Chapter 3 Part 3

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Chapter 3Part 3

• The History of Space Travel

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Skylab

• America's first space station, Skylab, was
  launched in May 1973 by a Saturn V rocket in the
  compartment that served as the third stage for
  the Apollo missions.
• Skylab was 119 feet long, had a 27 foot diameter,
  weighed 200,000 pounds, and had a volume of
  12,000 cubic feet.

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Skylab

• Severe damage was sustained by Skylab during
  launch, including the loss of the station's
  micrometeoroid shield/sun shade and one of its
  main solar panels. Debris from the lost
  micrometeoroid shield further complicated matters
  by pinning the remaining solar panel to the side
  of the station, preventing its deployment and
  thus leaving the station with a huge power
  deficit.

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Skylab

• Eleven days after launch, a crew of three
  astronauts was sent to fix the problems. They
  were reasonably successful and remained a total
  of 28 days in the station.
• Although the astronauts exercised, they still
  suffered a loss of red blood cells, bone calcium,
  weight, and muscle.

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Skylab

• Two more crews would visit Skylab. The second in
  1973 would stay for 59 days and the third 84 days
  from 1973 to 1974.
• Skylab would remain in orbit until July 1979 when
  it burned into the Earths atmosphere over the
  Indian Ocean.

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Skylab

• Achievements
• Astronauts spend a total of 171 days aboard
  Skylab.
• Astronauts performed ten space walks totaling
  over 40 hours.
• Skylab logged about 2,000 hours of scientific and
  medical experiments. Many of the experiments were
  on the astronauts' adaptation to extended periods
  of microgravity, and each Skylab mission set a
  record for the duration of time astronauts spent
  in space.

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Salyuts

• A program to send a series of space stations by
  the Soviet Union took place in the 1970s into the
  1980s.
• Seven Salyut space stations about 20 tons each
  were made. Three failed before they could be
  boarded in space.
• Two Salyuts were military while the others were
  civilian.

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Salyuts

• The second crew of three cosmonauts to Salyut 1
  was killed upon returning to Earth.
• The last two space stations were particularly
  successful as they received 16 and 10 crews
  respectively.
• The maximum stay time aboard was 237 days (in
  Salyut 7).
• The last crew left Salyut 7 in 1986. They had
  well paved the road to the next generation of
  space stations the modular space stations.

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Space Station Peace (Mir)

• Building of the Mir Space Orbital Station was
  initiated in February 1986 with the launch of the
  Base Block. A crew of two cosmonauts moved in the
  next month.
• Over the next 10 years, six modules would be
  attached for a total weight of about 130 tons.
  Mir measured about 100 feet long and 90 across.
• It was humanity's first permanently inhabited
  long-term research station in space.

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Mir

• The space station was originally designed to last
  5 years but instead endured until 2001 (a total
  of 15 years) when it was deliberately de-orbited.
• It survived a fire, collisions with spacecraft,
  and even attacks on its wiring by microbes that
  ate metal and glass! 

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Mir

• Mir was home to 28 different crews. All together
  104 cosmonauts and astronauts (44 American) from
  12 countries visited Mir.
• Mir made nearly 90,000 orbits and served as a
  base for 23,000 scientific experiments.
• The Russian cosmonaut Dr. Valeri Polyakov spent
  14 months on board from January 1994 to March
  1995 setting a record that still stands today.

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The Space Transportation System (STS) a.k.a. The
Space Shuttle

• With the major Apollo development effort winding
  down in the second half of the 1960s, NASA
  started looking to the future of the space
  program. They envisioned an ambitious program
  consisting of a large space station being
  launched on huge boosters, served by a reusable
  logistics "space shuttle", both providing
  services for a permanently manned Lunar colony
  and eventual manned missions to Mars.

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The Space Shuttle

• However reality was to interject and NASA found
  themselves with a rapidly plunging budget. Rather
  than stepping back and looking at their future as
  a whole given their new financial situation, they
  attempted to save as many of the individual
  projects as possible. The mission to Mars was
  quickly eliminated, but the Space Station and
  Shuttle continued on. Eventually only one of them
  could be saved, so it stood to reason that a
  low-cost Shuttle system would be the better bet,
  because without it a large station would never be
  affordable.

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The Space Shuttle

• The shuttle program was launched in January 1972,
  when President Richard M. Nixon announced that
  NASA would proceed with the development of a
  reusable low cost space shuttle system.
• The first complete orbiter, Enterprise was rolled
  out in September 1976 and later conducted a very
  successful series of landing tests which was the
  first real validation of the gliding abilities of
  the design.

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The Space Shuttle

• The final design for the space shuttle was a
  combination of rocket, spacecraft, and glider.
  The shuttle is unique in that it launches
  vertically as a rocket and returns to Earth
  horizontally like an airplane as it lands on a
  concrete runway, is recycled, and launched on
  another mission.
• It was the first spacecraft that did not
  partially disintegrate upon returning to Earth.
• The first shuttle to launch into space was
  Columbia on March 12, 1981.