Mir Is a Lab for Learning, Errors and All

The mishaps aboard the Russian space station Mir have produced deep concern about the safety of the spacecraft. Statements in the American media, in Congress and even from veterans of space flight such as James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, have urged that we remove American astronauts from Mir, cease support of its activities and encourage the Russians to abandon it.

Concern about Mir’s safety is rational, but calls to abandon the vehicle are not. They miss one of the most important points about why we need a space station in the first place. Mir is both a space station in general and a modest space laboratory in particular. But the general purpose of a space station is to teach us about living in nonterrestrial environments over the long haul. That, Mir is doing well.

We need to explore the solar system in successive small increments: first, suborbital and then orbital flights, which we have done, and then short and long-term flights in low Earth orbit, which are now being accomplished by the shuttles and Mir. Once we understand how to live for extended periods in this relative safety, we can begin to move out to higher altitude space stations or go on to establish a moon base, then a moon station and finally a moon colony. By then we would be quite sophisticated and could go on to Mars.

The recent problems on Mir, while they may temporarily disrupt laboratory work, are productive in providing us with exactly the kinds of information about performance and procedures that we need from a space station. Some of the lessons learned from Mir in the past few months are the kind that should be learned here in the relative safety of low Earth orbit. If the situation on Mir turns life-threatening, the crew can return quickly to the security of Earth in the Soyuz return vehicle that is docked to Mir like a life boat.

We have learned that an oxygen canister can catch fire and fill the vehicle with smoke and that the fire can be extinguished and the air cleared. Before this event, we knew little about how fire propagates in weightlessness (where heat doesn’t rise). Now we have experienced a fire and survived, and we also know that the systems that we designed to work in theory do work in fact.

If one of a space station’s modules (the Spektr laboratory module) is punctured, the occupants will survive and have sufficient time to isolate the damaged module until it can be repaired. Methods are now being devised for repairing such punctures, and the next Mir crew is practicing repair work in an underwater weightlessness simulator tank.

In addition, we have learned things that represent mistakes, lack of foresight or errors in judgment. Call them what you want, they are the kind of things that are always so obvious in hindsight and yet maddeningly hard to anticipate. They are in large part why we have a discipline called human factors, or ergonomics, which studies the interaction of human beings and the physical world.

While the mistakes involving Mir are Russian mistakes, we have committed some, too; remember the Apollo fire on the launch pad and the Challenger accident.

The puncture of the Spektr module on Mir would have been relatively simple to repair if it hadn’t been for cables from one module to another that had been draped through the hatchway. The hatchway had to be closed and sealed in order to isolate the damaged module, which was then leaking precious air. The crew, in its haste to secure the rest of the craft, had no choice but to cut the cables and close the hatch. The consequent loss of power shut down the spinning gyroscopes that stabilize the station and the whole massive thing began to tumble. We now know that an out of control tumbling space station can be righted with thrusters and stabilized until the gyros can be brought up to speed. We have learned the lesson that one never compromises a hatch even if we have grown very confident because a leak has not occurred in years and the safety hatch has never been used.

For years and years, Russian Progress supply vehicles have gone into orbit, caught up to Mir and docked, all automatically. A decision was made to see if a person could remotely pilot such a vehicle and accomplish the docking. The task was assigned to the senior Russian cosmonaut on board Mir (who, by the way, had already been in space for more than four months). So, with a minimum of practice and no opportunity to practice the entire docking process in a simulator until performance was error-free, the docking was attempted.

Clearly, the performance was inadequate. The Spektr module was punctured by the errant vehicle, which went on to damage a solar panel before becoming free of the space station. Eventually the Progress supply vehicle was put back under autonomous control and it docked itself properly. We now know that you should practice until perfect on Earth using simulators and other aids before attempting such activities in space.

So, you see, the space station Mir is doing for us exactly what it should be doing. The things that went wrong on Mir don’t usually happen with a brand new vehicle, so the forthcoming international space station won’t provide these lessons until it too is aging. Mir is a treasure that should not be wasted. The lessons we learn from it now, as we modify it and conduct preventive maintenance to keep it going as long as possible, are the very lessons that will allow us, one day, to more safely explore farther out into the solar system.