CHALLENGES OF HUMAN SPACE EXPLORATION

Freeman, an associate editor with 21st Century Science & Technology (LA-ROUCHE!), focuses on long-term research opportunities aboard space stations. Therefore, after a brief survey of antecedal developments (the work of Tsiolkovsky, Oberth and Goddard), she devotes perhaps half a paragraph to the Apollo program. Her detailed account begins with Skylab, a modified Saturn upper stage that supported three crews on orbit for a total of 171 days during 1972 and 1973. She presents the scientific results from Skylab in space physics and astronomy, materials science, and plant, animal and human physiology, and analyzes some issues involving habitat design, crew-ground relations, workloads, and the effects of isolation.

Proceeding chronologically, she then covers the Soviet stations Salyut and Mir, the Shuttle-Mir cooperation, and finally the projected role for the then still-to-be-launched International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory with three times the habitable volume and 5 times the power of Mir, which it is to replace.

Ms. Freeman has indeed done her homework. She describes almost every experiment, even those done by high-school students, and lists the names of the experimenters involved. A good deal of insight into mission planning, crew performance, and post-mortems is also provided. These are supplemented by a wealth of black-and-white photographs. Finally, Ms. Freeman recounts some of the internecine debates over the ISS.

For anyone interested in the work done aboard these various zero-gee outposts, this book is second only to the actual mission reports. But it also serves to justify the value of that work, and to squelch the nay-sayers, more effectively than NASA seems able to do. My favorite passage is found on page 227:

One of the loudest voices against the International Space Station is that of Dr. Robert Park,2 the director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, who faxes a one-page weekly newsletter to the press. Although there is no indication that he has ever been involved in space research, or even bothered to find out very much about it, he pretends to speak for the scientific community in print, and at every opportunity. For example, 'Most scientists regard microgravity as one of the least important variables you can have,' he told Popular Science in May 1998.

Dr. Kathy Clark has a few choice words for Dr. Park and the other self-appointed emissaries of the scientific community. She observes that "NASA is in a very funny situation, because they are so well known, and they are beloved, and the only government agency that is, but it also makes them a target for all kinds of problems... Then there's Robert Park," she continued. "I got interviewed by CNN, and I was talking to the reporter, and he said something about a scientist saying that there wasn't going to be any science. I said, 'That would be Robert Park.' And he said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Can't you broaden your horizons a little bit. {sic} Find another scientist. Robert is clearly making a living from saying this. He's never been to space. He doesn't know anything about it.'"

Now I have my own experience of the space station program, and I can testify that it was not as well run as it might have been, even given the pioneering nature of the endeavor. But those scientists who claim that no good science can be done aboard ISS, or that ground experiments can produce equally good science for a fraction of the cost, should read this book, for it demolishes their arguments quite thoroughly.

For the rest of us, the book is a fascinating introduction to the history and possibilities of microgravity science. Not as comprehensive as the primary sources it draws on (which are cited throughout the text), it nevertheless is very well researched. Three appendices list details of the various experiments on Mir. An extensive bibliography and an index round out the work.

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