anuary 2016 marks 30 years since the
loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
The orbiter had represented a brave
attempt by NASA to design, in the wake of the
Moon landings, an entirely new technological
generation of spacecraft.
A winged spacecraft was an element of how the
American future in space was supposed to have
been. In the early 1950s Wernher von Braun – who
had once worked on the V-2 programme for Nazi
Germany – dreamed of huge winged rockets to
carry astronauts to orbit, and a giant wheeled space
station, a transit point at which missions to the
Moon, Mars and beyond would be assembled.
The space programme of the 1960s did not
work out that way because of the pressure to get
American astronauts to the Moon by the end of
the decade. The Apollo spacecraft was a crude
capsule, and the Saturn booster, though mighty,
was in reality a descendant of von Braun’s own
V-2 ballistic missile. Even as the first astronauts
reached the Moon, NASA was proposing von
Braun’s plans for the 1970s that would have
included a winged spaceplane, a space station, and
missions to the Moon and Mars. But in the end
the Nixon White House accepted only the Space
Shuttle proposal – leaving it to act as little more
than a space ferry with nowhere to go.
By then, however, von Braun’s vision had been
immortalised in one of cinema’s most glorious
sci-fi visions – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
The saga of alien contact
shows a spaceplane, the ‘Pan
Am space clipper’, and a
wheeled space station, just
as in the 1950s prospectus.
Everything is clean, expensive
and spacious. The clipper
has a stewardess on board,
and there’s a Hilton hotel on
the space station. Even the
Discovery, the atomic rocket
that takes astronaut Dave
Bowman to Jupiter, is huge
and elegant.
However, astronauts were finding that the reality of spaceflight
was different. Spacecraft were fragile, crowded and grubby; the
International Space Station is more like an explorers’ shack than a hotel.
This new reality is reflected in the movies too: in 2001: A Space
Odyssey’s sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two (1984). By 1984 Apollo
was already a 10-year-old memory, and the Space Shuttle had just
begun flying. A new spacecraft called Leonov goes to Jupiter to
retrieve the lost Discovery, and to seek the monolith-builders. TheWill astronauts ever get to enjoy luxurious surroundings?
Into The Future
STEPHEN BAXTER is a science fiction writer who has written over 40 books. His
latest is Xeelee: Endurancecontrast between the spacecraft is striking. Leonov is an expression
of the reality of spaceflight as experienced: cramped, uncomfortable,
squat, ugly. When the two spacecraft are docked, it’s a collision of
1980s reality with 1960s dreams.
Today the astronauts are back to riding the Russian Soyuz,
a reliable but 1960s-vintage design, and NASA’s new Orion
spacecraft is a return to a similar capsule-based philosophy. But
there are plans for new spaceplanes, such as the visionary British
design Skylon. Meanwhile, space is not empty. If with the advanced
drives of the future we can build craft that can get you to Mars in
a matter of days or weeks, then even the very sparse interplanetary
dust will be a significant hazard, and streamlining and shielding will
be necessary. Perhaps even in deep space the future will see more
elegance than the Leonov craft of 2010 would suggest.
In the end, we may remember Challenger and the other shuttle
orbiters not as technical failures, but as brave attempts to realise
expansive future visions. ß“Astronauts
were finding
that the reality
of spaceflight
was different.
Spacecraft were
fragile, crowded
and grubby”
J
Astronauts will need to wait a
little longer for sleek, shiny and
luxurious spacecraftILLUSTRATOR: ANDY POTTS