The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

lasers and a large enough sail, even a manned interstellar
mission could be mounted on this basis. 96
Recently, another variation on the space sail theme has
been proposed: the magnetic sail, or magsail. One form
of this would be a loop of superconducting wire reeled
out from a spacecraft in which a current was made to
flow. Once started, the current would continue cycling
around the loop indefinitely, because a superconductor
offers no resistance. The magnetic field generated by the
current loop would interact with charged particles in the
solar wind to impart momentum to the magsail and thus
accelerate the spacecraft in the direction of the wind. At
roughly the distance of Earth from the Sun, this would
be sufficient over time for the magsail to reach speeds of
9, 320, 321
several hundred km/s.
Space Shuttle
See article, pages 396–401.
space-sickness
See space motion sickness.
space simulator
A device that simulates conditions in space and is used
for testing equipment and training programs.
space station
A large orbiting structure in which humans can live and
work for extended periods. The concept goes back at least
as far as a tale called “The Brick Moon,” written by
Edward Everett Hale just after the American Civil War.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky tackled the idea more technically
in a 1895 science fiction story and in 1903 expanded
his description to include rotation for artificial gravity,
the use of solar energy, and even a space greenhouse with
a closed ecosystem. In 1923, Hermann Oberth coined
the term “space station” to describe an orbiting outpost
that would serve as the starting point for flights to the
Moon and Mars. Five years later, Guido von Pirquet considered
a system of three stations—one in a near orbit,
one more distant, and a transit station in an intermediate
elliptical orbit to link the other two—that he suggested
might serve as refueling depots for deep space flights. The
notion of a rotating wheel-shaped station was introduced
in 1929 by Herman Noordung in his Das Problem der
Befahrung des Weltraums (The Problem of Space Flight).
He called his 30-m-diameter station “Wohnrad” (Living
Wheel) and suggested that it be placed in geostationary
orbit.
In the 1950s, Wernher von Braun worked with Collier’s
magazine (see Collier’s Space Program) and Walt Disney
Studios to produce articles and documentaries on spaceflight.
In them, he described an updated version of Noor-
space station 395
dung’s wheel, enlarged to a diameter of 76 m and reached
by reusable winged spacecraft. Von Braun saw the station
as an Earth-observation post, a laboratory, and a springboard
for lunar and Mars excursions. Later in the same
decade, the dream slowly began to turn into reality. In
1959, a NASA committee recommended that a space station
be established before a trip to the Moon, and the
House of Representatives Space Committee declared a
space station a logical follow-on to the Mercury Project.
As it transpired, the Apollo lunar program preempted the
goal of building an American space station in the early
1960s, although in 1969, the year Apollo 11 landed on
the moon, NASA proposed a 100-person permanent
space station to be completed by 1975. Known as Space
Base, it was envisioned as a laboratory for scientific and
industrial experiments and as a home port for nuclearpowered
tugs designed to carry people and supplies to an
outpost on the Moon. NASA realized that the cost of
resupplying a space station using expendable rockets
would quickly exceed the station’s construction cost. A
reusable spacecraft—the Space Shuttle—was the obvious
solution. The Shuttle would ferry up the people and the
supplies needed for a long stay in space, and ferry back
down people and the industrial products and experiment
samples they made on the station. But economic and
political priorities shifted during the Apollo era, and,
despite Apollo’s success, NASA’s annual budgets suffered
dramatic cuts beginning in the mid-1960s. Because of
this, plans for a permanent space station were deferred
until after the Shuttle was flying.
Meanwhile, the Soviets, having lost the race to the
Moon, focused instead on setting up a permanent human
presence in orbit. Throughout the 1970s they launched a
series of small, pioneering Salyut space stations and then,
in 1986, began assembly of the multi-module Mir.
NASA deferred post-Apollo station efforts to the 1980s,
with the notable exception of Skylab. When the last Skylab
crew headed home in February 1974, NASA proposed
sending a Shuttle to boost the station—a converted Saturn
V third stage—to a higher orbit, and even refurbishing
it for further use. However, delays to the Shuttle program
combined with greater-than-expected solar activity (which
expanded Earth’s atmosphere) hastened Skylab’s fall from
orbit.
In response to budgetary pressures and the magnitude
of the task of building a large permanent space station,
NASA began to explore the possibility of international
cooperation. American and Soviet negotiators discussed
joint Shuttle-Salyut missions as an outgrowth of the first
manned American-Russian space effort, the Apollo-
Soyuz Test Project in 1975. NASA offered the Shuttle
for carrying crews and cargo to and from Salyut and in
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