Science Fiction, er, Fact: Using ‘2001’ to Solve Problems in Space
The mega-death space threats in “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” may be remote, but the recent satellite failure that shut down millions of pagers is a preview of real space disasters that could begin this November.
Hollywood predicted this in the 1950s sci-fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” in which aliens shut down the Earth’s electrical and communications systems, and Hollywood detailed the disaster’s solution in the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Ironically, that solution could return L.A. County’s high-wage employment crown to the aerospace industry, and a Hollywood studio may be able to orchestrate this return.
Today, hundreds of commercial satellites transfer millions of phone calls, personal and business pages, TV broadcasts and bank and credit-card transactions around our planet. By 2003, these satellites will number in the thousands. This fall, Motorola’s 66-satellite system will allow calls to any subscribing cell phone on the planet. Microsoft’s 288-satellite system will be up in five years, creating an ultra-high-speed “Internet in the sky.” Tibetan villagers miles from the nearest telephone line will use solar-charged computer terminals to instantly reach New Delhi surgeons, San Francisco teachers or New York bankers.
The main cause of the four-dozen commercial, military and weather satellite failures in the last decade was mechanical problems, not meteors. But that will change this November, when astronomers say the Earth will pass through a region of dense space debris left by a passing comet centuries ago.
Ranging in size from sand grains to houses, and moving 40 times faster than a rifle bullet, it will resemble the debris encountered by the “Deep Impact” spaceship as it approached an incoming comet. For millions of years, the Earth has passed though similar fields every decade or so, and our atmosphere has protected us from all but the largest chunks. But the thousands of satellites we’ll rely on so heavily by century’s end will be sitting ducks. Even the tiniest punctures could cost thousands of lives in hospitals alone as a result of communications disruptions, because in space, the damage can’t be repaired.
The Hollywood solution, detailed in “2001,” was to build large, wheel-shaped space stations whose crews could act as Maytag repairmen in orbit. Twenty years ago, aerospace engineers at Rockwell’s Downey facility, who designed and built the space shuttles, explained how these stations could be built. Their idea, greatly refined since, centered on the shuttle’s huge, orange, external fuel tank, known as an “ET.”
While the two rocket boosters under the shuttle’s wings are released soon after launch, the ET stays attached, feeding its liquid fuel to the shuttle’s engines the rest of the way to orbit. It’s then released and destroyed to prevent collisions with later flights. A new one is built for each launch. The young Rockwell engineers, who had probably seen “2001” as students, not only figured out how to safely leave empty ETs in space, but calculated how a dozen of these 747-sized, airtight cylinders could be joined together to form a slowly rotating wheel with two more, joined end-to-end, passing through its center like an axle. The final structure could hold some 400 people under cruiseship-like conditions.
In 1978, Rockwell took the idea to their only customer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which shelved it. At that time, the shuttle, then projected to ferry 100 passengers, was still three years from its first flight. NASA also had no intention of becoming a space hotel operator and preferred designing things from scratch rather than using recycled components, like ETs. Rockwell, for its part, had never sold products to anyone but the government. Building commercial space stations for tourism or satellite-repair markets was beyond its ken.
Things are different today. The shuttles have flown nearly 100 flights, and NASA is keenly interested in privatizing them. Two years ago, Boeing bought Rockwell, and is desperately trying to find new business for the shuttered shuttle plants in Downey and Palmdale. But the Boeing space people have no idea how to interest the public in this dramatic option.
Now a network of engineers, writers and educators think Hollywood has the solution. A critical scene in “Armageddon” shows two space shuttles hanging on to their empty ETs, refueling them at the Mir space station, then refiring their engines and heading off toward the incoming meteor. The group of engineers, part of a national organization, Space Islands, based in West Covina, points out that this scene will be the first time the general public learns the standard fate of ETs, and sees their incredible size.
They also point out that NASA plays only a minor role in this movie. Early script leaks indicate that the Swiss Army Corp., (yes, the knife and sunglass people) finance and manage the flight. Another recent film, “Species II,” had the same premise. Its opening scenes show the first manned landing on Mars. The shuttle-like spaceship is covered with corporate logos, and TV coverage of the landing is commercially sponsored. NASA isn’t mentioned.
Space Islands asserts it can attract enough corporate sponsorships and contract-TV coverage to cover most of the first ET-station’s five-year, $10-billion construction and launch costs. The Beverly Hills-based Hilton Corp. has already expressed interest (there was a Hilton Hotel on the “2001” space station), as have Radisson, Marriot and three major airlines. Boeing’s largest rival, Airbus Industrie, is even discussing beating Boeing to the punch, offering airline clients several dozen free passes to the first station if they buy new Airbus airliners.
Another group, the Downey-based Aerospace Legacy Foundation, says a “space theme park” could be built on the 200-acre, nearly abandoned, former Rockwell site in Downey, where the space shuttles and much of the Apollo program were designed. NASA owns most of the land and has been told by Congress to sell it as surplus. The group has approached Universal Studios about building a new theme park, highlighting 50 years of space exploration’s past and 50 years of its future. With a three-story “thick” ET-station as its centerpiece, Space Island sponsorship funds may cover part of its cost. The site’s huge buildings could make ideal sound stages; the station mock-up and other space attractions could allow filming of a movie or TV series built around the concept, and much of the actual station design work could be done behind glass walls, resembling the “Jurassic Park” set.
Boeing itself could well participate, since it would build the dozens of second-generation space shuttles the real ET-stations will need, along with nearly a thousand ETs over the next decade. Our region’s satellite builders, TRW, Hughes and Loral, may lease station sections in advance for their own repair crews, since assembling, repairing and refueling their satellites in orbit (using “2001” space pods) could cut costs in half. Universal could even acquire exclusive on-board broadcast rights as the first station is assembled. Its “Earth-seen-from space” logo would certainly be appropriate.
It’s a dramatic, very California approach to moving thousands of tourists and businesses off the planet--and Southern California’s two major employers, Hollywood and aerospace, could make it happen.
