Features

300 kilometres above us, a long way in the context of Earth, but a miniscule distance in the vast expanse of the universe, is the home of the first continuous ten years of human occupation in space. It is an odd kind of home. With its conglomeration of wires and mechanics lining the 109-metre length of its walls, it looks like a cross between a military submarine and your family’s attic. But the views it experiences on its 15 orbits of earth each day outdo either. “Sometimes it looks like you’d expect it to look, which is you’re flying over a huge rotating ball with a black sky and it’s breathtakingly beautiful, but often you feel that the world is like a big wall on one side of you and you’re going underneath it...The seas, the oceans, they look like blue neon. It’s so bright it hurts your eyes,” describes English Astronaut Pieter Sellers who has flown three shuttle missions to the International Space Station (called the ISS for short).





 
The inhabitants of the ISS have hailed from 15 different countries and together have facilitated the construction, operation and funding of what is part orbiting science laboratory, part a symbol of the various nations’ attempt to stake a human claim on the so-called final frontier that space represents.
 
Originally embodied in the heated rivalry between USA and the then-USSR, this desire to play a part in the universe outside the world we know changed form considerably after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The loss of a competition quite as emotionally charged as the Cold War had provided, along with budgetary worries required national space agencies to change the bold approach that had characterized the Space Race.
 
Manned and unmanned spacecrafts had now been in space for decades, satellites were in constant orbit around the Earth, the moon had been landed on but Mars was still too far, at least for humans. The focus became a space station orbiting the earth and allowing for permanent human habitation. Russia had already achieved this in Mir, a space station in operation since 1986. But space stations are expensive beasts and by the early nineties Russia, alongside other nations aspiring to a similar space presence began to realize that pooling resources was going to be the only viable option. The USA and Russia announced the plans for a joint space station in 1993. The first of sixteen modules, Zarya, Russian built and American financed, was launched in November 1998, by which time Japan, Canada and Europe’s space agencies had also come on board the project. Construction has continued until this year when it was planned to be completed. A little behind schedule the space station is technically still unfinished, with a final Russian module planned to be launched in May of next year.
 
But even before the completion of the ISS, there is a healthy dose of skepticism beginning to emerge alongside the traditional excitement towards the future of manned space exploration. Nasa’s termination of the Shuttle program with the last shuttle Atlantis’ final flight on 8 July raises some complex questions about the future of the American space program. The shuttles were designed and sold to the public as a reliable and regular ferrying system for American efforts in space. In practice, the shuttles have been able to be launched far less routinely than anticipated and disaster has twice resulted in the death of two sets of crew. The shuttles could hardly be called a failure. Two fatal launches out of 135 is not an outrageous statistic in what is clearly a risky line of work and the program saved the Hubble Space Telescope in allowing it to be repaired by hand in 1993 and they have played a key role in the servicing of the International Space Station. But even, as Nasa insists, the shuttle program is painted as a success, it is a very expensive success. The cost of a shuttle launch is at the cheapest, US$ 450 million, with some estimates as high as US$1.5 billion. Note that is just one launch. And that, is seems is the problem of space ventures generally. They cost a lot.
 
There are of course some moral issues surrounding this. Is it appropriate to spend US$100 billion in ten years on an orbiting research station when during the same period back on earth 80 million children died due to poverty? Is it really worth committing massive financial and intellectual resources to enterprises such as landing humans on Mars when the temperature of the planet we’ve got is raising at a rate recognized as well over the UN’s threshold for dangerous climate change?
 
It might turn out that it is. Consider that the US spent an estimated US$3 trillion (at least) on the Iraq war and US$5.8 trillion on its nuclear weapons program, and the billions directed towards space ventures start to look more reasonable. Added to this is the employment benefits such activity creates. The Space Shuttle program created $4 billion in economic benefit a year to Florida and Nasa related activities created 400 000 jobs in the state. Such generation in jobs also serves to redirect the career paths of some of the most successful scientists, engineers and pilots whose expertise would otherwise be targeted towards less desirable aims, such as the trillion dollar undertakings mentioned above.
 
In practice, moral questions will give way to logistical ones in determining the future of space programs. “Space exploration is really expensive. But it is the next step. We’re so dependent on space systems, that it seems redundant to talk about the expense of space exploration, we simply cannot afford to neglect it” says Maria Pozza, an Otago student whose PhD thesis is on law of space.” She gives the example of satellites, which have become an integral part of human activity from security to the weather forecast on the six o’clock news.
 
But for a space presence further afield, the issue becomes whether there is the public attitude to commit resources towards this purpose. With the excitement of the Space Age fading some predict that although activity will continue to grow within the earth’s geostationary orbit (the realm of satellites), the “days of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely faded” (according to The Economist). The exception to this may be the occasional robotic expeditions further afield, which are recognized as a safer, easier and cheaper option than the unnecessary addition of a human being (but it is those human beings who will capture the public’s imagination).
 
Comparing the current public enthusiasm for space with that at the height of the Space Race is missing the point. Certainly no one is making the ambitious announcements of the Space Race, but with no Cold War to fuel them, no one has to. Times have changed but not all extraterrestrial aspirations have disappeared and they are coming from more diverse sources than exclusively the American and Russian space agencies.
 
For a start the US military has it’s own space program, entirely separate from Nasa’s with a yearly public budget of US$8.7 billion and a suspected considerably higher confidential budget. The world’s up and coming powers could have an important part to play. In 2003 China became the third country to launch a human into space on a rocket it had built itself and it has indicated plans to begin construction of a space station later this year.
 
And there’s always the private sector. Commercial firms have begun taking on the role of carrying cargo into low orbit to destinations such as the ISS. This is hardly groundbreaking work, but it might lead there, or at the very least free up national state agencies to do the groundbreaking work. Space tourism too is, to use the marketing quip, taking off. Space has already had its first tourist since American multimillionaire Dennis Tito hitched a ride on a Russian spacecraft to the ISS in 2001. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is taking bookings for sub-orbital space tourism and Boeing has announced it is planning to begin tourist launches into low earth orbit in 2015. Though it is hard to see this ever becoming a mass market due to the cost (Tito is thought to have paid US$20 million for his excursion), removing space solely from the realm of highly trained astronauts, is likely to fuel public interest in further space exploration.
 
Back to the International Space Station, where does it fit in all this? The Economist has perhaps a little over-zealously called it: “the biggest waste of money that has ever been built in the name of modern science.” Certainly the research undertaken on the station has only been described to the public in vague terms with the implication being that conducting research 300kms higher than usual adds an important element to scientific experimentation. In reality, that element may be simply that conducting experiments in space is cool. Combined with the fact that such experience in space may get humankind equipped for more ambitious space travel, this would not be the worst use of public funds.
 
Really the ISS’ greatest achievement is not only a scientific one. “What the ISS represents is a practical step in space cooperation. The ISS illustrates how nation states are capable of space cooperation and that yes, we do indeed have a future in that” says Maria Pozza. The level of coordination of the law, finances, resources and people of 15 nations (two of which started this journey amidst the threat of firing nuclear missiles at each other) is no mean feat.
 
The ISS will not last forever. The program has only been planned until 2015 but all nations involved have expressed a desire to continue the program beyond that point. Last year Obama committed Nasa to the ISS until at least 2020. The exact reasons behind the policy are unclear, but it is obvious the ISS retains its most important supporter.