The Next Giant Step

By Frederic Golden

Reagan launches a campaign for a permanent space station

Silently drifting across the sky, it will resemble nothing so much as the imaginative creation of an inventive youngster with an Erector set. It will consist of sleek metal cylinders, winglike panels, sinewy aluminum beams and long, cranelike arms. But in the eyes of President Reagan, there is nothing really far out about the bizarre-looking object. If he has his way, it will be circling the earth by the early 1990s.

In an impassioned plea reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge to land a man on the moon within the decade, Reagan last week called upon Congress to endorse another leap into the cosmos and establish a permanent space station. He unveiled the proposal just before the tenth flight of the shuttle, scheduled to lift off from Florida on Friday. A highlight of the eight-day mission will be an untethered sortie into space by two astronauts using NASA's new manned maneuvering units, which are in effect self-contained space capsules with their own steering jets.

The proposed space station, occupied by half a dozen men and women at a time, will orbit several hundred miles above the earth. It will open a new world of extraterrestrial opportunity that will include scientific experimentation, zero-g manufacturing, observation of the earth, and even the launching of spacecraft to remote parts of the universe. Reagan's rhetoric was euphoric: "We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful economic and scientific gain."

As far back as the turn of the century, the Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote about large spinning habitats in space. But until recently any such idea was regarded as no more than pie in the sky by the upper reaches of the Reagan Administration. The turnabout came in December, when NASA Administrator James Beggs met with the President at the White House. The space chief emerged from that close encounter, in the words of one official, as if he "were orbiting on cloud nine."

Reagan, who had earlier slashed furiously at the space program and even canceled an unmanned rendezvous with Halley's comet, was apparently won over by two key points: 1) the increasing sophistication of the Soviet space effort, which has permitted cosmonauts to remain aboard their semipermanent Salyut space stations for as long as seven months at a time, and 2) the possible commercial payoff from a space station, notably manufactured goods far superior to any made under the tug of earthly gravity. Among them: ultrapure Pharmaceuticals, difficult-to-grow gallium arsenide crystals for microchips, alloys made of metals that resist mixing on earth and a new generation of chemical catalysts for producing plastics and other synthetics.

The next "giant step," as Reagan called the space-station proposal, will actually begin with a moderate stride. For fiscal 1985 the Administration will seek no more than $150 million extra in NASA's $7.2 billion budget to plan the station's architecture and set its specific goals. However, in subsequent years, when construction starts, as much as $1.2 billion a year will be required for the project. Estimated total cost over the decade: $8 billion. The bill could be brought down if Beggs succeeds in winning European, Canadian or Japanese participation.

Preliminary studies agree that the station will have to be freighted piecemeal into orbit inside the space shuttle's big cargo bay. This "building-block approach," as the chief of NASA's Space-Station Task Force, John Hodge, calls it, will take a minimum of five flights. The components will include two or more cylinder-shaped modules, each with the volume of a large recreational vehicle. These will serve as working and living ("habitation modules" in NASAese) quarters for the astronauts. Solar panels will catch sunlight and turn it into electricity. Huge radiators will shed excess heat from the station's operations. In addition, there will be external pallets on which various scientific instruments can be mounted, one or more remote-controlled cranes to move equipment about and at least one docking port for visits by the space shuttle.

Because of the station's limited size, life on board may be somewhat restricted, but hardly boring. Besides doing their regular-chores, the workers will occasionally have to leave the station in small maneuverable capsules to retrieve satellites for repair or help nudge additional units into place. In their idle hours occupants will browse through the station's library or play video cassettes. They will exercise regularly, perhaps on fixed bicycles or treadmills; such exertion ensures continued muscle tone and the health of the cardiovascular system in the less taxing weightless environment. Even couples may be allowed on board, since there are already several husband-and-wife astronauts. Shuttles will pay regular visits to bring supplies and equipment and carry off manufactured products.

Enticing as it may seem, though, the space station is not yet a sure bet. In an era of huge federal deficits, it will be an obvious target for congressional budget cutting. Some scientists, including a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, are concerned that the station could take precious federal funds from other research in space. (Beggs insists that NASA has no intention of sacrificing any existing programs.) Nor does the station have much support from the Pentagon, which says there is no compelling military need for it.

But such reactions are what Jerry Grey, publisher of the influential journal Aerospace America, whimsically calls the telephone syndrome. As he explains, "No one needed the telephone either, until they had one and discovered how much easier it made their lives." --By Frederic Golden. Reported by Jerry Hannifin/Washington

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin/Washington