: stuck in module five. They have no way of getting
Speaker 1: out because one end of the station seven is on
Speaker 1: the other side. Of the sealed off five and or
Speaker 1: six rather and the other end of the station is
Speaker 1: on the other side of sealed off module four, so
Speaker 1: you'd have this dead end situation. It could be castrophic
Speaker 1: at any rate. By the time we were actually into
Speaker 1: the power tower, design was abandoned, and in the fall
Speaker 1: of eighty five, NASA studied a different design called a
Speaker 1: dual keel station. That's keel as k e e L.
Speaker 1: It's you know, a boat term. The design had a
Speaker 1: massive trust, sort of like a long rectangle of scaffolding
Speaker 1: and a length of scaffold going across the middle halfway
Speaker 1: down the length of the rectangle. NASA plan to mount
Speaker 1: modules on this trust connected to one another, and also
Speaker 1: have solar arrays attached to either side, extending outward from
Speaker 1: the edges of this rectangle, and modules amounted along the interior.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to describe, so if you want
Speaker 1: to get an image of this, you can search dual
Speaker 1: Keel spaceship and there are a lot of illustrations and
Speaker 1: models of it. And it's kind of a moot point
Speaker 1: because NASA would later abandon this design too, But the
Speaker 1: idea was that the design would provide stability in micro
Speaker 1: gravity for the entire station, that it would keep things
Speaker 1: stable so you didn't have to worry about too much
Speaker 1: mechanical stress being placed on any point of the space station,
Speaker 1: which could then lead to failure. The size and complexity
Speaker 1: of the design also meant the NASA increased the crew
Speaker 1: complement to eight astronauts. The earlier designs had focused on
Speaker 1: a crew of six, but there was this concern that
Speaker 1: six astronauts wouldn't be enough to both get the station
Speaker 1: up and running and keep it running while also doing
Speaker 1: experiments like the station would be so complicated that astronauts
Speaker 1: would be spending all of their time assembling things, empowering
Speaker 1: them on and maintaining them, and never getting around to science.
Speaker 1: NASA estimated that it could get all the parts of
Speaker 1: this space station up into orbit in eleven Shuttle missions,
Speaker 1: so even one fewer than the power Tower version, and
Speaker 1: that the added cost of the change in in the
Speaker 1: design would be quote unquote just four hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: And uh I say that because the Power Tower space
Speaker 1: station cost and estimated around eight point one billion dollars
Speaker 1: when it was all said and done, like that was
Speaker 1: how much it was estimated to cost had we gone forward.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, four million is just kind of
Speaker 1: a drop in the bucket if you're talking about eight
Speaker 1: point one billion dollars. But there were critics who were
Speaker 1: worried that NASA was being super conservative with those estimates,
Speaker 1: that it was actually gonna cost way more than that,
Speaker 1: and the tendency for projects to go over budget was
Speaker 1: well established. Now again I want to stress that this
Speaker 1: tendency for NASA projects to go over budget, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's necessarily an inherent flaw in NASA, or that
Speaker 1: people are being dishonest or something. Rather, I think this
Speaker 1: is something we should expect because NASA's tied to politics,
Speaker 1: So changes in the political landscape, like changes in how
Speaker 1: much Congress budgets towards ASSA, not to mention who happens
Speaker 1: to be leading NASA after presidential administration's change, all of
Speaker 1: that can have a massive effect on the agency itself,
Speaker 1: and it's beyond the project leader's control. Now, in the
Speaker 1: design process, engineers found it necessary to deviate from the
Speaker 1: initial you know, design in order to meet all the
Speaker 1: parameters of the mission. And this is where they ran
Speaker 1: into some serious problems. Now, maybe you've heard a phrase
Speaker 1: similar to this. You can have it done fast, you
Speaker 1: can have it done right, and you can have it
Speaker 1: done under budget, but you can only pick two of
Speaker 1: those three things. Well, NASA was trying very hard to
Speaker 1: do everything, and there are actually more requirements than just three,
Speaker 1: and it was proving to just be too big of
Speaker 1: a challenge. Complicating matters was the tragedy of the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Challenger disaster that happened in and the loss of
Speaker 1: all hands aboard was a huge blow to both the
Speaker 1: nation and the space program in particular, and NASA grounded
Speaker 1: the Shuttle program for more than two and a half
Speaker 1: years while investigating the causes of that explosion. Obviously, that's
Speaker 1: going to have an impact on plans for a space station.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of the project, NASA estimated it might
Speaker 1: take more than thirty missions, not eleven, in order to
Speaker 1: complete the station, with it being suitable for occupation after
Speaker 1: twenty one missions. Meanwhile, astronauts with experience in space, you know,
Speaker 1: they critiqued the design of the station. They called out
Speaker 1: flaws that would make it, you know, more difficult for
Speaker 1: astronauts to do their jobs in space, and budget cuts
Speaker 1: meant that NASA would have to look to eliminate certain
Speaker 1: modules and reduce the capacity and thus usefulness of the
Speaker 1: station in an effort to meet new budget constraints. In
Speaker 1: NASA submitted a cost assessment for building the dual keel design,
Speaker 1: and the new cost was figured to be at least
Speaker 1: fourteen point five billion dollars. Congress flipped out, and several
Speaker 1: politicians at expressed doubt that the station would ever actually
Speaker 1: go into orbit. Because of all the various delays and
Speaker 1: changes in design. The whole possibility of a modular space
Speaker 1: station with the US taking a lead role was in
Speaker 1: jeopardy now. Eventually, NASA and several representatives from the government
Speaker 1: were able to hash out a compromise. NASA would abandon
Speaker 1: the dual keel design, not entirely. Some elements of the
Speaker 1: project would actually find their way into a new proposal,
Speaker 1: but the majority of it would be put on indefinite
Speaker 1: hold until it was effectively just gone, and NASA would
Speaker 1: instead design, build, and deploy what was being called a
Speaker 1: Phase one space station, something to serve as kind of
Speaker 1: an interim step toward establishing a permanent space station in orbit.
Speaker 1: After all, that was the goal to create a space
Speaker 1: station that could stay in orbit indefinitely, serving as a
Speaker 1: scientific platform and a stepping stone toward future space exploration
Speaker 1: missions to places like Mars. The new design, NASA estimated,
Speaker 1: would need either to in or eleven missions to get
Speaker 1: everything into orbit. It would omit lots of stuff from
Speaker 1: the previous designs, including half of the power generators, so
Speaker 1: its capacity would also be limited. The Reagan administration gave
Speaker 1: the new design the name of space Station Freedom, so
Speaker 1: at least this version got as far as getting a name,
Speaker 1: which is more than I can say about Power Tower
Speaker 1: and Dual Keel. However, like those unnamed stations, Freedom would
Speaker 1: also never become a real station. Parts of Freedom would
Speaker 1: evolve to become components for the International Space Station. But
Speaker 1: that's further down the line. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what Freedom was supposed to be. So this
Speaker 1: was still going on in the late nineteen eighties when
Speaker 1: these conversations were going The Soviet Union was still a
Speaker 1: thing at that point, so Mirror was still a thing.
Speaker 1: It had been nearly a decade since sky Lab had
Speaker 1: come crashing back down to Earth, and more than a
Speaker 1: decade since the United States had astronauts aboard a U
Speaker 1: S space station. Now AASA continued to receive criticism for
Speaker 1: the proposed station design. To meet the lower budget requirements
Speaker 1: that Congress set, NASA had simplified freedom so that it
Speaker 1: would have just two connecting points for additional modules. The
Speaker 1: dual keel design had had five of those. This prompted
Speaker 1: some critics to suggest that the station wouldn't actually support
Speaker 1: enough scientific work to be a good return on investment.
Speaker 1: There were calls to abandon the modular approach entirely and
Speaker 1: then send up something more like the monolithic stations of
Speaker 1: the Saliot and sky Lab eras. Meanwhile, the European Space
Speaker 1: Agency was at loggerheads with NASA because the two agencies
Speaker 1: couldn't come to an agreement regarding module design and purpose,
Speaker 1: and the e s A was growing frustrated that NASA
Speaker 1: was blocking some of their proposals and thus bringing the
Speaker 1: international project into jeopardy. Then on the home front, here
Speaker 1: in the US, there was another adversary. There was the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. The d D wanted to have full
Speaker 1: military access to the station for the purposes of military research.
Speaker 1: Now that would already be a complication if the station
Speaker 1: were purely an American project, because scientists would be forced
Speaker 1: to surrender space to researchers conducting experiments for the military.
Speaker 1: But since Freedom was supposed to have international cooperation, this
Speaker 1: was even more complicated. After all, Europe wasn't likely to
Speaker 1: grant full access to any es A modules to US
Speaker 1: military researchers, and that got Congress involved, with members of
Speaker 1: the d O D and Congress people getting into some
Speaker 1: pretty heated battles over the whole thing. Station Freedom was
Speaker 1: starting to take on a pretty ugly context, and there's
Speaker 1: probably something allegorical to be said about that, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to leave that to the poets out there. Despite
Speaker 1: all these issues, Freedom did get initial approval to move
Speaker 1: forward before it would ultimately dissolve and morphintic contributions towards
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. More on that after this quick
Speaker 1: break so to find a lot of drama and disagreements,
Speaker 1: NASA got approval from the National Research Council in ven
Speaker 1: to go forward with the construction of space Station Freedom. However,
Speaker 1: that approval did not come with a lot of enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: but it did give NASA the ability to start securing
Speaker 1: development contracts with various vendors, thus moving from this sort
Speaker 1: of theoretical planning stage to something a bit more concrete,
Speaker 1: with companies actually manufacturing hardware. Critics continued to complain about
Speaker 1: the station plan in general, with some saying that it
Speaker 1: was putting way too much emphasis on material science experiments.
Speaker 1: A big part of the original station plan was to
Speaker 1: pursue the possibility of bringing commercial manufacturing to space, but
Speaker 1: then folks figured that that didn't make a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense unless you were just building stuff meant to
Speaker 1: we're in space, like to fly off to the Moon
Speaker 1: or Mars or something, because otherwise, the cost of getting
Speaker 1: raw materials to space and then bringing finished products back
Speaker 1: to Earth is just I mean, it's astronomical to use
Speaker 1: a pun. The plan was that the US would take
Speaker 1: the lead on this station. It would have majority ownership,
Speaker 1: like vast majority ownership of the station. Canada would have
Speaker 1: like three percent ownership of the station, and then the E,
Speaker 1: s A, and Japan would each have fifty one percent
Speaker 1: ownership of their individual modules that connected to the station.
Speaker 1: The crew would consist of eight astronauts, six of whom
Speaker 1: were to be American and the other two being International astronauts.
Speaker 1: Each crew was expected to serve a ninety day tour
Speaker 1: of duty. But then NASA leader said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we changed our minds. Let's make it a hundred twenty
Speaker 1: days for a tour of duty instead. UH. That was
Speaker 1: because they were trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: reduce the number of space Shuttle missions they would need
Speaker 1: to send in order to you know, keep up that
Speaker 1: particular schedule. Uh. And there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: on Earth calling for NASA to explore alternatives to the
Speaker 1: space shuttle program, including the use of heavy lift rockets
Speaker 1: to bring stuff up to a proposed station. This was
Speaker 1: largely because of that Challenger disaster. There were people saying,
Speaker 1: we need to have a different alternative to just space shuttles.
Speaker 1: On the political front, NASA saw it's budget slashed a
Speaker 1: few times, including massive cuts to the Space station budget.
Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, when you're trying to complete
Speaker 1: a very challenging project, it does not get easier to
Speaker 1: do when support for your project goes away. NASA had
Speaker 1: originally hoped to begin launching components by but at this
Speaker 1: stage that had slipped to with them, you know, estimating
Speaker 1: that astronauts could potentially begin to occupy the space station
Speaker 1: starting in UH. Even that decision was met with criticism,
Speaker 1: namely from NASA's partners, because Japan and Europe were both
Speaker 1: upset that NASA did not first consult with them before
Speaker 1: announcing this pushed back launch date. The international participation meant
Speaker 1: that all these agencies are dependent upon one another to
Speaker 1: at least some extent, and so a delay with one
Speaker 1: obviously affects the others. And I suppose they weren't really mad,
Speaker 1: they're just very disappointed by space station Freedom whimpered to
Speaker 1: a halt. The project had pretty much failed in every metric,
Speaker 1: and audit showed that the station design was more massive
Speaker 1: than originally planned. It was heavier in fact, and that
Speaker 1: would put more strain on making sure that NASA could
Speaker 1: keep the thing in orbit and not have it decay
Speaker 1: and re enter the atmosphere. It would mean, you know,
Speaker 1: more mass means again that you have to keep on
Speaker 1: pushing to keep that momentum going or else you know,
Speaker 1: it'll slow down gradually and come crashing to Earth. The
Speaker 1: design was also extremely complex for Freedom. Some critics felt
Speaker 1: that in fact, it was overly complicated, and that meant
Speaker 1: that it was both driving up the cost and also
Speaker 1: it would make it harder to actually build and operate
Speaker 1: the ding dang thing. On top of that, the you know,
Speaker 1: in order to meet the budget needs, NASA was starting
Speaker 1: to make some pretty massive cuts on the design, including
Speaker 1: cuts to the power generation. Now, that prompted scientists to say,
Speaker 1: you might not even be able to generate enough power
Speaker 1: to run all the different experiments, and that would be
Speaker 1: an issue too, Like, if you can't actually run the
Speaker 1: experiments you need to run, then why are we even
Speaker 1: building the thing. The findings of the you know reports
Speaker 1: showed that there would be a thirty four percent shortfall
Speaker 1: in power supply, and so you know, you have a
Speaker 1: third of the power you need is just not there.
Speaker 1: That's not great. Essentially, the conclusion was that the state
Speaker 1: was going to be too expensive and not actually do
Speaker 1: what scientists needed it to do. So the whole thing
Speaker 1: kind of fizzled out. Now, NASA still wanted to build
Speaker 1: a space station, and folks in the government still wanted
Speaker 1: that too, at least some of them did, but the
Speaker 1: agency was told it would be getting less money than
Speaker 1: and it would also require another redesign. They weren't going
Speaker 1: to be able to go with station freedom. Now, if
Speaker 1: this episode has nailed any point home, I think it's
Speaker 1: that this whole process is laborious to the extreme. But
Speaker 1: the engineers went back to the drawing board and NASA
Speaker 1: created a new design. In the news station, we use
Speaker 1: prefabricated trust segments that would not require assembly in space,
Speaker 1: and that would reduce the number of e v A
Speaker 1: s or extra vehicular activities or spacewalks that would be
Speaker 1: necessary to bring the station together, which had been a
Speaker 1: criticism of the previous designs. They would have required thousands
Speaker 1: of hours of spacewalks, and the goal was to aim
Speaker 1: for more like a few hun hours of spacewalks per year. Uh,
Speaker 1: the station would be smaller, and it would have fewer
Speaker 1: modules and fewer power generators to boot. Crew quarters would
Speaker 1: get smaller. Crew capacity would go from eight astronauts to four.
Speaker 1: The life support system was simplified. It also meant that
Speaker 1: NASA would have to fly more resupply missions to the
Speaker 1: station to bring up more water and oxygen because the
Speaker 1: simplified version of life support would not be able to
Speaker 1: reclaim and recycle oxygen and water as effectively, So that
Speaker 1: would be an additional burden, right, You would have to
Speaker 1: keep bringing more supplies up, and that's expensive. Scientists worried
Speaker 1: that a crew of four would be too small to
Speaker 1: do anything really useful aboard the station, and that any
Speaker 1: experiments would be so limited as to be a terrible
Speaker 1: return on investment. So politicians began to question the viability
Speaker 1: of this project. Now I feel a lot of sympathy
Speaker 1: for NASA, because here there's an agency trying desperately to
Speaker 1: put together a working plan for a space station, but
Speaker 1: with all the different pressures and components in place, the
Speaker 1: task was next to impossible. At one point, in House
Speaker 1: Appropriations Subcommittee actually voted determinate all funding for the space station,
Speaker 1: which at that point had received the derisive nickname space
Speaker 1: Station Fred because it was a fraction of the size
Speaker 1: and capability of the proposed space station Freedom Freedom got
Speaker 1: shortened to Fred. Now. Despite the vote to terminate support,
Speaker 1: Congress as a whole decided to continue providing funding for
Speaker 1: the station, particularly after NASA made some deep cuts elsewhere
Speaker 1: in its various programs. The following year, Congress held a
Speaker 1: vote to cancel the project, but that vote was defeated
Speaker 1: and it kept the station alive for the time being.
Speaker 1: And this whole time there were companies working on building
Speaker 1: that actual hardware that would make up the modules on
Speaker 1: the space station. So NASA had kept tweaking designs, but
Speaker 1: doing so while trying to maintain compatibility with older plans
Speaker 1: so that the pieces that were already in motion would
Speaker 1: still be usable. By the time, you know, they were
Speaker 1: ready to launch the space station, some of the hardware
Speaker 1: was actually nearing the point where NASA was going to
Speaker 1: need to do some flight testing. So like stuff was
Speaker 1: coming together, It's just that the overall space station project
Speaker 1: itself was at risk. Then the USSR fell apart, and
Speaker 1: the Cold War effectively came to an end. At least
Speaker 1: that Cold War came to an end. I would argue,
Speaker 1: we have other Cold Wars going on right now, including
Speaker 1: one with Russia. Now there were there was no longer
Speaker 1: an adversary in the form of the U S s
Speaker 1: R that was gone. This also meant that Congress started
Speaker 1: to look at reducing budgets for things like military budgets
Speaker 1: as well as the space budget. And this reinforces the
Speaker 1: fact that the space program was in part fueled by
Speaker 1: the rivalry that the United States had with the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and without that rivalry, a lot of politicians just didn't
Speaker 1: see the expense of a space station as being justifiable,
Speaker 1: the Clinton administration gave NASA a new order to come
Speaker 1: up with three different proposals for a space station that
Speaker 1: would honor the international commitments that NASA had made with
Speaker 1: partners like the European Space Agency, and they had three
Speaker 1: different budget caps. There was a budget cap of five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, seven billion dollars, or nine billion dollars. So
Speaker 1: in other words, hey, NASA, propose space stations. These are
Speaker 1: the three categories. They can't go over nine billion, and
Speaker 1: then we'll decide which one we're gonna go with. Considering
Speaker 1: that even Station Fred was projected to cost nearly seventeen
Speaker 1: billion dollars, this was a huge request. However, you could
Speaker 1: say that NASA had already done some of this work, right,
Speaker 1: Some of those contracts that had made had already started
Speaker 1: to produce components for a space station, so at least
Speaker 1: some of it had already been paid for. Now, as
Speaker 1: it would turn out, the collapse of the USSR would
Speaker 1: mean that Russia, once considered a great enemy to the
Speaker 1: United States, could join in this international project. This finally
Speaker 1: sets the stage for the International Space Station, and that
Speaker 1: is what we will talk about in the next episode
Speaker 1: in this series, but for now let us say goodbye.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: I greatly appreciate it. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again, really Sion.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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