Source: The Space Review
The International Space Station’s future and the ghost of the space station Mir
For a generation, NASA struggled to get approval to build an Earth-orbiting space station as the “next logical step” in human exploration of outer space. The 1969 Space Task Force report contained plans for two space stations, one orbiting the Earth and one in lunar orbit. These space stations were envisioned as building blocks for a long-term human space exploration program that would eventually end up at Mars before leaving for the outer planets. Unfortunately, NASA’s appetite for massive future funding clearly stretched beyond the bounds of acceptable domestic politics; President Richard Nixon effectively rejected such grandiose schemes with the consolation prize for NASA becoming the space shuttle.
Building the post-Apollo human spaceflight program
Keeping the space shuttle as a tool was critical for NASA’s aspirations since its primary purpose was to support the space station when that was finally built. In fact, the shuttle payload bay was considered critical and had to be of a certain size so it could carry station modules to orbit during construction while also accommodating US Air Force payloads. The shuttle became operational in the early 1980s but that program became locked into a merry-go-round where repeated trips to orbit proved productive but the physical limitations inherent in shuttle-only missions meant long-duration space research was impossible. Placing objects in orbit and then returning to retrieve them proved less useful than originally envisioned. The Long Duration Exposure Facility, for example, was deployed in 1984 and retrieved in 1990. However, NASA made lemonade out of the shuttle by extending its mission time in orbit and devising payloads that would require the shuttle’s heavy-lift capability. The effects upon the space science program proved debilitating, though, as all payloads had to be rated safe enough to travel with humans, an added burden in terms of project cost and complexity. The effect was to reduce the number of space science missions and increase their complexity.
On a parallel track, the agency aggressively pursued approval of an Earth-orbiting space station, a quest that remained a futile one for over a decade. For the United States, the embarrassing part was that the Soviets from the 1970s forward pushed aggressively to orbit a series of space stations, culminating in the Mir Space Station, whose core element was launched in 1986 and remained in space until 2001. The earlier space station effort, in the form of the US Skylab missions, had effectively ended in 1974 with that space station plunging into the Pacific Ocean in 1979, the last vestige of the Apollo program and its dreams of expanded space exploration.
Space station approval and the future
In January 1984, after much discussion and strife within the Reagan Administration, the President announced his support for an Earth-orbiting space station in his State of the Union address. This approval had come after multiple meetings and against the unified opposition of the president’s staff, whose expressed concerns about cost and schedule. After the shuttle development process in the 1970s, there was considerable skepticism in policy circles outside NASA regarding the agency’s ability to even honestly estimate likely costs and to keep to the original developmental schedule. NASA’s mantra was that the space station was the “next logical step” in the human space exploration progression leading inevitably to arrival on other celestial bodies beyond the Moon. Despite its political weakness, the space station was ultimately approved by Congress even with active animosity in some congressional circles. In some cases, these arguments were vestiges of the earlier 1960s debates over whether the Apollo program was worth the cost given the social and economic problems existing on Earth, echoes of which are heard today. In 1984, President Reagan’s personal commitment was sufficient to override opposition in the administration but the program became de facto an orphan politically with no executive branch champion outside NASA itself.
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