Category Manned Spaceflight Log II—2006-2012

There were three streams to manned space flight operations during the 1990s. First, the main Shuttle program completed a range of independent engineering, science, deployment, and servicing missions. The Russian national Mir program flew a series of long-duration expeditions and a number of shorter visiting missions, some of which were international cooperative ventures. The third element was the Shuttle missions associated with the ISS program, including the series of rendezvous and docking missions with the Mir station and the start of ISS assembly operations.

For the Shuttle program, an important learning curve was climbed by sending orbiters to the Russian Mir station. When Space Shuttle was originally proposed, one of its major objectives was to create and support space station operations. This objective was lost in the early years of Shuttle operations and almost for­gotten well into the 1980s, but by the 1990s the Shuttle finally had an objective and the target it was designed for. As plans to send the Shuttle to a space station were finalized, the 1990s also saw a range of missions flown by the Shuttle which at times seemed very much like cleaning a house: flying long-delayed missions, adapting others to support the new Mission to Planet Earth program; expanding the scope of the Hubble Space Telescope and deploying other great observatories and research satellites; and preparing for the start of ISS construction.

It is amazing now to look back at this period. It was a time of great change in the Soviet Union and a struggle for funding for the new Russian space program. Across the Atlantic, there were similar difficulties in securing a future for the U. S. Freedom station and continuing with Shuttle operations. The unique circum­stances of these events allowed both nations to come together and, with some effort, overcome their differences to launch a true partnership that was extended to include 16 nations, creating what we now know as the International Space Station. The program of cooperation has, in hindsight, allowed the creation of the ISS to run relatively smoothly during the last decade or so, even with further tragic setbacks and operational hurdles to overcome.

The Mir program was the cornerstone for both the Russians and, to an extent, the Americans to progress on to the ISS. One of the most important lessons learned from Mir was adaptability. Being able to adapt flight plans, over­come difficulties, and have the skills, alternative systems, and procedures to keep flying was a testament to the robust nature of the Soviet/Russian hardware, if not its refined technology. Being prepared for the unexpected was a lesson well learned by the Americans during the seven residencies on the station.

During Mir, something new was learned on every expedition; there were often unexpected lessons. It was surprising to some how long the program continued to be operational. Mir, as a space complex, had been continuously manned between September 7, 1989 and August 27, 1999 by a succession of crews for 3,640 days, 22 hours, and 52 minutes. That record has now been surpassed by the ISS, but at the time this was a huge achievement, especially with the difficulties in keeping the station flying at all in its latter years. Often overlooked was the significant amount of science research conducted on the station over a period of 14 years. By 2000, the station had over 240 scientific devices on board with an accumulated mass of over 14 tons. Over 20,000 experiments had been conducted (see Andrew Salmon’s “Firefly” in Mir: The Final Year, edited by Rex Hall, p. 8, British Interplanetary Society, 2001).

It was not smooth sailing by any means. Simply maintaining Mir systems began to consume most of the main crews’ time on board, as did trying to find places to store unwanted equipment. Once cosmonauts began to make return visits to the station, sometimes years apart, they reported that the time spent on repairs had increased significantly over their earlier tour. They found equipment already stored in locations meant for experiments to be set up, which caused valuable experiment time to be lost because of relocating the logistics. International crew members described finding equipment on board the station a nightmare, with conditions on the station reported as detrimental to an efficient working environment. But much of this would prove valuable for the new ISS program. In quantifying the value of their series of missions to Mir and support­ing the seven NASA residencies, John Uri, the NASA mission scientist for Shuttle-Міг, commented in the fall of 1998 that NASA had developed a host of lessons learned from Phase 1 operations at Mir. Of these, he estimated that 80-90% would have useful and direct application for the planned science program on the ISS. The others were somewhat peculiar to performing science on Mir; yet there is always something to be gained. Clearly identifying what not to do can be an equally valuable lesson as learning how to approach and complete a task.

2001-2010: THE EXPANSION YEARS

From the start of the new decade and the new millennium, the emphasis of human space flight focused around the creation and operation of the International Space Station. All but 3 of the 31 Shuttle missions flown in this decade were associated with the assembly and supply of the station. The first non-ISS mission was the fourth Hubble Servicing Mission, SM-3B (STS-109) in 2002. The second conducted ISS-related science, but flew independently of the station. This was the research flight STS-107, which ended tragically on February 1, 2003, with the high-altitude destruction of Columbia just 16 minutes from the planned landing. Following the loss of a second orbiter and crew in 17 years, the decision was made to retire the fleet. Originally, this was expected to be in 2010 but this was subsequently delayed until 2011, after 30 years of flight operations. As a result of the Columbia tragedy and inquiry, there was a review of the remaining payloads and hardware still to be launched to the station and a revised launch manifest was released for the remainder of the program, now with some of the planned elements deleted from the schedule. Once the Shuttle completed its return to flight qualifica­tion in 2006, there were no further serious delays in completing ISS assembly and finally retiring the Shuttle fleet.

In addition to the effort to complete the ISS, there was a move to fly one more service mission (SM-4) to Hubble. This had originally been canceled follow­ing the Columbia loss but was reauthorized after lobbying from the scientific community and the public. This third non-ISS mission of the decade was flown with great success, as STS-125 in 2009. The flight rounded out an impressive series of six missions specifically associated with the telescope but, sadly, the end-of – mission return to Earth on board a shuttle for the Hubble, which was on the manifest for about 2013 prior to the loss of Columbia, had to be abandoned. Had this been possible, a significant amount of information could have been gained from studying the telescope’s physical structure after over 20 years in orbit, prior to displaying the historic spacecraft in a museum for public viewing.

For the Russians during the first decade of the new millennium all effort was focused on supporting ISS operations, with the slow expansion of the Russian segment but regular resupply via Progress unmanned freighters. The venerable Soyuz was still in service at the end of the decade and in a new variant, the Soyuz TMA-M. This was the fifth major upgrade to warrant a separate designation. Though other vehicles have often been proposed by the Russians as Soyuz replacements, the almost 50-year-old design remains the primary crew ferry and rescue vehicle. In the period of 2003-2006, while the Shuttle was grounded or being requalified for operational flight, only the Soyuz was able to ferry crews to and from the station. It enabled the station to continue to be manned and oper­ated, albeit with a reduced two-person caretaker crew. In hindsight the option taken in the early 1990s to include Soyuz in the program has been, with the grounding and eventual retirement of the Shuttle, a wise one and has saved the ISS program until something else replaces the Shuttle orbiter to take American astronauts into orbit.

There are moments in human history that define significant change and development. One of the more positive moments occurred on October 4, 1957. On that day, the world’s first artificial satellite was placed into Earth orbit, signifying the dawn of what became known as the “space age”. That defining moment, when Sputnik attained a successful orbital insertion, finally unlocked the age-old secret of flight beyond the confines of our planet and brought human dreams, stories, and plans to explore “space” closer to fruition and reality. The rapid pace of advancement has become a feature of space exploration since that date. After those centuries of hopes and desires, another significant development occurred but a short two and one half years later.

Over a decade later, a third suborbital trajectory was inadvertently flown during an aborted Soyuz launch in April 1975. In this case, a spent stage of the R-7 launch vehicle failed to separate cleanly and caused the remaining launch vehicle to veer off course, triggering an abort just a few minutes into the mission before completing an emergency parachute recovery just over 21 minutes after launch. As a result of the failure, the Soviets did not assign an official Soyuz designation to the flight (it should have become Soyuz 18). Instead, they termed the event “the April 5 anomaly”. In the West, this “mission” is often referred to as Soyuz 18-1, to distinguish it from the successful replacement Soyuz 18 mission flown with a

different crew a few weeks later. As the aborted flight attained a peak altitude of 119 miles (192 km) it was officially credited as a space flight in progress, becoming the highest altitude suborbital trajectory to date.

In September 1983, a second Soyuz launch was aborted seconds before release from the pad when the carrier rocket suddenly exploded. The emergency escape rocket fired and propelled the crew to a safe, if rapid recovery five minutes later. As the maximum altitude attained was just a few thousand feet and the “launch” had not taken place, this did not become an accredited space flight or official “mission”. It was an unwelcome and surprising experience. In July 1985, Shuttle mission 51F suffered a main engine failure which threatened its ascent to orbit. Fortunately, sufficient velocity and altitude had been attained at the time of the failure and the loss of the engine could be compensated by those remaining. Abort-To-Orbit (ATO) mode was followed, resulting in a lower-than-planned Earth orbit which was modified over the next few days.

The question of when a space flight is not credited as a flight into space, but is instead deemed a mission in progress, was demonstrated tragically in January 1986 with the STS-51L mission and the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its crew of seven. The vehicle exploded just 73 seconds after leaving the pad at an altitude of 14,020 m (45,997 ft.), far below the recognized altitude to be termed a true space flight. However, in respect to the lost crew, NASA credited them post­humously with a mission duration of 1 minute 13 seconds to the point of the disaster and officially termed the ill-fated flight a “space mission in progress”.

This same classification was attributed to the STS-107 mission in February 2003, when that vehicle and its crew of seven were lost during a high-altitude breakup just 16 minutes from the planned landing in Florida. Again as a mark of respect to the crew, they were credited a mission duration to the point of loss of signal. Unlike STS-51L, they had completed a 16-day flight and were coming home from orbit when disaster struck. In most records of space flight missions, the flights of Soyuz 18-1 and STS-51L tend to be listed as attempted orbital mis­sions which fell short of that goal during flight. Had all gone well, they would have both attained sufficient velocity to have been accredited as true orbital space flights.

In contrast, the Soviet program was not going well. All their effort for manned operations was now diverted to creating a space station. The objectives of this program were, typically, not forthcoming from the secretive Soviets, and would not be for some years. However, it was subsequently revealed by Soviet space watchers that there would be two distinctly separate space station programs, either civilian and scientific in nature or more military in intent, which would both be run under one heading, called “Salyut” to help mask the clandestine nature of the military stations.

In April 1971, as part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the Gagarin flight, the first Salyut was launched. Tragically, the first man in space had not lived to see the tribute, having been killed in a plane crash in March 1968 at the age of 34. He had never had the opportunity to return to orbit. The first Salyut was a compromise between the DOS scientific stations (identified later as “civilian” in the West) planned by OKB-1 and the Almaz (“Diamond”) military – focused stations designed by OKB-52. It was plagued by difficulties from the start. The first crew (Soyuz 10), launched a few days after the Salyut, could not complete a hard docking and returned after only two days in space. Then the second crew was grounded when one of them failed a medical, so their intended mission was flown by the backup crew. Launched as Soyuz 11, this replacement crew completed a challenging 21 days on board the station but tragically died during the recovery phase due to a faulty air equalization valve.

As a result, the Soviet manned program was grounded and a planned third visit to the Salyut canceled. It would be two years before the next Soyuz crew entered orbit to test the improvements to the ferry craft and three years before a

cosmonaut crew would enter another Salyut in orbit. During this period, the Americans completed both the Apollo program and the three Skylab program manned missions, forging ahead in both lunar and space station experiences much to the chagrin of the Soviets.

The final Apollo missions to the Moon were flown in 1972. Apollo 16 and 17 completed the J-series of scientific missions to more geologically challenging sites, maximizing the variety of samples retrieved from the six landing sites. The Apollo program was a highly successful series and, even with the Apollo 13 aborted landing, significant experience and confidence was gained in sending crews out to the Moon and from performing the first EVAs on the surface of another celestial body. Unfortunately, a number of factors contributed to the closure of the program, which prevented the Americans from expanding upon this experience and contributed to the diversion of hardware, funds, and investment elsewhere. Most notably, this was to the planned Space Shuttle program, which had been authorized in January 1972 and approved in April that year while the Apollo 16 astronauts were exploring the Moon.

Just over a decade after manned space flight had become possible, the emphasis was already changing. No longer was it a race to achieve leadership at the Moon. Now, a concerted effort to look back at Earth began to develop and with it, hopefully, the creation of economical access to and from Earth orbit, with additional emphasis on sustained and extended operations in low Earth orbit. When Apollo stopped flying to the Moon in December 1972, no one really thought it would be over 35 years before we would even consider going back there seriously with a new program, and probably over 50 years before we finally make it.

This decade also brought a new, third player into the field of manned space flight operations—the Chinese. Long thought to have keen interest in developing human space flight capability, a planned program to place Chinese citizens in space in the 1970s was abandoned due to more pressing difficulties in the country. In 1992 a new manned space flight program was authorized, and from 1999 a series of unmanned test flights of the Shenzhou vehicle finally qualified the system to put a man into space.

In October 2003, taikonaut (or yuhangyuan) Liwei Yang flew Shenzhou 5 on a 21-hour mission, certifying the vehicle for human space flight operations. Two years later, in October 2005, a trio of taikonauts flew Shenzhou 6 on a five-day manned test flight, qualifying the vehicle for more extensive operations. It would be almost three years later, in September 2008, before the next Shenzhou crew entered orbit. This was also a three-man mission, but much shorter, with the specific objective of performing the first Chinese EVA. This was accomplished by mission commander Zhai Zhigang on September 27, 2008. All of these missions were explained by the Chinese authorities as planned steps toward the creation of a small space research laboratory, leading to larger space stations and eventually to Chinese manned expeditions to the Moon.

The first decade of the 21st century would put in place the infrastructure to expand the capabilities of the U. S., Russia, and the other partners in the ISS program, and to support the future direction that would be pursued over the coming two decades. The emergence of China added a whole new element to human space exploration and the appearance of their first space laboratory signals their intention to create a permanent presence in space, possibly far beyond low Earth orbit.

On the morning of April 12, 1961, a Soviet pilot named Yuri Gagarin sat strapped to an ejection seat in the cockpit of his craft awaiting the start of his next flight. As a serving air force officer there was nothing strange about that, except that the “craft” was a spacecraft, not an aircraft, and Gagarin was lying on his back, not sitting upright in the normal flying position. One other significant difference in his pending flight was that Gagarin was sitting on a rocket standing on a launchpad instead of in a military jet on the end of a runway. It was true that Gagarin was about to fly into the atmosphere once more, but not for long. Within minutes of leaving the launchpad he was passing through the upper reaches of the planet’s atmosphere, where blue skies turn black and “air” becomes “space”, pioneering a new mode of transport, that of manned space flight.

Since that day, small steps and giant strides have been made in the exploration of space, be it by automated satellites, space probes, or crewed

D. J. Shayler and M. D. Shayler, Manned Spaceflight LogII—2006—2012, Springer Praxis Books 158, DOl 10.1007/978-1-4614-4577-7_1, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

vehicles. Each and every mission adds to the database of experience, whether successful or not. There had been arguments for and against human space explora­tion even before Gagarin left the pad. Over the decades, these have expanded to include debates on the militarization of space; on the importance of scientific objec­tives; the direction of future space efforts and how they could be financed; the drain on science and unmanned programs to fund manned activities; and whether the budget should be spent on space at all when there are so many problems here on Earth. These arguments will certainly continue for many decades to come, counter­ing the natural global evolution of the program, but on the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s mission (April 2011), the time was right to take stock and review what had been achieved in human space flight, how we had arrived there, and where to go in the future.

There have been countless volumes over the previous six decades or so that have provided an exhaustive narrative of various manned space flight programs, the hardware, operations, and results. The basic records of these missions were recorded in the earlier edition of this log (Praxis Manned Spaceflight Log 1961­2006, Tim Fumiss and David J. Shayler with Michael D. Shayler, Springer-Praxis 2007) providing both a handy reference in its own right, and a companion volume to the various titles that examined each program and mission in more detail.

Where blue skies turn black 3

In all space flights, there are three phases that are common to each mission. Though the profile, objectives, and even the hardware changes, the sequence remains the same for human missions—launch, inflight, and landing.

Launch sites

There have only been three launch sites used to send humans into orbit since 1961, one each in the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. In addition, Edwards

Air Force Base in California was the home of the X-15 program from which a series of “astro-flights” were conducted in the 1960s. Nearby Mojave Airport was the departure point for the 2004 SpaceShipOne flights. Despite plans, there were no launches of military Manned Orbiting Laboratory missions in the 1960s, nor classi­fied Shuttle missions during the 1980s, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, also known as “Slick-6”) in California.

The first launch of a manned orbital space flight, on April 12, 1961, was from Pad 1 at Site 5 at the huge Baikonur Cosmodrome, in what was Soviet Central Asia (now known as the Republic of Kazakhstan). All subsequent Soviet/Russian manned launches have taken place from the same cosmodrome, though a few have used Pad 31 at Site 6.

Similarly, all American manned space flights have begun from the extensive launch complex at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The early missions launched from Pad 5 (used for the suborbital Mercury-Redstone launches), 14 (Mercury Atlas), 19 (Gemini Titan), or 34 (Apollo Saturn IB), with the Pad A or В sites at Launch Complex 39 serving as the launch site for all Apollo Saturn V and Skylab/ASTP Saturn IB missions. The LC-39 pads were subsequently converted to launch all 135 Shuttle missions. As changes take place once more in Florida to remove Shuttle-related launch systems and install facilities for the next generation of U. S. launch vehicles, these historic pads will be used to place new American vehicles into orbit. Across the world in China, the third launch site for manned spacecraft is located in Jiuquan and is used to support the launch of Shenzhou missions.

Using redirected lunar hardware, the Skylab space station became the first (and, to date, only) American domestic space station, another example of the long, compli­cated, and troubled American space station history within both NASA and the USAF. The military-orientated Manned Orbiting Laboratory program (utilizing a variant of the NASA Gemini spacecraft for crew transport) was canceled in 1969 after six expensive years of development and only one unmanned test flight. The NASA “civilian” space station program began quietly in the early 1960s, discard­ing the various grand plans revealed in the 1950s for giant stations circling the Earth and instead focusing upon creating payloads of scientific hardware flown on adapted Apollo spacecraft. These would supplement, but not replace, the lunar effort. Preliminary studies both within NASA and at contractor level revealed that the Apollo Command and Service Module, the Lunar Module, the Saturn family of launch vehicles, and the supportive hardware had the flexibility and potential to complete far wider missions than just sending men to the Moon for short visits to set up scientific instruments, return a few boxes of Moon rock, and plant a flag.

These ideas were soon identified as Apollo Extension (or Apollo X) missions. They were an obvious continuation to the basic lunar profile missions, which

could be flown throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s or beyond. However, as the effort intensified to develop the hardware required to reach the Moon, hopefully before the Soviets, so too did the administrative and political pressure not to divert substantial funds away from the main Apollo lunar program. Any new program suggestions suffered accordingly. Indeed, there was so much focus on simply getting the men to the Moon and safely home that even the science intended to be conducted on the Moon was reduced to almost nothing for the first landing. This was of course partly because of the immense challenge in simply achieving the landing in the first place and a desire not to overcomplicate the first attempt. Any expansion of science could be deferred to later missions once the commitment to reach the Moon by 1970 (and beat the Soviets) had been achieved.

The studies continued, however, and in an attempt to mask their appearance as a “new start” the programs were restructured. In 1966, Apollo X and all its connotations were gathered under a new program branch, identified as the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) Office. The primary focus of this effort centered upon using spent Saturn launch vehicle stages fitted out in space as rudimentary space laboratories. There were other missions proposed, but the Orbital Workshop (OWS) concept was the flagship of the AAP program. The rocket stage intended

Early designs from the Apollo X studies.

for use as the station would be fueled and used during the launch. Once in orbit and empty, it would be decontaminated by the crew, who would arrive in a CSM ferry craft. This became known as the “wet” workshop design. NASA had to be careful to avoid promoting the space station program as a new start because of the possible threat to the budget allocation for the mainline Apollo effort. The
way round this was to identify the “new program” (that was not officially new) as one that was simply applying the hardware and skills of Apollo to a range of further missions beyond the original remit.

Most of these missions were expected to fly in Earth orbit in between the lunar missions. After the initial Apollo landing missions (probably four or five), AAP missions to lunar orbit would follow, creating an OWS there followed by 14-day missions to the surface, hopefully setting up a small research base and extended surface expeditions. Unfortunately, concerns over the cost of the main­line Apollo and the decline in both interest and support for going to the Moon by both politicians and the public signaled the end of extensive AAP operations.

By the end of 1969, the lunar landing by Apollo had indeed been accomplished, twice, but only one AAP space station remained on the manifest. Three manned missions were planned, but it would not become the primary focus until after the Apollo missions to the Moon were completed. By early 1970, AAP had been renamed Skylab and the “wet” workshop design had also changed. Now, the laboratory would be launched on a two-stage Saturn V, with the third stage pre-fitted out as a fully equipped “dry”, or unfueled, workshop. The three teams of astronauts were planned to fly 28, 56, and 56-day missions during 1973.

Skylab 1, the unmanned laboratory, was launched in May 1973 and was almost lost during the attempt, with one of the solar power arrays and micro­meteorite shields being ripped off by aerodynamic stress. Almost limping to orbit, the problems in cooling and powering up the station caused the first mission to be delayed to give NASA time to develop plans and hardware to recover the station to as near planned operating levels as possible. The success of the first and second crews in deploying the remaining array and installing protective solar shades saved Skylab, allowing a full three-mission program to be completed. The missions set new endurance records of 28 days, 59 days, and an impressive 84 days (both instead of the planned 56), rendering a potential 21-day fourth visiting mission unnecessary. The Skylab teams gained significant experience and gathered impor­tant results from Earth observations, solar studies, medical investigations, and a wide range of other experiments and research studies in materials processing, astronomy, and education.

Unfortunately, the fully functional backup laboratory, “Skylab B”, was not launched due to budget restrictions. Instead, the flight-ready module was sent to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. for public display. To this day, former astronauts who could have flown to and lived in the station are reluctant to visit the display, recalling lost opportunities. Other unflown Apollo Saturn hardware from the canceled lunar missions was allocated to the Johnson, Marshall, and Kennedy Space Centers as museum pieces. This was very disap­pointing, not only for those who had built the vehicles and those who had hoped to fly on them, but also for those who had negotiated the funding to pay for them under the Apollo program. Instead they remained on the ground, stark reminders of what might have been.

Following Skylab, the only remaining American mission firmly on the launch manifest was the docking mission with a Soviet Soyuz, which was designated the

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. This one-off mission occurred in the summer of 1975, when Apollo “18” rendezvoused and docked with Soyuz 19. The ensuing handshake in space between astronauts and cosmonauts as they opened the con­necting hatches for the first time featured in the headlines around the world; a demonstration of growing detente between the two superpowers both on Earth and in space.

The ASTP had evolved from talks between representatives of the American and Soviet space programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with agreements on the exchange of data on both manned and unmanned missions. In early plans, it was suggested that an American Apollo might dock with a Soviet Salyut space station crewed by Soyuz cosmonauts. This was soon dismissed as impractical by the Soviets, since Salyut did not then have two docking ports. What was not revealed at the time was that a second-generation Salyut station was in develop­ment which did indeed feature two docking ports, a design which would not be revealed until later in the decade. Following the ASTP mission, talks continued for some years and included the possibility of docking a Shuttle orbiter to one of these, now revealed, second-generation Salyuts. Unfortunately, the political climate worsened, so talks on joint manned missions were abandoned for over a decade.

The retirement of the Shuttle in 2011 left something of a void. While any operational experience can be learned from, Shuttle operations will have little application directly to the proposed vehicles that will follow. The Shuttle system and hardware were unique and the new designs have more in common with the Apollo Command and Service Module than Shuttle orbiters. However, many of the lessons learned from the Shuttle-Міг program did have direct application to ISS operations.

For those vehicles which will eventually follow the Shuttle, a whole new learning curve might need to be scaled. By the time the new vehicles fly, those who were around for most of the Shuttle program will probably have retired, losing core experience that, like the Apollo era, will be hard to replace. There is, however, one significant difference between the transition from the Apollo era to the Shuttle era and the one from the Shuttle era to whatever replaces it.

In the 1970s, relatively few former astronauts moved to managerial roles in the space agency or the industry. Most of the engineers and managers who were at NASA during Apollo moved on to work on the Shuttle program, at least in its early years, bringing with them valued experience. A generation later, things were much different. The industry was much larger, most of the original employees at NASA had retired, and there were far more opportunities for former astronauts to move across to managerial roles, both inside and outside the agency, within the broader space program.

At the end of the Apollo era, many of the veteran astronauts, managers, and engineers decided to leave the program. In contrast, many of those who flew or managed the Shuttle are now in key positions within the space industry, working on a variety of new programs or projects including those contractors developing the Shuttle replacement. With the end of the Shuttle and some years before its replacement arrives, it is likely that more former Shuttle astronauts will retire. It will be interesting to monitor the career path of the ex-Shuttle pilots and mission specialists who climb the corporate ladder or advance in the administration of NASA and leading contractors in the coming decades. In Europe, former ESA astronauts are also beginning to move to higher administrative roles. In contrast, trying to track the progress of cosmonauts after they stop flying was always (and continues to be) difficult. Most of the military cosmonauts retire on a pension,

while the civilian engineers resume work at Energiya until they retire. A few, Uke Alexei Leonov and Vladimir Titov, secured positions in leading Russian corporate businesses.

Former NASA astronauts, including Bob Crippen, Frank Culbertson, Bill Lenoir, Brian O’Connor, Loren Shriver, Dick Truly, and more recently Charles Bolden, Mike Coat, and others have made the transition from the astronaut office to the management side of the agency and then stepped across into industry. Their personal experiences from flying in space have been applied back into the program, but at a much higher level. It will be interesting to monitor whether such moves have a lasting legacy for the future space program.

Living on a planet means “space” is all around us, a fact most people often overlook or are even still unaware of. Standing on “terra firma”, it is easy to forget that this “firm ground” is actually traveling through space on its own journey around the star we know as “sol”, or the Sun. To journey “into space” generally means traveling throughout the atmosphere to a point where you briefly see the blue sky turn black and into a condition where normal aerodynamic control surfaces such as wings, rudder, and ailerons are useless; only rocket engines can provide the impulse to move under a vacuum condition. It is a con­dition controlled by the forces of gravity pulling on objects in perpetual free fall.

The barrier between blue sky and space has been defined at different altitudes above the Earth. For some it is 50 miles (80.45 km); others state 62 miles (or 100 km), while still others claim you are not in space until you are in orbit and you cannot call yourself a true space explorer unless you have completed at least one orbit of Earth. With even more flights to the edge of the defined atmosphere planned, such as the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo program, so the debate of what is or is not a true flight into space will continue.