Odyssey March 2002: President's Message

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Odyssey, March 2002. Editor: Kris Cerone

President's Message

As I write this astronauts aboard the shuttle Columbia have just finished repairing and upgrading the Hubble Space Telescope. The crew have replaced equipment on the observatory's power system, replaced the Faint Object Camera, and installed a refrigeration unit to allow an infrared instrument to operate once more. This was done in the course of five space walks that reportedly went off without a hitch. All in all, it looks like a textbook case of how to perform a space mission and it made the best use of human and robotic capabilities.

Photograph from STS-92 mission. NASA

At the same time, three crew aboard the Alpha International Space Station continue to operate the facility, performing some assembly, some maintenance, and some science activities. The Alpha construction schedule was delayed to allow the Hubble repair mission to proceed. Now full-scale construction can begin anew.

Unfortunately, the Administration's plans for the facility still delay or eliminate the Habitation Module and the Crew Return Vehicle, two key elements if the crew size is to expand beyond the current limit of three. The Station's design will demand that the three crew will spend most of their time just maintaining the facility, leaving little time to do useful science. Our international partners in Europe, Japan, and Canada have expressed serious concerns about how little use and access they will have to their modules and equipment unless the crew size is increased. But in the present budget climate and with the new NASA administrator, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Perhaps an enterprising private firm could convince NASA and the Bush administration to allow them to develop the Habitation Module and the Crew Return Vehicle in return for a fixed lease rate or a guarantee of commercial experiment or advertising space aboard them. There is a precedent for such a move: the SpaceHab facility that flies on the Shuttle on every Station mission was developed with private capital. The company that operates it earns a portion of its revenues from NASA leases and a portion from sales of experiment space to private companies. This arrangement is a "win-win" situation for both NASA and the company: the space agency gets a very capable facility at a modest cost and without the development expense of a traditional program, while the company has a guaranteed customer base, flexibility to meet commercial customer needs, and substantial experience in operating such a facility. A similar arrangement for the Station's Habitation Module and Crew Return Vehicle would also benefit all concerned.

And while we're on the subject of Station and commercial flights, some of you may have heard that Lori Garver, the former NSS Executive Director, is working to become the next space tourist to go to the Alpha station. Garver is arranging financing for the flight through her current employer, DFI, and rounding up other commercial sponsors. Two other individuals have expressed interest in purchasing the spare seat aboard a Soyuz capsule: Lance Bass of the pop group 'NSynch and a Polish businessman. Those of us with NSS affiliations are rooting for Lori, but we wish good luck to whoever gets to go.

Finally, we're gearing up for a busy spring in the OASIS activities department: we just finished the tour of the renovated Air and Space Gallery of the California Science Center, several folks are going for a tour of Mt. Wilson observatory on March 23rd (see details elsewhere in this issue), we'll be going to a group viewing of the new IMAX film Space Station 3D on April 20 (following the OASIS meeting), and we're having a public lecture on the Mars Odyssey mission at the Boeing Huntington Beach facility on April 27th. We hope to see you and your friends at some or all of these events.

Steve Bartlett