Spacecraft: 100 Iconic Rockets, Shuttles, and Satellites That Put Us in Space

459 Pages·2018·45.94 MB·English

by  Michael H. Gorn

CONTENTS
Introduction
1 THE FIRST SPACE AGE 1957-1977
CAPSULES
Mercury
Gemini
Apollo
Vostok 3K
Voskhod 3KV
Voskhod 3KD
Soyuz 7K-OK
Soyuz 7K-OKS
Soyuz 7K-L1
Soyuz 7K-LOK
Soyuz 7K-T
Soyuz 7K-TM (ASTP)
Progress 7K-TG
SPACEPLANES
X-15
MiG 105-11
LANDERS
LK
Lunokhod Rovers 1 and 2
STATIONS
Skylab
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
Salyut 1
Salyut 2, 3, 5 (Almaz)
Salyut 4
ROCKETS
Vanguard 1
Redstone/Juno-1
Mercury-Atlas
Agena
Centaur
Gemini-Titan II
Saturn IB
Saturn V
R7
N1
UR-500 Proton
ROBOTICS
Explorer 1
Vanguard 1
Lunar Orbiter 1
Ranger 7
Surveyor 1
Mariner 10
Pioneer 10
Viking 1 and 2
Voyager 2
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 2
Sputnik 3
Luna 3
Luna 4-9
Luna 15, 16, 18, 20
Venera 9-12
2 THE SECOND SPACE AGE 1977-1997
CAPSULES
Soyuz 7K-ST
Soyuz-TM (7K-STM)
TKS
SPACEPLANES
Space Transportation System
The Shuttle Orbiters
Orbiter Enterprise
VKK Buran
STATIONS
Mir
Atlantis-Mir
Salyut 6 and 7
ROCKETS
Shuttle Rocketry
Ariane 4
Energia
ROBOTICS
Cassini-Huygens
Hubble Space Telescope
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
Galileo
Giotto
Ulysses
3 SPACE EXPLORATION AT A CROSSROADS 1997-2017
CAPSULES
Orion
Dragon
CST-100
Shenzhou
Soyuz MS (7K-MS)
SPACEPLANES
SpaceShipOne and Two
X-37B
STATIONS
International Space Station
Unity
Zarya
Zvezda
Destiny Laboratory
Multipurpose Logistics Modules
Tiangong-1
ROCKETS
Space Launch System
Falcon 9
Antares
New Shepard
Ariane 5
VEGA
Long March-2F
ROBOTICS
Opportunity and Curiosity
Chandra Telescope
Spitzer Space Telescope
Juno
Deep Impact
New Horizons
James Webb Space Telescope
BepiColombo
Herschel and Planck
LISA Pathfinder
Rosetta
Selected sources and further reading
Acknowledgments
Index
INTRODUCTION
Spacecraft tells the story of a
momentous period in world history,
when we escaped the atmosphere,
looked down at the seas and the
continents, and for the first time saw
the planet in all its complexity,
fragility, and beauty. At the same time,
we looked skyward into the heavens
and saw celestial phenomena as old as
creation and as transcendent as the
mind can fathom. The daring vehicles
that accomplished these missions
during the last six decades—from
Sputnik 1 to the James Webb telescope
—represent the summation of space
age exploration up to the early twenty-
first century; they reflect the ongoing
attempt by humanity to comprehend the workings of the universe and its parts.
The initial forays into space had Earth-bound parallels. At the dawn of the
Space Age in the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed legislation
for a uniform network of high-speed freeways across the United States,
ostensibly for national defense. Its usefulness, however, proved far wider. The
National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 represented the biggest
public works expenditure in US history (about $41 billion by the end of the
Eisenhower administration alone) and expanded the American expressway grid
by roughly 41,000 miles. More than that, it stimulated job creation and
contributed to the economic boom of the 1950s, accelerated the pace of modern
commerce, and narrowed sectional and regional differences, geopolitically
unifying the country as never before. In their own way, the spacecraft that serve
humanity return many of the same benefits.
Three years before the passage of this law, on the other side of the world, a
New Zealander and a Nepalese Sherpa undertook a completely unrelated
challenge. On May 29, 1953, Edmund P. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became
the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the tallest point on Earth
at 29,028 feet (8,848 meters). “We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to
at 29,028 feet (8,848 meters). “We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to
reach the top of Mount Everest,” Hillary later said. Of no military, economic, or
political consequence, reaching the peak of the world satisfied several deep-
seated human drives: the pursuit of origins, the fulfillment of curiosity, the lure
of adventure, the revelation of the unknown, and the test of endurance. These
same motivations also typify the urge to explore space.
Because this book is confined to spacecraft designed for illumination rather
than for tangible results—for endeavors like Mount Everest, rather than the
National Highway System—there arises the inevitable debate between human
and robotic sojourners. Will we engage with the universe through cosmonauts,
astronauts, and taikonauts—through sentient explorers—or will automated
orbiters and landers be our surrogates? The spacecraft profiled suggest that both
have unique but complementary roles, that robots will continue to be sent to
places too inhospitable or too distant for us, and that people will go where risk
can be managed and where human intelligence cannot be substituted.
The Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover performs many of the same
chores as living spacefarers, without the limiting factors of time, fuel, supplies,
and (to name only one safety issue) radiation exposure—the latter a serious
health concern according to Curiosity’s own findings. On the other hand, the
twelve Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972
accomplished tasks impossible for machines. They witnessed and described the
palpable texture of the moon’s surface, assessed the general features of its
geology, and felt the peculiarities of lunar gravity in their every step and motion.
They quarried large and highly varied quantities of rock and soil (842 pounds in
all). They reported changes in their own physiology and psychology. They
golfed! Then they returned to Earth with suggestions for future missions and
explained how the experience affected them in artwork, memoirs, and the media.
Spacecraft also illustrates the international context of space travel over the
last sixty years. It started as a duel between the United States and USSR, in the
height of the Cold War, that not only involved a technological contest, but a
struggle for world opinion. The Soviets and Americans trumpeted their space
achievements to the world as proof of the superiority of their cultures, their
governments, their economic systems, and their political ideologies. But once
the Cold War ended, space exploration ceased to be a subplot in a global
confrontation and in time assumed a radically different character.
This evolution underlies the organization of this book. Divided into three
parts of twenty years each, it traces three distinct periods. The initial one, from
1957 to 1977, covers the first Space Age, during which time the two
superpowers vied for supremacy. The climax occurred with the race to the moon,
a battle won by the United States in part because President John F. Kennedy
imposed the daring objective of a lunar landing. That accomplishment erased the
early lead held by the Soviets and enabled NASA to leap ahead to the finish line.
But even though Apollo captured the big prize, the clash did not end there. To
redeem themselves, the Soviets pivoted to new ground. By pursuing space
station development with the seven Salyuts and Mir, the USSR restored its
reputation and closed out the first phase of space exploration with an
unquestioned mastery of long-duration habitation in orbit. The United States,
meanwhile, scored its own late-innings win by concentrating on a series of
spectacular robotic missions: the historic flights of Vikings 1 and 2 to Mars in
the bicentennial year and the so-called Grand Tour of Voyagers 1 and 2 to the
outer planets starting in 1977.
The next point on the timeline—from 1977 to 1997—was a transition period
that left behind the Soviet-American polarity and opened a new era of tentative,
multinational collaborations. This realignment began with the recognition by
NASA and the Russian space agency that the end of the Cold War and the
tightening of budgets left neither side with the resources necessary to build
massive new projects in space. Consequently, to the shock of many, these former
combatants agreed to forget (if not forgive) their old hostilities and to negotiate a
partnership for an immensely ambitious undertaking: the International Space
Station (ISS). Along with the ISS, the space shuttle also became a key
contributor to the budding détente in the heavens. Its large crew complement of
up to seven enabled travelers of many nations, races, and creeds to work and live
beside one another, and its cavernous cargo hold rendered it the sole means of
transporting and assembling the outsized modules of the ISS. This era also
marked the emergence of another transnational force: the European Space
Agency (ESA), whose ten founding states came to epitomize fully integrated
teamwork across borders.