ISS History: July 11, 2000 - Zvezda Arrives

Zvezda (Russian: for "star"), DOS-8, also known as the Zvezda Service Module, is a component of the International Space Station (ISS). It was the third module launched to the station, and provides some of the station's life support systems, as well as living quarters for two crew members. It is the structural and functional center of the Russian portion of the station - the Russian Orbital Segment.


The module was manufactured by S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia. Zvezda was launched on a Proton rocket on July 12, 2000 and docked with the Zarya module on July 26. The rocket used for the launch was one of the first to carry advertising; it was emblazoned with the logo of the fast food chain Pizza Hut, for which the company is reported to have paid more than US$1 million.



Links from Space News:
Pizza Hut Puts Pie in the Sky with Rocket Logo

Shuttle Discovery One Week Away From Move to Launchpad

Feb 23, 2010:
Space shuttle Discovery will be moved to its launch pad on March 2

Reported by the UPI today from Cape Canaveral, Space shuttle Discovery is being readied for its move to Launch Pad 39A at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. The move will take place on March 2. The flight won't take place until April 5, 2010 at the earliest, but of course they want to get it there well beforehand.

It will take the Discovery about six-hours to complete the 3.4-mile journey. The Discovery will be placed on a giant crawler-transporter and the movie will start at 12:01 a.m. EST. NASA TV will provide live coverage of the event beginning at 6:30 a.m.

This Tuesday will also be the day the Discovery's astronauts and ground crews participate in a launch dress rehearsal. This is called a Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. The test provides each shuttle crew with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training.

Discovery's STS-131 crew will be commanded by Alan Poindexter. James Dutton Jr. serves as the shuttle's pilot. The other crew members are astronauts Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Clayton Anderson and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki.

The shuttle will deliver science racks to be used in space station laboratories. Launch is set for 6:27 a.m. EDT April 5.

Source
Discovery to move to its launch pad

Mass Media Paves the Way For Space Exploration

Mankind has always been interested in space exploration...but there's always so many things for a government to spend their money on that space exploration can be shunted aside, unless the public supports it.

Jules Verne, in 1865, published From the Earth to the Moon (French: De la Terre à la Lune. It's just after the Civil War, and a scientist devises a gigantic gun that can shoot a projectile up to the moon.

Rockets have been known for thousands of years - having first been invented in China, but rockets for space flight came a bit later. When scientists did start working on it, they were from all countries, but there was no real government program...they were all pretty much working on their own with limited assistance:

In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), published The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, the first serious scientific work on space travel. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation—the principle that governs rocket propulsion—is named in his honor (although it had been discovered previously). He also advocated the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propellant, calculating their maximum exhaust velocity. His work was essentially unknown outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel in 1924.

In 1912, Robert Esnault-Pelterie published a lecture on rocket theory and interplanetary travel. He independently derived Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, did basic calculations about the energy required to make round trips to the Moon and planets, and he proposed the use of atomic power (i.e. Radium) to power a jet drive.

In 1912 Robert Goddard, inspired from an early age by H.G.Wells, began a serious analysis of rockets, concluding that conventional solid-fuel rockets needed to be improved in three ways. First, fuel should be burned in a small combustion chamber, instead of building the entire propellant container to withstand the high pressures. Second, rockets could be arranged in stages. Finally, the exhaust speed (and thus the efficiency) could be greatly increased to beyond the speed of sound by using a De Laval nozzle. He patented these concepts in 1914. He, also, independently developed the mathematics of rocket flight.

In Germany, Willy Ley became interested in spaceflight after reading Hermann Oberth's book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("By Rocket into Interplanetary Space"). After publishing Die Fahrt in den Weltraum ("Travel in Outer Space") in 1926, Ley became one of the first members of Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR - "Spaceflight Society") in 1927. He wrote extensively for its journal, Die Rakete ("The Rocket").

The Depression probably prevented many would-be scientists from doing anything about space travel, and slowed down the progress of those who were already at work on the topic.

Science fiction in print form - namely the pulps - took off after April, 1926, when Hugo Gernsback founded the first magazine dedicated solely to science fiction - Amazing Stories. The pulps continued through WWII, although many went under because of paper shortages.

After the War, German rocket scientists who had worked on the V2 were captured by Russia and the United States. Werner von Braun especially made every effort to flee into American hands.

After his arrival - and that of many of his colleagues - in the US, the US space flight program started to gain a foothold, especially when, in 1950, the year 1957 was declared the International Geophysical Year. It was in 1957 that solar activity would be at its height, and every developed country in the world (except China) wanted to help investigate it.

With talk of satellites being sent into space (as well as with the cold war and fear of a radioactive WWIII, for real, science fiction movies and TV began to take off.) A movie about UFOs made its debut in 1950, in which it postulated that the UFO (which had been seen in 1949) was actually a Russian space craft -- rather than something from outer space).

Science fiction started on TV with children's programs:

Captain Video and His Video Rangers was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network from June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955, and is considered to be the first science fiction TW series.

Then came Space Patrol. Space Patrol began as a 15-minute show on a local (Los Angeles) station on March 9, 1950. On December 30, 1950, a half-hour show was added on Saturdays on ABC (while the 15-minute show continued daily locally, and was seen via kinescope in a few other cities). A 1953 30-minute episode was the subject of the first US experimental 3D-TV broadcast on April 29 in Los Angeles on ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

Space Patrol aired continuously until July 2, 1954; after a short break, it reappeared on September 4, 1954, and it finally disappeared from the air on February 26, 1955. 210 half-hour shows were made, and close to 900 15-minute shows over Space Patrol's 5-year run.

Shorty after Space Patrol made its debut came Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.

The series aired, in different years, on all four major television networks: on CBS from October 2 to December 1950, ABC from January 1951 to September 1952, NBC from July to September 1951, DuMont from August 1953 to May 1954, and on NBC again from December 1954 to June 1955, with the final broadcast on June 25, 1955.

1955 may be counted the watershed for outer-space based kids shows. All of them - Space Patrol; Tom Corbet, Space Cadet; Captain Video; Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers 1953-1954... to be replaced by Westerns!

To be sure, pilots were made, as for example Destination Space (1959). Men Into Space was an almost documentary-like present-day TV series, documenting mankind's attempts to expore the men. (I'll be sharng screencaps of these episodes shortly.)

The next major science fiction series - that wasn't an anthology - was Lost in Space, in 1965, running until 1968. Then, Star Trek, from 1966 - 1969.

December 4, 1998: Unity Arrives at ISS

The Unity connecting module was the first U.S.-built component of the International Space Station. It is cylindrical in shape, with six berthing locations (forward, aft, port, starboard, zenith, and nadir) facilitating connections to other modules. Unity measures 4.57 metres (15.0 ft) in diameter, is 5.47 metres (17.9 ft) long, and was built for NASA by The Boeing Company in a manufacturing facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Sometimes referred to as Node 1, Unity is the first of three such connecting modules that will be part of the completed station.

Unity was carried into orbit as the primary cargo of the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-88, the first Space Shuttle mission dedicated to assembly of the station. On December 6, 1998, the STS-88 crew mated the aft berthing port of Unity with the forward hatch of the already orbiting Zarya module. (Zarya was a mixed Russian-US funded and Russian-built component launched earlier aboard a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.) This was the first connection made between two station modules.

Source: NASA and USA Todayhttp://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm

ISS News: 2/16/10 - Shutters opened on Lookout

Astronauts Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick performed their third and final spacewalk on Tuesday night, removing the stiff insulating blankets that had covered the shutters over the seven-window domed lookout that had been put into place the day before.

Then, Patrick unlocked the shutters.

Mission Control ordered the shutters opened while the spacewalkers were still outside, so the two men could take measures if something jammed. Behnken and Patrick remained 10 feet away from the windows after the shutters were raised.

The $27 million observation deck is part of the new space station room, Tranquility. Space shuttle Endeavour delivered the European compartments last week.

The Italian-built dome — 5 feet tall and nearly 10 feet in diameter — is designed to offer 360-degree views of Earth and outer space, as well as the space station itself.

It's not just for the crew's viewing pleasure; a robotic work station will be installed early Thursday, providing direct views for astronauts when they operate the station's big mechanical arm.

Six trapezoid-shaped windows encircle the dome. In the middle is a round window 31 inches across.

During normal operations, the space station crew will be able to keep the round window unshuttered most of the time, as well as a couple others. But the windows which face along the direction in ehich the outpost is orbiting will be closed, except during robotic operations, to protect against a micrometeorite strike.

The six shuttle astronauts began their ninth day in space listening to a recording of Jimmy Buffett's "Window on the World." Mission Control played the song to set the night's mood.

The two spacewalkers had to finish plumbing work on Tranquility before moving on to the dome. They opened up the valves on an ammonia coolant line that they hooked up during Saturday night's spacewalk.

Tuesday night's spacewalk represented the last of the Endeavour crew's space station construction work. The shuttle will depart Friday.

Back at the launch site, meanwhile, NASA has delayed the next space shuttle flight. Discovery had been scheduled to set off in mid-March, but a string of unusually cold weather stalled preparations. Liftoff is now scheduled for April 5.

Only four more shuttle flights remain, before the shuttle program is closed down.



Astronauts take shutter-raising spacewalk

Nov 20, 1998: ISS - Zarya Put Into Orbit

Zarya "dawn" in Russian, also known as the Functional Cargo Block or FGB, was the first module of the International Space Station to be launched. The FGB provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the ISS during the initial stage of assembly. (Now, Zarya is primarily used for storage). The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut program.

Zarya is owned, and was paid for, by the United States space agency NASA. It was built from December 1994 to January 1998 in Russia at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center (KhSC) in Moscow. The module was included as part of NASA's plan for the International Space Station (ISS) instead of Lockheed's "Bus-1" option because it was significantly cheaper (US$220 million vs. $450 million). As part of the contract Khrunichev constructed much of an identical module (referred to as "FGB-2") for contingency purposes. FGB-2 has been proposed for a variety of projects; (it is now slated to be used to construct the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module).

Zarya weighs 19,300 kilograms (43,000 lb), is 12.55 meters (41.2 ft) long and 4.1 meters (13 ft) wide at its widest point.

The module has three docking ports, one on each end, and one on the side.

Specifications
Length: 12.56 m (41.2 ft)
Diameter: 4.11 m (13.5 ft)
Solar array length: 10.67 m (35.0 ft)
Solar array width: 3.35 m (11.0 ft)
Mass: 19,323 kg (42,600 lb)



Source:
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
(Produced by NASA, so copyright free)

ISS News Feb 15: Astronauts move old space station docking port

On Monday night, February 15, 2010, the astronauts aboard the space station (pop quiz - name them!) moved the old docking adapter to a new position. The station's robot arm removed the 10-year-old adapter from the space station and transferred it to a port at the new room, Tranquility. There, it will provide an extra docking location for visiting vessels, and also serve as a buffer against micrometeorite hits.

Simultaneously, the crews of the space shuttle and space station connected power and data lines in the new $27 million observation deck, that had been moved to its permanent location early Monday. Later this week, the domed, seven-windowed lookout will receive another addition: a robotic work station for operating the station's mechanical arm.

On Tuesday night, astronauts Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick will conduct a space walk in which they will unlock the shutters on the lookout's windows. This will allw the crew inside to open the shutters.

Behnken and Patrick were the astronauts who operated the robot arm during Monday night's moving operation.

"Take the rest of the afternoon off," Mission Control radioed after the relocation job was completed. Mission Control gave the two crews Tuesday morning off to prepare for the spacewalk finale; it's afternoon to the astronauts, who are working the graveyard shift in orbit.

Endeavour and its crew of six will depart the space station Friday after a visit of 1 1/2 weeks. They've already accomplished their major objective: delivering and installing Tranquility and the observation deck, European contributions.

Here's the link to yahoonews:
Astronauts move old space station docking port

And here's the link to NASA's website.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Trends: The Attempt to Stop Space Exploration

It costs a lot of money to fund space exploration, and there are always people who say that that money should be spent on social programs - subsidized housing for the poor, and so on. But money has been spent on social programs since the 1960s - with what result? There are more poor now than ever before - thanks to welfare programs that don't discourage waiting to start a family until you can actually afford it, and so on. "The poor are always with us," as I believe the Bible states somewhere.

Obviously, the money spent on space exploration shouldn't be wasted, by funding projects that will never go anywhere, but we - as in Americans, and as in the world - need to make a concerted effort to get out into space. Only a few thousand people will be able to make the trip, probably...but if the best and the brightest can go set up a colony full of atheistic capitalists on Mars, or Titan, or similar, and found a kind of Galt's Gulch, there might yet be hope for mankind, in this writer's opinion.

But let's see what Isaac Asimov thought about American's attitude toward space travel, way back in July 1939, when he was 19. (He shares the story in his essay, "How Easy To See The Future!")

...Even at the age of 19 I was aware that all those technological advances in the past that had significantly ruffled the current of human custom had been attacked by important segments of the population who, for one reason or another, found it difficult to accept change. It occurred to me, then, that this would surely be true of the development of spaceflight as well. My story "Trends" therefore, dealt primarily with opposition to space flight.

It was, as far as I know, the first description of ideological opposition to mankind's advance into space. Until then, all those who had looked forward to the new development had either ignored the reaction of humanity, or had assumed it would be favorable. When there did indeed arise ideological opposition, in the late 1960s, I found myself accepting credit as a seer, when I had merely foreseen the inevitable.

Below is an article, an opinion piece from the New York Times, reprinted in a local paper, first pubished on January 31, 1973, the dilemma of the expense of health care. Note that the example the writer offers - of an expensive program that can be given up - is space exploration.

The article will appear small here at this blog, but click on it and do a save as, and the large version will appear that you can read.

Isaac Asimov on Science Fiction

Isaac Asimov, perhaps the most famous science fiction writer of all time thanks to the popularity of his Foundation and Empire books, was also a prolific science writer. Indeed, his goal was to become the best science popularizer of all time.

A few of his essays dealt with science fiction, and many of these were collected into an anthology called Asimov on Science Fiction, published way back in 1983.

In one of them, he gives a brief summary of man's dreams of space travel, as related by authors from the dawn of recorded time:

1st century AD - Lucian of Samosata tells of a journey to the Moon, using a flock of birds
1657 - Cyrano de Bergerac writes a story in which he suggests rockets as a way to reach the moon.
1752 - Micromégas is a short story written by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius and his companion from the planet Saturn. (They observe Earth and laugh at its follies)
1818 - The first novel that might be defined as science fiction is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818)
1863 - Jules Verne becomes the first writer to specialize in what will become known as science fiction, with his 1863 publication of Five Weeks in a Balloon
1895 - HG Wells' The Time Machine, the very first true time travel story, is published
1898 - HG Wells' The War of the Worlds, the first interplanetary warfare story, is published
1902 - Frenchman Georges Melies films The Man in the Moon
1920 - RUR, a play involving androids supplanting man, was first performed
1926 - Hugo Gernsback publishes Amazing Stories, the first magazine to be drevoted exclusivey to science fiction.
1929 - Frau im Mond, by Fritz Lang, is one of the first "serious" science fiction movies, featuring a relatively accurate - based on science known then - journey to the moon, such as the use of a multi-stage rocket.

And here's an important paragraph that we all need to grasp:

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be--and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not, or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today--but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept about which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Another use of science fiction?

It stimulates curiosity and the desire to know.

ISS News Feb 15, 2010 : Tranquility Receives Domed Lookout

The headline at Yahoo News reads: Space station's new lookout in final resting spot

Astronauts have finally installed a fancy observation deck at its new spot on the International Space Station.

An Italian-designed lookout, which has seven windows, including the largest ever sent into space, is now in place at the International Space Station. Because of "jammed bolts" and "wayward wiring", it took hours longer than expected to have the lookout in place.

The $27 million domed lookout is the ceiling to a new room at the station called Tranquility. It is, essentially, "a big bay window".

Here's the link for those who want to see the original article:
Space station's new lookout in final resting spot [Note, external links can break over time.]

Conquest of Space

In 1950, two science fiction movies made their debut. Conquest of Space featured a space station, and an atomic rocket ship - both designed by Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley, and a journey to Mars.

1950 was seven years before Sputnik...but Germany's rocket scientists had been spirited away from Peenemunde by both Russians and Germans for one purpose only,for man to get into space. These two movies were made in "near history" - with technology that was felt to be possible in the very near future.

Seven years later... the Space Race began in earnest. And these two movies, as well as the other, famous "Radiation Theater" movies of the 1950s, prepared the world for the event.

Movie Spoilers below!



Rocketship X-M started filming after Conquest started, and was finished several weeks before Conquest was, and made its debut to ride the wave of expection for Conquest. (It was also in black and white, while Conquest was in color.

Rocketship X-M stood for Expedition Moon, only there was an accident in space and the ship ended up heading for Mars. On its return, the sole female aboard the ship, a scientist, miscalculated the fuel requirements, so the ship crashed on return to Earth, and all aboard died. (The captain of that ship was Lloyd Bridges - pre-Sea Hunt.)

Conquest of Space had no big starsm but did have such actors as Ross Martin of pre-Wild Wild West fame, and Benson Fong - the only minority, a Chinese-American scientist.

Here are a few quotes from the movie:

Narrator: This is a story of tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, when men have built a station in space, constructed in the form of a great wheel, and set a thousand miles out from the Earth, fixed by gravity, and turning about the world every two hours, serving a double purpose: an observation post in the heavens, and a place where a spaceship can be assembled, and then launched to explore other planets, and the vast universe itself, in the last and greatest adventure of mankind, the plunge toward the...
[A rocket fires]
Narrator: conquest of space!

Religion vs Science, Exploration vs Invasion

General Samuel T. Merritt: According to the Bible, Man was created on the Earth. Nothing is ever mentioned of his going to other planets. Not one blessed word.

Captain Barney Merritt: Well, at the time the Bible was written, it wouldn't have made much sense, would it?

General Samuel T. Merritt: Does it now? The Biblical limitations of Man's wanderings are set down as being the four corners of the Earth. Not Mars, or Jupiter, or infinity. The question is, Barney, what are we -- explorers or invaders?

Captain Barney Merritt: Invaders? Of what, sir?

General Samuel T. Merritt: The sacred domain of God. His heavens. To Man, God gave the Earth, nothing else. This taking of... of other planets... it's almost like an act of blasphemy.

Captain Barney Merritt: But why? They belong to no one else.

General Samuel T. Merritt: We don't know that.


Captain Barney Merritt: But look, sir, it couldn't be just an accident that at the very time when Man's resources on Earth are reaching an end, Man develops the ability to leave his own world and seek replenishment on other planets. The timing is what fascinates me: it's too perfect to be accidental.

General Samuel T. Merritt: Those other planets might already be tenanted.

Captain Barney Merritt: Oh, I don't think so... the universe was put here for Man to conquer.

Manifesto

From 1966 to 1969, a TV show called Star Trek swept millions of viewers on a ride into outer space. At the same time, the American space program was at its height.

And now, 40 years later...whither our star trek? How far away are we, as Americans, as Earthlings, from forming a Federation of Planets, albeit one consisting of only Venus and Mars, and spaceships capable of traveling between them?

This blog will recount the history of our star trek - mankind's attempts to reach the stars, from the science fiction that inspired scientists, to the scientists with grand dreams...to the politicians who have saved and/or destroyed the various space programs.

If the earth is to be saved - for animals to have habitats in which to live and breed, mankind must relieve its overcrowding by epanding out into space. One can only hope that this expansion will be done in peace... (of course the only way for that to occur is for religion to be left behind, in this author's opinion).

Just as nuclear warfare is now within the grasp of a lot of countries who never learened from history, and therefore are doomed to repeat it, so space travel is within our grasp. Let us hope that space warfare is not.

But this blog will track the triumphs and tragedies of the past, present and future.