The international space station is supposed to showcase worldwide scientific cooperation, but the engineering is strictly ... : Down to Earth

When the $30-billion international space station is completed, it will rank as the most costly single object ever created--surpassing the price tag on any machine, aircraft, computer, weapon, power plant or edifice.

It will orbit Earth as a dramatic symbol of human intent to explore the furthest reaches of space, its proponents say. And it will epitomize a new international collaboration between North America, Europe and Asia to jointly conduct big-ticket scientific research.

But as major segments of the space station take shape in factories worldwide, another important message is coming into focus: Building the space station is not creating much new manufacturing or engineering know-how.

Unlike other big aerospace projects of recent decades--such as the SR-71 spy plane, the B-2 bomber or the space shuttle--the space station is not the dynamic engine of technology that teaches designers and plant managers new skills.

“At McDonnell Douglas, there is very little new technology that we are developing,” said R. Gale Schluter, vice president and general manager of the space station division in Huntington Beach. “We are not pushing the state of the art.”

The space station’s laboratories will no doubt eventually yield important scientific, industrial and medical advances, but the immediate impact of building the facility is not demanding the kind of engineering breakthroughs in materials, electronics and metalworking that the aerospace industry has historically achieved.

As a result, the colossal taxpayer investment in the space station is not likely to have near-term spinoffs that have created graphite tennis rackets, solar cells that power roadside emergency telephones or artificial limbs constructed of welded titanium.

It was Congress that forced NASA to think more modestly, demanding price cuts amid concern that the program had become unaffordable. It wasn’t until the space station was sold under a cooperative agreement with Russia that it gained solid support in Congress.

In an effort to cut costs, NASA eliminated a number of projects to develop new technologies. Gone, for example, was an innovative new materials program to protect the station from tiny meteorites. Instead, the station will use Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests.

Also abandoned was an ambitious program to develop new robotic systems--including one known as the “flight telerobotics servicer”--that would help erect and maintain the station, said John E. Mansfield, NASA’s associate administrator for space access and technology.

Astronauts will be spending more time on spacewalks than they have during the entire Space Age, dating back to the first venture outside a craft in the 1960s. The ability of astronauts to complete laborious chores in space is one of the biggest risks in the entire program, some experts say.

“This is a very utilitarian space project,” Mansfield said. “What we are setting up for is the most labor-intensive project imaginable. Those poor astronauts are going to be working 15 hours a day.”

Proponents say the space station itself is merely a tool to achieve a much larger goal.

“The space station was never supposed to be an engineering marvel,” said Mark Albrecht, the former space council chief during the Bush administration. “There is only one reason to build the space station--if you believe that someday we are going to explore space.”

The actual assembly of the station will require 44 launches, not including the 10 to bring crews to it and the 19 to reboost the station to maintain proper altitude. There will be a total of 73 launches by three nations over 55 months, with little margin for delays or launch failures.

During the assembly, astronauts will have to perform 888 hours of extravehicular activity or space walks, a number that has significantly grown through the years.

“It is an ambitious set of requirements,” said Marcia Smith, a prominent aerospace specialist at the Congressional Research Service. “It doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, but it is a risk that has to be considered within the cost and schedule that NASA has advertised.”

NASA also has decided to forgo an ambitious effort to develop systems that would clear away space debris from the space station’s orbit, Mansfield said. The decision was made after the National Research Council issued a report saying that debris in space would not be a major hazard to the station.

The space agency also abandoned plans for a more advanced electrical generating system, using dishes that would have converted solar energy to heat and used mechanical generators, Smith said. The massive solar panels now planned will create enormous drag on the spacecraft, shortening the intervals between rocket firings to reboost the station.

One of the few robotics projects that NASA was able to protect is a free-flying flashlight that would potentially respond to astronaut voice commands. In the tough job of working in space, such a robotic flashlight could be invaluable, giving astronauts an extra set of hands.

The low-tech approach will mean that astronauts will have to spend more time on housekeeping and less on experiments. Mansfield acknowledged that the scientific community is growing worried that after supporting the space station, it is going to be shortchanged.

“The space station is supposed to be up quickly and produce science, but it is going to be harder than hell to do that,” Mansfield said. “Housekeeping could force commercial payloads off.”

The amount of so-called rack space for scientific experiments is also less than expected. Already, requests for access to the station by the scientific community exceeds capacity by 200%, he said.

As NASA and the Defense Department have generally opted for less ambitious technology in the post-Cold War era, the larger question has become: What is going to push the frontiers of engineering knowledge in the future?

Aerospace projects have traditionally played the central role in providing U.S. industry with sources of new materials and manufacturing technology.

The aerospace industry spurred the widespread use of computer-controlled machinery in factories, the development of exotic heat-treating technologies and high-temperature alloys. Boeing, for example, has used three-dimensional computerized design systems, pioneered on the Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber, on its recent 777 jetliner project.

The B-2 also taught Boeing how to build large aircraft structures out of reinforced plastic composites, which it is now applying to commercial jets. Until the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works pioneered the SR-71 spy plane in the 1960s, the ability of industry to work with titanium was limited. And the space shuttle in the 1970s led to multiple innovations in carbon materials, high-pressure pumps and insulation.

Aircraft, defense electronics and space programs have created myriad commercial products, such as radiation-blocking sunglasses, insulin pumps, lasers, water purification membranes, medical radiation therapy and ultrasound scanners that give prospective parents pictures of their unborn child.

In the last three years, NASA’s National Technology Transfer Center has received 12,000 requests from U.S. firms for industrial know-how, said Lee Rivers, director of the center. The impact of defense and aerospace technology on the U.S. economy, he said, “is pervasive.” Thus, by any historical measure, the space station should be the crowning achievement when it comes to spinoffs, but that’s unlikely because of the financial constraints.

“It was deliberately focused on not trying to invent anything, so it could get done within budget and on schedule,” said Douglas C. Stone, the space station program manager at Boeing, the prime contractor for the project. “The technology that we were supposed to apply to this laboratory was understood and mature.”

As a result, critics say, the station has captured few imaginations.

“It is mainly welding,” said John Pike, director of the Space Policy Project at the Federation of American Scientists. “In contrast to other things where there was a technological barrier, the main barrier here was financial.”

In addition, other critics point out that the U.S. economy does not need huge federal projects to develop innovative technology.

“Just because we are spending $30 billion on the space station doesn’t mean we are going to get better toaster ovens,” said Dwayne Day, an expert at George Washington University’s space policy institute. “You don’t need big, exciting projects to give scientists and engineers something to do. That’s what the Soviet Union was all about--grandiose projects that bankrupted their economy.”

But just because the station isn’t embracing any major new technology, that doesn’t mean it will be simple or easy to build.

For example, Stone said the job of verifying the fit and function of millions of pieces of hardware on the ground that must be assembled in space with flawless precision is a unique requirement in industrial history.

And certainly, there are some aspects of the space station work that do involve new technology. Stone cited the development of a new welding process--variable polarity plasma arc welding--by Boeing and NASA that allows computers to check the integrity of a weld as it is being made and adjust electrical current in real time.

“This will be a real benefit to the pipeline industry,” Stone said.

Among the most demanding aspects of the space station is not the aluminum modules that will house astronauts, but the electrical power system, under development at Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne unit in Canoga Park.

Power outages and electrical fires occur regularly on Earth; aboard the space station they would be catastrophic. So Rockwell engineers in Canoga Park have built a laboratory that will simulate the entire space station electrical system. George J. Hallinan, program chief at Rocketdyne, said the work “is advancing the state of engineering for the nation.”

Laboratory experiments aboard the space station will need as much power as possible. Managing the loads and keeping batteries charged for when the station goes into the Earth’s shadow will be tricky work. Rocketdyne has developed circuit breakers capable of tripping in as little as five microseconds.

“Oh God,” said Rockwell engineer Fitch Williams, “people haven’t done this before.”

McDonnell Douglas, meanwhile, is building 45 large aluminum bulkheads that will make up portions of the truss. Although the bulkheads are not pressing the state of technology, the emphasis on “first-time quality” is having a big impact.

“We are establishing new standards within this corporation for quality and management control in a major program,” said Schluter, the McDonnell chief.

Nonetheless, space enthusiasts wish NASA were allowed to take on something even more ambitious: a station infused with more imaginative technology or a mission to Mars.

“I have a bunch of engineers who would love the challenge of making the station weigh half as much or last twice as long,” said Stone, the Boeing chief. “But you can’t do that with the same schedule or cost.”

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Fact Box

* The station will spread over an area the size of two football fields as it circles the Earth at an altitude of 220 miles.

* Six astronauts will live and work on the station, occupying seven laboratories; two modules for sleeping, eating and recreation; and two modules for logistics. The solar panels will generate 110,000 watts of electricity, enough to supply 10 homes with power.

* The station will require 73 space launches by three nations over a 55-month period, scheduled to start next year and be completed in 2002.

* The laboratories will conduct research in 10 major categories: biotechnology, combustion, fluid physics, electronic materials, metals, polymers, biomedical sciences, commercial development, engineering and Earth observation.

* About 13,000 U.S. workers at NASA and its contractors are employed on the project.

* Elements of the station are being produced in Huntington Beach, Canoga Park and Sunnyvale, Calif., and in 38 other states, Russia, Canada, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany and France.