Category Manned Spaceflight Log II—2006-2012

Having completed their mission crews prepare for the return to Earth. The method of crew recovery depends upon the design of the vehicle and the location of the landing area. This is usually a barren expanse of land or one of the planet’s vast oceans, both of which give a wide margin for error. The occupants of the spacecraft always hope for a safe and as soft a landing as possible.

For the Soviets, and subsequently the Russian planners, the preferred landing site has always been on soil, usually the immense expanse of Kazakhstan. One of the main reasons for this in the early days was the then secret nature of the whole

Soviet space project; keeping the returning crews and vessels away from the eyes of the outside world. It also avoided diverting naval resources into recovering crews from distant oceans. The early Vostok missions were unable to support a returning cosmonaut landing inside the spacecraft and thus provided an ejection seat for separate parachute descent. However, since 1964 all returning Soviet/ Russian spacecraft with a human crew on board have featured retro-rockets to soften the impact on the arid steppe land.

All Soyuz crews train for water recovery and, though none have been planned, there was one “splashdown”, on a frozen lake in 1976. The recovery proved to be a challenge for both the crew on board and the rescue teams. An earher mission also just missed landing in a lake by just 50 meters in 1971. With the advent of international cooperation, a number of international backup landing sites have been established for Soyuz spacecraft emergency landing situations, foremost of which are sites in Canada.

The ground landing is commonly called a “dust down”. Also termed a “soft landing” method, a landing in a Soyuz is never “soft”, with some dramatic impacts reported over the years, and with spacecraft bouncing upon landing or dragged by parachute. Crews have frequently described the impact as similar to a car crash. The earlier Vostok missions were also planned with ground landings, although cosmonaut training included water recovery techniques as a precaution. But with Vostok, the landing speed of the capsule was higher than any crew would have been able to survive, so the solo cosmonaut used an ejection seat system to vacate the capsule and descend by personal parachute.

One problem that this caused was in officially verifying the early missions. The Soviets had to state officially that each cosmonaut had launched and landed in their spacecraft in order to qualify for the new, internationally recognized aero­nautical record. One of the criteria for this was that an occupant had to be inside the vehicle from the moment of leaving the pad to it touching down back on Earth. The Soviets quietly had to ignore this, particularly for Gagarin’s first mission, and maintained this pretense until 1978 when reports emerged that the first cosmonaut had indeed used the ejection system and parachute at the end of his flight. By then, of course, it hardly mattered.

When the Vostok was “upgraded” to fly a larger crew the ejector seat was removed. But this brought back the problem of the higher landing velocity and no suitable escape system. It was for these Voskhod craft that the retro-rocket package was first introduced, located in the recovery parachute system to slow the descent enough for the crew to survive the landing. Fortunately, only two Voskhod were flown, so the risk was minimal before the advent of Soyuz. The Chinese Shenzhou is similar to Soyuz. It is also designed for ground landings and follows a similar profile to the Russian craft.

All American manned space flights under Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo ended with parachute recoveries in the ocean and were retrieved with the assistance of the U. S. Navy. This costly exercise was one of the reasons the Shuttle vehicle was designed with ground landings in mind, reducing NASA’s bill from the U. S. Navy. The possibility of an orbiter ditching on water was still feasible in emergency situations and all crews did train for water egress up to the vehicle’s retirement. Conversely, land recovery techniques were also studied for both Gemini and Apollo although it was never adopted beyond tests and demonstrations. The vehi­cles currently in development to replace the Shuttle are being designed with both land and water-landing capabihties in mind.

From 1981 through 2011, 133 of the 135 Shuttle missions launched ending with a landing inside the continental United States, on runways in Florida (78 landings), California (54 landings), or New Mexico (1 landing). The Shuttle also had the capacity to land at a number of contingency landing sites around the world, although these were never called upon. Neither were the various trans­atlantic landing sites that were on standby during each launch in case the mission was terminated early. The Shuttle also had the capacity (in theory) to return to its launch site if necessary in an emergency situation, but again this was never required, much to the relief of each Shuttle crew!

There were significant developments during the second decade of manned space flight operations, which progressed the program forward as the emphasis changed from pioneering missions and lunar exploration to extended duration space flight and international cooperation.

During the final Apollo missions (14-17), the emphasis switched to more extensive surface activities and orbital science operations. The use of the Lunar Roving Vehicle and more mobility in the pressure suits helped the efficiency of the astronauts but one thing that became abundantly clear from the surface activities was that the disturbed lunar material would be a significant factor in planning any future lunar excursions (although at the time no one really thought this would be over 50 years in the future). The lunar dust found its way into everything, cover­ing the suits, the equipment, and cameras. It was carried inside the LM at the end of the moonwalks and, in the one-sixth gravity, lingered in the environment inside the LM. When the next-generation lunar spacecraft or scientific research base appears, it will likely include an airlock-type facility, or at least an airflow barrier, to isolate the outside environment and EVA equipment area from the living quarters. Another important lesson learned from the later Apollo missions was that back-to-back EVA operations were tiring for the crew concerned, something that would have to be factored into planning for extensive EVA operations from the Shuttle.

From Skylab, the Americans experienced a totally new learning curve. Prior to the space station missions, the longest U. S. flight had been the 14-day Gemini 7 mission of 1965, with little mobility available in the close confines of the crew compartment. Even the three final Apollo landing missions with a packed timeline only lasted 11 to 12 days. There had been a gradual buildup of U. S. duration records over the first decade of operations, but Skylab extended the experience significantly over a period of just nine months. The Skylab missions set the achievement bar high for the rest of that decade and beyond.

Skylab has been an often overlooked program, in the shadow of Apollo, but like Gemini before it Skylab established some of the most important and influen­tial experiences and achievements in U. S. space flight history. The program has more in common with today’s space station program than with the historic Apollo lunar missions. In some respects, Apollo could be considered a diversion from the logical progression of early manned space flight activities, from the first attempts through to experience of extended space flight operations in low Earth orbit, prior to the expansion of human exploration away from Earth. It could be argued that, like the Concorde supersonic passenger plane, and perhaps even the Space Shuttle, the Apollo missions were ahead of their time and suffered accord­ingly. Mastering operations in low Earth orbit and establishing a firm foothold there before moving outwards seems to be the way the global program is being directed for the 2020s. Perhaps without the distraction of the Space Race, we may have already gone farther along this path. But, then again, without that back­ground of competition, we may not have gone very far at all. Once again, future history will reveal just how important these early programs were in establishing permanent human presence in space and far from the Earth.

One of the key lessons learned from the Skylab missions was the importance of scheduling the crew’s time and workload. There was an eventual realization that introducing new activities or objectives for which the crew had little or no prior experience would be less productive than allowing the crew to have the choice to follow a basic flight plan, with a “shopping list” of priorities. Tasks needed to be flexible, so that they could be completed on the day, added to a list of things that would be desirable to complete as soon as possible, or which could be slipped into the schedule as and when time allowed. Trying to micromanage the timeline, as was the case on Apollo, was not the best way to plan longer missions on a space station.

Skylab also highlighted the need for the crews flying the missions to be capable generalists rather than necessarily dedicated specialists. Each of the three missions included a scientist astronaut who had worked on the program for some years, but few of the pilot astronauts had been on the program for that long, many of them having moved over from the Apollo program. Skylab 4 Commander Jerry Carr, a Marine pilot on his first space flight, soon realized that, while learning to operate and monitor the Apollo Telescope Mount and its suite of solar observation experiments, he became a far better solar observer when he stopped trying to become a solar scientist.

It remains a bitter disappointment to many, both inside and outside of the program that, following the glowing success of Skylab A (especially after recover­ing the station from the brink of failure), the backup OWS could not be launched as Skylab В in the second half of the 1970s. It would have been a golden opportu­nity to capitalize on the experiences of the first workshop and to correct the mistakes made first time around, as the Soviets were beginning to learn from their Salyut series of stations.

SOYUZ TMA-9 (UPDATED)

2006-040A September 18, 2006

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of

Kazakhstan

April 21, 2007

Northeast of the town of Jezkazgan, Republic of Kazakhstan

Soyuz-FG (R7 serial number Ц15000-23),

TMA-9 (serial number 219)

215 da 08 h 22 min 48 s (Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin)

10 da 21 h 05 min (Ansari)

Vostok (“East”)

ISS resident crew transport (13S), ISS-14 research program, visiting crew 11 research program

Flight crew

LOPEZ-ALEGRIA, Michael Eladio, 48, USN, NASA ISS-14 commander,

Soyuz TMA flight engineer, fourth mission

Previous missions: STS-73 (1995), STS-92 (2000), STS-113 (2002)

TYURIN, Mikhail Vladislavovich, 46, civilian, RSA ISS-14 flight engineer 1, Soyuz TMA commander, second mission Previous mission: ISS-3 (2001)

ANSARI, Anousheh, 40, civilian, U. S. space flight participant, visiting crew 11 (returned with ISS-13 crew on TMA-8)

Shuttle delivered ISS-14 crew members—STS-121 up (STS-116 down)

REITER, Thomas Arthur, 48, ESA (German) ISS-14 flight engineer 2, second mission

Previous missions: Soyuz TM-22 (1995)

STS-116 up (STS-117 down)

WILLIAMS, Sunita Lyn, 41, US Navy, NASA ISS-14 flight engineer 2

Flight log

The 14th resident crew boarded the International Space Station (ISS) two days after they had been launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. On board with Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin was U. S. space flight participant Anousheh Ansari, who would spend just over a week aboard the station conducting a small research program. The day after docking, the crew were able to witness the reentry of

Atlantis at the end of the STS-115 mission, four days after the Shuttle had undocked from the station.

The original intention was for Japanese businessmen Daisuke Emomato to fly to the ISS on TMA-9 with Ansari serving as his backup, but he failed his preflight medical on August 21. The following day, Ansari replaced him on the prime crew. Ansari is the Iranian-born naturalized U. S. citizen who cofounded Telecom Tech­nologies Inc. in 1993, supplying softswitch technology to the telecommunications industry. With her brother-in-law, she made a multimillion dollar contribution to the X-Prize suborbital space flight record attempt foundation, which was officially named the Ansari X-Prize in recognition of the contributions by her family. (The X-prize was won by SpaceShipOne in 2005.)

With the formal handover to the ISS-14 crew completed on September 27, Ansari returned to Earth on September 29 aboard TMA-8 with the ISS-13 crew members NASA astronaut Jeffery WilUams and Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.

While Ansari’s fellow Soyuz TMA-9 crew mates were undergoing their induction in ISS systems prior to assuming formal residency from the outgoing ISS-13 team, the latest space tourist completed her own program. During her nine days on board the station, she conducted three TV broadcasts, amateur radio broadcasts, and a series of photographic and video surveys in the Russian segment of the station for educational purposes. She also participated in bio­medical experiments, including researching the mechanisms behind anemia, muscle changes that influence back pain, and the consequences of radiation on crew members.

With the departure of the ISS-13 crew, Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin began to work with ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, who had arrived on July 6 aboard Discovery during the STS-121 mission. The German astronaut was working on the ESA Astrolab program and would leave the station on December 20 aboard Discovery (STS-116) after handing over his ISS-14 FE2 role to NASA astronaut Sunita Williams who arrived on the station on December 11. Williams would con­tinue on board the station with the ISS-15 crew after the departure of Lopez – Alegria and Tyurin. During their first days on the station, the new resident crew was occupied with troubleshooting the Russian Elektron oxygen system, which had been switched off due to overheating just before they arrived on the station. This was followed by the shutdown of Control Moment Gyroscope #3 (this would be replaced during STS-118) and the repair of the American Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) system. Maintenance work takes up as much time as experimental work on most expeditions. Thomas Reiter’s arrival saw the resump­tion of delivering a third permanent crew member via Shuttle, an important step towards resuming normal operations after the loss of Columbia in February 2003. Other “normal” operations included the relocation of Soyuz TMA-9 from the aft port of Zvezda to the nadir port on Zarya on October 10. The crew relocated the Soyuz a second time on March 31, moving the spacecraft from Zarya back over to Zvezda to clear the hatches for other operations. During their expedition, the crew would also receive the Progress M-58 and M-59 resupply vessels and host the STS-116 crew.

Throughout their expedition, the resident crew continued to work on the expanding experiment program in both the Russian and American segments. These were now being supplemented by the ESA program conducted by Reiter. There were 114 hours of crew time planned for American science operations and 266 sessions on 41 experiments in the Russian segment. The crew also conducted extensive robotics work with the Canadarm2 unit on the exterior of the station.

A total of 33 hours 42 minutes of EVA time was accumulated by the ISS-14 crew. Lopez-Alegria conducted all five space walks, accompanied on the first and fifth by Tyurin from Pirs using Russian Orlan suits and by Sunita Williams for the other three, operating in U. S. EMUs from the Quest airlock.

The first EVA (November 23, 2006, 5h 38 min) involved the repositioning, deployment, and relocation of equipment on the exterior of Zvezda, as well as the commercially sponsored Canadian “golf experiment” in which a golf ball was placed in orbit using a gold-plated club. The next three EVAs (January 31, 2007, 7h 55 min; February 4, 7h 11 min; and February 8, 6h 40 min), from the U. S. segment, focused upon rerouting electrical and fluid quick disconnect lines from the soon-to-be-disconnected Early External Active Thermal Control System to a permanent cooling system in the Destiny Laboratory. The two astronauts also began work for the Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System (SSPTS), which would enable the Shuttle to draw electrical power from the station for extended visits to the facility. On their third EVA, the two astronauts jettisoned two large shrouds from solar array truss P3 Bays 18 and 20 and installed an attachment for cargo carriers. The final EVA of this expedition (February 22, 6h 18 min) was back on the Russian segment, where the two astronauts retracted a stuck antenna on Progress M-58 and performed a series of equipment photography and similar lesser tasks. In a total of 10 EVAs, Lopez-Alegria had accumulated an American astronaut record of 67 hours 40 minutes by the end of his residency.

On March 31 (March 30, gmt), the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft was relocated from the Zarya port to the rear Zvezda port. Although this operation took only 24 minutes, the operation to shut down the ISS and then restart it again took several hours each side of the relocation flight, during which the station remained unmanned.

A combination of the delay to the launch of STS-117 (due to hail damage on the External Tank on February 26) and the rescheduling of TMA-10 from March to April ensured that Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams would both set new American astronaut endurance records for stays in space. The replacement resi­dent crew arrived at the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-10 on April 9, 2007. Traveling to the ISS with the ISS-15 cosmonauts was American businessman Charles Simonyi. Following the customary welcoming ceremonies, Simonyi exchanged his Soyuz seat liner with Williams, who officially joined the ISS-15 crew. The formal handover between ISS-14 and ISS-15 crews took place on April 17. After a joint program of 10 days, the ISS-14 crew loaded the Soyuz TMA-9 with items for their return, together with Simonyi, on April 21.

Milestones

250th manned space flight 102nd Russian manned space flight 95th manned Soyuz flight 9th manned Soyuz TMA mission 13 th ISS Soyuz mission 11th ISS Soyuz visiting mission (VC11)

Longest flight by a Soyuz spacecraft (215 days)

Set new endurance record for ISS Expedition (215 days)

Lopez-Alegria set career EVA record for an American at 67 h 40 min (10 EVAs) He also set record for longest U. S. space flight (215 da 8h 22 min 48 s)

Ansari was the 4th (1st female) space tourist and the 1st Iranian in space

Flight crew

POLANSKY, Mark Lewis, 50, civilian, NASA commander, second mission Previous mission: STS-98 (2001)

OEFELEIN, William Anthony, 41, USN, NASA pilot

PATRICK, Nicholas James MacDonald, 42, civilian, NASA mission specialist 1 CURBEAM Jr. Robert Lee, 44, USN, NASA mission specialist 2, third mission Previous missions: STS-85 (1997), STS-98 (2001)

FUGLESANG, Arne Christer, 49, ESA (Swedish) mission specialist 3 HIGGINBOTHAM, Joan Elizabeth, 42, civilian, NASA mission specialist 4

ISS-14 crew member up only

WILLIAMS, Sunita Lyn, 41, USN, NASA mission specialist 5, ISS-14 flight engineer 2

ISS-14 crew member down only

REITER, Thomas, 48, German Air Force, ESA (German) mission specialist 5, ISS-14 flight engineer 2, second mission Previous mission: Soyuz TM22/Mir 20 (1995)

Though it is not evident to everyone, we are all explorers of space, moving with the Earth on a continuous journey within our galaxy in the universe. For a for­tunate few in recent years, that journey in space has become very personal as they have left Earth for a short time, paving the way for longer and even farther jour­neys to the planets and beyond. It can be a privilege to witness defining eras of history and that is certainly true of following the first human steps towards the stars. Though we will never witness those journeys in our Ufetime, we have wit­nessed the start of that adventure, and that is rewarding in itself. Half a century into that journey, there have been countless reviews of our progress in space exploration; what has been achieved to date, how this experience can be useful in understanding where we wish to focus future directions, and why those decisions are made. Part of this decision making is to look back at the rich heritage of today’s truly international manned space program.

Every crew aims to complete their mission as planned, safely and efficiently. While hoping for the best, they are all certainly aware of the dangers and uncertainties of space flight and train hard for emergency, contingency, and alternative missions, should things go wrong. For any space flight, “things” could go wrong during training, on the launchpad, during the ascent to orbit, in the flight itself, during reentry, on landing, or during recovery. Such contingencies will also form part of the “commercial and tourist” space flights that are likely to begin in the next few years. Those who wish to pay for this experience will have to train for and be aware of such situations as part of their acceptance for the flight.

For NASA, a second Skylab could also have helped the transition from the Apollo era to the Space Shuttle era and given some of the veteran astronauts remaining in the office an opportunity to fly and to pass on their skills and experi­ences to the Shuttle era selections. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Some members of the original NASA astronaut selections faced a wait of over seven years from the end of Skylab to the first Shuttle mission, with only the 1975 ASTP mission flown in that period. For some, this was much too long to wait and they left the program to pursue other goals, taking their experience with them.

But in 1978 the first NASA astronaut selections in a decade did bring in the first female and monitory astronauts to the team. Things were certainly changing as the decade drew to a close. The “original” four NASA pilot astronaut selec-

tions, and former MOL astronaut transfers, in the 10 years between 1959 and 1969 were drawn from those with experience of military or civilian jet and test pilot roles. This reflected the need for the “flying” skills thought to be beneficial to the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo series of missions. As the nature of the missions evolved from the pioneering steps, so NASA brought in two groups of “scientist astronauts” to train for later missions on Apollo and AAP (Skylab). Their back­grounds were more academic than operational flying, but they still all had to qualify from a military jet pilot course to be assigned to Apollo era missions. For some this was a qualification too far and they left the program without flying in space, while others adapted well in gaining new flying skills. Four of the scientists flew between 1972 and 1974, while others performed backup and support roles on Apollo and Skylab. But they still had a long wait to fly on the Shuttle.

By the late 1970s, the scientist astronaut designation had changed briefly to senior scientist astronaut before eventually becoming the mission specialist desig­nation that would become familiar in the new Shuttle program crewing policy. But the name wasn’t the only change, as the role was now widened to encompass a broader range of skills and education. A greater diversity of specialists and qualifi­cations were now considered acceptable for astronaut selection, encompassing engineering, pure and applied sciences, alongside operational accomplishments and new technologies.

Jet pilot training was now no longer a prerequisite. In fact, NASA reasoned that past experiences and qualifications served to demonstrate a candidate’s ability to learn, so they assigned each new astronaut selection into a basic astronaut training program. It soon became evident, in the ongoing mystery of NASA flight crew selection, that being a professional astronomer did not lead to a flight on Shuttle astronomy missions; neither did qualification as a medical doctor guaran­tee automatic assignment to a medical mission. Such qualifications did increase the chances of such an assignment as the program unfolded, however. Unlike the early selections to NASA’s astronaut program, who were designated “astronaut” from the first day, those selected from 1978 only received the designation after completing the Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) training program.

This was one of the most challenging missions in the history of the program. During the 13-day mission, the crew rewired the ISS power system and continued

the construction phase by installing the P5 truss assembly. The flight also featured the exchange of ISS resident crew member Thomas Reiter with Sunita Williams.

Originally planned for a December 7 launch, the mission was delayed 48 hours due to low cloud cover, as no favorable conditions were expected to support a launch until December 9. The first nighttime launch in four years (due to post – Columbia safety limits for ascent photography), the ascent to orbit went without a problem. This was the first mission to feature the Advanced Heath Management System (AHMS) designed to improve the safety of the SSME. On this flight only performance data were collected, but on future flights the system would cut off the SSME if it detected a failure was about to occur.

The next day, the crew used the orbiter boom sensor system mounted on the end of the RMS to sweep the orbiter’s surface carefully, surveying for any damage incurred during ascent. The survey revealed no significant problems and the 2-day approach to the ISS continued.

However, a wing inspection was subsequently called for after a minor vibration reading on a port wing sensor was recorded. Analysis of inspection imagery determined that the heat shield could support a safe reentry and no further inspection was required. After backflipping the orbiter to allow the ISS crew to visually and photographically inspect the heat shield, Discovery was docked with the station on December 12. Following integrity checks and hatch­opening ceremonies, Williams officially became a member of the ISS-14 crew and Reiter joined the STS-116 crew.

The installation of the P5 truss was supported by three EVAs. Shortly after docking, the truss was lifted out of the payload bay and passed to the station’s robot arm, where it was suspended overnight. The following day (December 12) Curbeam and Fuglesang conducted a 6h 36min EVA to attach the P5 truss, as well as replacing a failed camera that would be required to support future EVA tasks. Launch locks were removed and the astronauts completed plugging in the new segment to allow the P6 segment to be attached to the end of the P5 unit in readiness for when it was moved from its temporary location. A number of get – ahead tasks were also completed. At the end of the EVA the backbone of the ISS had increased by a further 11 feet (3.35 m).

The second EVA on December 14 lasted 5 hours, with the two crew members continuing the rewiring to incorporate the new truss. Despite problems fully retracting the P6 solar array (with only 17 of the 231 bays or panels folded as designed), its retraction was sufficient to allow the P4 array to rotate and track the Sun, generating power to the station. The astronauts were also able to relocate the two main carts on the rails of the main truss, place a thermal covering over the station’s RMS, and install bags of tools for future EVA support.

For the third EVA on December 16, Williams joined Curbeam to complete the rewiring operations. They also attached three bundles of Russian debris shield panels on the exterior of the Zvezda Service Module. These would be fully installed on future EVAs. After installing a robotic arm grapple fixture, the pair returned to the P6 array to continue its retraction, shaking it while it was reeled in one bay at a time. At the end of the attempt, 65% of the array had been retracted. This EVA lasted 7 hours 31 minutes.

The final EVA on December 18, by Curbeam and Fuglesang, was added to complete the P6 retraction. It would be relocated during a later 2007 mission. After securing insulation on the station arm, the EVA ended at 6 hours 38 minutes. At the completion of EVA activities, STS-116 had logged a total of 25 hours 45 minutes. In addition, Curbeam had accumulated a career total of 45 hours 34 minutes EVA time across two of his three Shuttle missions, setting a new record.

While the EVAs were being conducted, the crews transferred over two tons of food, water, and equipment to the station under the direction of Load Master Joan Higginbotham. They also transferred about two tons of unwanted equipment and samples from experiments into the Spacehab module for the return to Earth. Just two minutes short of a full eight days of joint operations, Discovery was undocked from ISS on December 19. The next day, the crew again inspected the orbiter heat shield for any damage incurred during orbital flight. They also deployed three small scientific satellites, checked out the landing systems, and completed stowage for reentry.

Originally scheduled for December 21, the landing was postponed due to the addition of the fourth EVA. Inclement weather at the Cape then forced a cancella­tion of the first attempt there and it was too windy to land at Edwards. However, conditions at the Cape turned dramatically to allow a landing on the second attempt on December 22. A total of 17,900 commands were sent on this mission

setting a new record, with over 5,000 more commands from MCC-H than for any previous flight.

Milestones

251st manned space flight 147th U. S. manned space flight 117th Shuttle mission 33rd flight of Discovery 20th Shuttle ISS mission 7th Discovery ISS mission First Swedish citizen in space First Swedish astronaut to perform EVA First flight of Advanced Health Management System New record of 17,900 commands sent from MCC-H New Shuttle EVA record (accumulative) of 45 h 34 min set by Curbeam

There is not the scope to provide a detailed analysis in this present volume but for the benefit of understanding the more recent space flights, a brief overview of our steps to space is presented here (see the first three chapters in Praxis Manned Spaceflight Log 1961-2006, Springer Praxis 2007 for additional details). For every flight into space there has to be the journey from the surface of our planet, through our atmosphere, and into the vacuum beyond, at all times increasing in velocity to overcome the pull of gravity which keeps us on the planet in the first place. As humans, space is not our natural environment and it takes an enormous effort to get us there, sustain us while we explore, and then protect us to get safely home again. Of course, the farther we explore from our planet, the more support we will need and the more difficult the return to Earth becomes. Learning to sustain ourselves in space has always been a challenge, from the first flights of a few minutes or hours to the current months spent on board the space station.

Though each space flight is unique in its content, the profile for its preparation and execution is essentially the same: A mission is identified and assigned its objectives; a flight plan is created and the hardware prepared; the flight crew is selected and trained; then eventually the vehicle is launched, flies its mission, and then returns to Earth. All this is then followed by evaluations of the crew, research, and mission performance and examination of returned hardware in prep­aration for the next mission. This is a basic overview but it stands true for all successful missions flown to date, regardless of the country of origin, or mission objectives.

While this may be the plan, it does not always turn out that way. Human space flight is a high-performance, high-risk endeavor, which will always carry an element of danger for the mission, hardware, and crew. It has been demonstrated several times that accidents can occur during any of the stages of a mission, from training to recovery. For each of these potential risk areas, safety features, systems, and procedures were built in to help protect or possibly rescue a crew.

Some of these were introduced or modified for use on future flights only after an emergency had occurred during a previous mission.

Each crew is trained in emergency or contingency procedures and is provided with medical kits, escape equipment, and alternative flight plans to help deal with olf-nominal stations. Mission planners develop alternate mission profiles to gain at least something from the mission should the primary objective have to be aban­doned or curtailed, but this has to be done with crew safety in mind at all times. Though mission success is at the forefront of each crew in their execution of their flight, crew safety is the overriding factor and the primary responsibility of the mission commander. As much as each crew member would want to perform to the maximum and contribute as much as they could as a team member, they all have homes and families to return to. The expectation, excitement, and personal rewards of flying in space run strong in each crew member, but never as strongly as the desire to come home safely. Accepting the risk is part of being a space explorer, but these are not foolhardy individuals willing to risk their own fives or threaten the safety of others.

Across the globe in the Soviet Union, the cosmonauts remained focused upon crewing a series of Salyut (or Almaz) space stations, flying to and from the station in Soyuz. From 1978, the mission durations began to increase markedly, supported by the regular resupply flights of Progress vehicles. These “space freighters” delivered fresh supplies of fuel, air, water, food, equipment, and other small items of hardware. Once emptied by the crew, they could be filled with trash and unwanted material for a destructive burn-up in the atmosphere, thus freeing up valuable room on board the station.

During the Salyut missions, each two-man crew had their hands full completing all the assigned science objectives while maintaining the onboard systems and keeping the facility clean and habitable. Generally, the crewing on most missions included a military pilot cosmonaut as commander and either a design bureau flight engineer on the civilian Salyut or a military engineer on the Almaz missions. There were very few equivalent scientist astronauts in the cosmo­naut team and those who were selected, even with medical background, had little opportunity to fly on a mission. When the new variant Soyuz (Soyuz T) was intro­duced, it was once again possible to plan three-person crewing on the stations. However, when a third seat was available, it was normally filled by a second engineer from a design bureau (mostly from OKB-1, the Korolev design bureau), guest cosmonauts, or physician-cosmonauts.

From 1978, a change occurred for the visiting missions to a Salyut. The first civilian cosmonaut commanders (again from OKB-1) were accompanied by a representative from the East European/Interkosmos countries for short, week-long missions. The Interkosmos cosmonauts were certainly not of the “mission special­ist” class, and were mostly military officers who were given a short course of space training for a one-flight opportunity, mainly for political-propaganda reasons (and to install foreign equipment on the Salyut). Essentially it was a Soviet way of combining the roles of the Shuttle payload specialists and manned space flight engineers that would soon be seen on the Shuttle. The Interkosmos program evolved into a series of commercial agreements with other countries, which flew in the 1980s on Salyut 7 and Mir and later developed into the so-called “tourist flights” of “space flight participants” seen on the ISS in recent years.

In September 1977, the Soviets launched the second-generation Salyut 6 station, of which much was expected. Reports indicated that the first Soyuz mission to the station would be, in part, a proud celebration of the 20th anniver­sary of Sputnik 1. So when Soyuz 25 failed to dock successfully, it came as a bitter blow and cast a shadow over the all-rookie crew. Though they were later exonerated of all blame, the die was cast and significant changes were imple­mented for future crewing policy. By October 1977 there had been 14 Soyuz manned dockings attempted with either another Soyuz or a Salyut/Almaz station since October 1968. Six of these had failed. As a direct result of the Soyuz 25 failure, it was decided that no all-rookie crew would be flown again, especially not for such an important, high-profile mission. Eventually, the criteria were relaxed, but it would be another 17 years before the next all-rookie Russian Soyuz crew would launch (Soyuz TM-19 in April 1994 with Yuri Malenchenko and Talgat Musabayev aboard).

One of the problems was that there was no leeway in the docking attempt. The stripped-down battery version of Soyuz, used on Salyut station missions since 1974, had a limited independent orbital life of just two days, barely enough to get to and from the station in the first place. Unlike Apollo 14, which took six attempts to extract the LM from the top of the S-IVB stage en route to the Moon, repeated attempts at docking for the Soyuz were out of the question. It was an expensive lesson to learn, from the point of view of wasted resources and hardware. Improvements made for the Soyuz T helped to resolve the orbital flexibility of the spacecraft, but not before another failed docking had occurred in 1979 due to a malfunctioning main engine on the Soyuz.

When the missions to the stations were successful, it added to an ever growing database of long-duration information that would enable the Soviets/ Russians to develop their space station operations with greater confidence. Round-the-clock ground support for months on end; experiences of small crews working together in restricted confines of the orbital laboratory; masses of biome­dical information and psychological data (including the stresses of command, work over long periods of orbital flight, and the difficult decision of whether to tell a crewman in flight of a family bereavement or major incident back home). All of this was essential information to the growing program and those missions yet to come.

There were also plenty of challenges to overcome and learn from. The Soviet stations were limited in air-to-ground communications coverage, due to the lack of a global tracking network. Maintenance and housekeeping chores increased as the stations got older, making it difficult to strike a balance with important and often time-critical research objectives. From Salyut 6, there was the added dimension of disruptions to the routine from visiting crews, both at arrival and after departure. Operationally, the program had to learn about the challenges (and consequences) of docking more than one spacecraft to the station core module at the same time and the dynamic stresses on the whole structure this entailed. Postflight recovery techniques and protocols following such long missions also had to be improved—valuable lessons for even longer expeditions that were already being planned.

Salyut operations during the 1970s were also evolving the cosmonaut mission training cycle. For the Yostok missions, the Soviets had created a small training

group of cosmonauts taken from the larger corps, from which they would select the prime and reserve crews. This method had been successful and continued into the Salyut program. This experience, of having several crews going through the preparation cycle for assignment as reserve, backup, or prime crew, would prove highly successful and flexible. Separate training groups were formed for visiting crews, or to evaluate new versions of the Soyuz. These experiences would be adopted over 20 years later as the International Space Station evolved—a lasting tribute to the Soviet crewing policy devised in the Gagarin era.