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.”“All right.I’ll do that.”As she turned, she caught sight of the immense beauty of Earth sliding past the observation dome; the Indian Ocean a breathtaking swirl of deep blues and greens, the subcontinent of India decked with purest white clouds.“But …” she looked at Malone, then asked in a whisper, “don’t you miss being home, being on Earth? Don’t you feel isolated here, away from …”His booming laughter shocked her.“Isolated? Up here?” Malone pitched himself forward into a weightless somersault, then pirouetted in midair.He pointed toward the ponderous bulk of the planet and said, “They’re the one’s who’re isolated.Up here, I’m free!”He offered her his arm and they floated together toward the gleaming metal hatch, their feet a good eight inches above the chamber’s floor.Space StationIn the grief and turmoil following the January 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, most of the world lost sight of NASA’s program to build a permanent manned orbiting station.A few weeks after that tragic accident, the Soviet Union launched Mir, the eighth space station it has placed in orbit since 1971.Mir is apparently a permanent station.Two cosmonauts are working in it as I write these words.I doubt that we will ever see a day again when there are not at least a few human beings living and working in space.NASA’s space station is still the most important project in the American civilian space program.It is the key to all the future explorations and development of the solar system, a base in orbit from which we can go on to the Moon, to Mars—eventually, to the stars.Soon after I wrote this piece I was invited to give a lecture in Pittsburgh.My hosts provided a lovely suite in a downtown hotel that overlooks the spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio.From my hotel window I looked down at the little park there and saw the foundations of the original Fort Pitt.It struck me that this was the frontier less than three centuries ago.Fort Pitt was a bare little outpost in the wilderness then.It has grown into a giant modern city, headquarters of mammoth corporations such as USX (formerly U.S.Steel), Rockwell International, Alcoa Aluminum, and many others.Less than three hundred miles overhead, a bare little outpost will be built in space.And for the same reasons of industry and exploration that turned Fort Pitt into modern Pittsburgh, that space station will grow into a city of commerce and industry and science.And it won’t take two centuries to make it happen.Not if we act with vigor and intelligence.“When you think of this thing being a little over four times as long as a shuttle, it is a big piece of equipment.”Neil Hutchinson paused for a moment, then added, “And that’s just the initial station that we’re trying to put up there.”Hutchinson was manager of the Space Station Program Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, outside Houston.He was in charge of building the largest structure ever placed into space.To Philip Culbertson, Hutchinson’s boss at NASA headquarters in Washington, the size of the space station was not as important as its permanency.“We want this thing to fly for twenty-five or thirty years,” said Culbertson, pointing to an artist’s rendering of NASA’s planned space station.“It must be an evolutionary design.”He tapped the picture on his conference table.“The space station may not be very graceful-looking,” he said, but since it will be assembled in orbit from pieces carried aloft by the space shuttle, there will be no need to make it streamlined.No winds will rock the space station, no weather will threaten it.It will not have to reenter the atmosphere and return to Earth.It is intended to be in space permanently.If it is eventually abandoned, it will be disassembled and sent back to Earth aboard space shuttles, reversing the technique by which it will be built.Sitting beside Culbertson was his deputy, John Hodge.Assembling the station in space “just changes your whole attitude toward the design,” he said.The space station can evolve and develop even after it begins operating in orbit.A slow smile broke across Culbertson’s face.“It’s kind of nifty that we can attach pieces on the outside with no penalty.”The first modules of the space station are scheduled to be launched aboard the shuttle in the early 1990s, according to current NASA plans.The station should be complete and “ready for business” in the mid-1990s.Its initial mass will be more than fifty tons, with room for growth.At least six shuttle missions will be required to bring the station’s primary components into orbit.Total program cost was originally budgeted at $8 billion, but by 1987 the cost was more realistically pegged at $12.5 billion [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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