
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 24, 1990                   TAG: 9003262158
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SPACE STATION/ PROBLEMS OF DESIGN, HUMANITY

TRAVEL through the vastnesses of the universe is a perennial dream, the stuff of thousands of stories, novels, movies and TV dramas. But when people try "to boldly go where none has gone before," they encounter enough trouble to suggest that maybe the game's not worth the candle.

The most recent evidence that space is darn tough to conquer comes from NASA itself. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration acknowledges that the $30 billion space station Freedom can't be constructed as designed; its parts would start to break down before the station was completed.

It sounds like an engineering problem complicated by human error. But the trouble is intimately linked with other human frailties: our incompatibility with the environment of space.

Compensating for that did not seem insurmountable in the halcyon days of NASA. In the 1960s it powered Americans into orbit around the Earth, then the moon, then - beating the Soviets! - landed them repeatedly on the lunar surface. Nothing seemed beyond reach.

But while space science scored additional impressive advances with unmanned probes and satellites, NASA's manned-flight projects began to bog down. Providing a safe environment for astronauts meant added weight, cost, difficulty and time. Shortcuts could be disastrous, as demonstrated by the 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger, which killed seven astronauts.

The human element figures strongly in the space-station project. This installation is to be 500 feet long and weigh 290 tons. It cannot be built on Earth and fired intact into space. A series of 31 space-shuttle flights carrying parts is to begin in 1995; also to be delivered are people to assemble the parts. While at work they must be protected from radiation, orbiting debris and meteorites. To put it mildly, that slows the pace.

Discovery that the parts will begin wearing out early and require human maintenance (about 2,200 hours a year) means still more exposure to the inhospitable space environment. It also means, of course, diversion of people from the experimental work supposed to be done at the station.

David M. Walker, manager for space-station assembly, thinks design changes (probably including more expensive parts) can reduce the hours of maintenance needed later. "We're just going to have to become better at living and working in space. We can solve these problems."

Given enough money and time, probably so. But such problems are not peculiar to the American project. The Soviet Union launched the core module for its 100-foot Mir space station four years ago. Construction today is two years behind schedule, "hampered," reports The New York Times, "by planning lapses, equipment failures and close brushes with death." Scientific experiments have often taken a back seat to repairs.

Those faint of heart and easily discouraged do not make good pioneers. On the other hand, it can be foolhardy to press on in the face of enormous difficulties. While satellites, unmanned probes and robots are not especially exciting, with them a great deal can be accomplished in space. Nature simply did not make human beings to exist and thrive there. It may not be worth the effort to overcome all the natural obstacles to that activity.

by CNB