From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Tom@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: 
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.1893
Posted: Fri Jun 25 13:57:19 1982
Received: Mon Jun 28 05:57:07 1982

n543  0347  25 Jun 82
BC-STATION-06-25
    By Richard Gilluly
    (c) 1982 The Baltimore Sun (Field News Service)
    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has revived the
idea of a permanent manned space station.
    In outlining the idea, NASA chief James M. Beggs said the space
station would be the next logical step after the agency's shuttle
spacecraft becomes fully operational - which could be soon if the
fourth and final shakedown mission of the shuttle, scheduled for
liftoff Sunday, is successful.
    The space station ''would be small at first, assembled in orbit with
modules carried to space by the shuttle,'' he said.
    The cost of establishing the first small station, perhaps by 1990,
would be from $3 billion to $5 billion, according to a NASA fact
sheet released in connection with Beggs' announcement, which was made
Wednesday before a joint session of the Economic Club of Detroit and
the Engineering Society of Detroit.
    The idea of a permanent space station was proposed in connection
with the shuttle in the early '70s, but was deferred along with other
space proposals when the program was cut back.
    Beggs said the space station could greatly improve mankind's ability
not only to assess the impact of Earth activities, but to launch
probes of Mars and Venus that could lead to a better understanding of
the future evolution of the Earth and how it developed from the solar
nebula, the diffuse mass of hot gases from which the planets are
thought to have condensed.
    A space station also would improve commercial applications of space
technology, including the gravity-less processing of materials and
the servicing of communications satellites, he added.
    He said the stationwk5r tpe
shuttle because the shuttle is an ideal vehicle with which to
construct it. The shuttle lifts off like a rocketship and then
returns to Earth to land like an airplane, and is able to carry large
cargoes into space. It is man's first almost wholly reusable
spacecraft.
    NASA spokesmen say the first space station would have a crew of
three or four astronauts and scientists, but eventually as many as 12
crew members could be accommodated. The crew might spend as long as
three months in space, and they would be taken to and from the
station via the shuttle.
    Beggs emphasized that the station would not be a successor to the
shuttle - which, he said, is a transportation system - but rather a
successor to Skylab, a manned station launched in 1973 for scientific
experimentation. Skylab finally re-entered the atmosphere and
disintegrated because NASA had no way to boost it into a permanent
orbit.
    The proposed space station would be equipped with maneuvering
rockets which would allow it to stay in orbit indefinitely.
    Besides Skylab, the Soviets have operated a space station, Salyut 6,
since 1977, which has accommodated five Soviet crews as well as 11
visiting crews from Soviet bloc nations. Salyut 7, recently launched,
is now occupied by cosmonauts and, according to Biggs, may
''represent a larger, more sophisticated system that would move the
Soviet Unon another step forward in its dominance in near-Earth
space.''
    Sen. William Proxmire (D, Wis.), a frequent critic of NASA
proposals, wasn't available for comment, but a spokesman said it
would be safe to say he would be ''negative'' toward the proposal.
    The spokesman, Tom VanDerVoort, said that now is a particularly
inappropriate time for NASA to propose a space station in view of
what he said is the uncertainty of the shuttle garnering enough
commercial payloads to become a paying proposition.
    In connection with earlier suggestions that NASA might propose a
space station, Proxmire has said the space agency ''has a bias toward
huge and very expensive projects. It proceeds regardless of real
need.''
    Terence Finn, a member of NASA's space station task force, a group
studying the possibility of deploying such a station, said Proxmire's
criticisms are not necessarily valid.
    He admitted that NASA is starting with the idea of a space station
and then working from there to specify its exact purposes, but he
said this approach is preferable. The reason, he said, is that all
the potential users will have ''input'' into how it is constructed.
    It will be a station designed from the very start to serve the
purposes of its users instead of the other way around, he said.
    Among the potential users now being approached are military,
scientific and commercial interests.
    But he stressed that the space station is not yet at the proposal
stage. The next step, he suggested, would be more intensive studies
than the preliminary ones now being conducted. These more intensive
studies might cost $10 million to $15 million as contrasted with the
$3 million or so now being spent on the preliminary studies.
    Finn said the European Space Agency, the Japanese and the Canadians
had expressed interest in participating in a U.S. space station
program.
    END
    
nyt-06-25-82 0644edtt
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[I understand that some of the various space groups are trying to do a
mail campaign to Reagan and Keyworth to support this station  --Tom]