U.S. SPACE PLANS SPACE STATION PROGRAMME IN SEARCH OF MORE FUNDS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32361, 29 July 1970, Page 16

U.S. SPACE PLANS SPACE STATION PROGRAMME IN SEARCH OF MORE FUNDS

(Reprinted from the “Economist” by arrangement)

The decline in spending on space has its roots partly in the United States, partly in the Soviet Union. The Americans were as good as inviting trouble when they made an all-out bid to get to the moon without any clear programme in their minds about what to do when they got there.

No nation invests $24,000 million in order to provide scientists with some interesting photographs and a bag full of moon rocks. Both could be obtained with less risk, and for much less money, by unmanned rockets.

a second time against the re- < strictions imposed by the: Apollo programme. In theory, this ambitious,. long-term plan has the Nixon Administration’s blessing. But not its money. This kind of work cannot be paid for on $3400m a year, with a rundown and demoralised staff, when engineering groups and test teams have been broken up and scattered to the four winds. On such a basis, N.A.S.A. could only limp along through the 1970 s and into the 1980 s. Since the technical problems of building the space shuttle are such that it could not fly before 1978, however, much money was spent on it, only an optimist would forecast when the Americans will be seriously pioneering new frontiers in space again. N.A.S.A. is, however, not short of optimists. This month they went into action at Houston to sell the programme, and sell it hard. Two Apollo rockets, 14 and 15, are firmly scheduled for flights to the moon; Apollo 14 should leave in January. The balance on order—up to Apollo 20—will probably be used in what amounts to a dry run of the new system, putting a rough workshop into orbit round the earth. Then N.A.S.A. outlined the possibility of a new programme, starting in 1978, which would involve launching a shuttle every six weeks in order to construct and then service a permanent 12crew station. This station would consist of something like five separate decks enclosed in a 50ft cylinder, the lot rotating gently at the end of a 200 ft boom to give some semblance of artificial gravity. Women In Space Warming to the job, the engineers said that some of the crew might be women; for the first time, N.A.S.A. would be able to provide the “necessary degree of privacy” for them. The programme assumes just over 90 shuttle flights spread over a decade.