Word: repairable
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This, of course, is the rationale for NASA's next great project, the space station, a place where wonderful new chemicals, cures and gizmos yet undreamed of are to be produced. And for those still justifiably skeptical about these claims, the Hubble repair provides yet another role for man in space: concierge. Who, after all, will service our huge earth-serving space infrastructure, the satellites that bring us Beavis and Butt-head, that allow weathermen to guess wildly a full seven days into the future, that can rattle the pocket pagers of every Rogaine salesman in the country? Who will...
...something of a pity that appliance repair is the way to justify man in space these days. Thirty years ago, when all this was starting, the model for manned flight was not Art Carney in the sewer but Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape. Long ago, public support for space exploration had two parts. First, a spirit of competition. It was sport -- war by other means -- writ large, very large: an international race to the moon...
...launch date for the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission loomed during the waning days of November, NASA's veteran spin controllers did their best to lower public expectations. The seven astronauts who would ride into orbit aboard Endeavour faced the toughest assignment ever handed to a shuttle crew and the most complicated mission since the moonshots of two decades ago. They would have to wrestle huge pieces of machinery into tight spaces, disconnect and connect fragile electronic equipment, and make sure no loose screws damaged the delicate telescope -- all while wearing puffy pressure suits and bulky gloves in a vacuum...
...spacefarers did more than salvage a telescope that has cost taxpayers $2.7 billion (including the $693 million repair bill for Endeavour's house call). The astronauts also created a kind of time warp. For a few days, America was back in the 1960s, an era when space was a grand frontier to be tamed, and when NASA's technical brilliance and right-stuff bravado made the agency seem virtually unstoppable as it sent men into orbit and on to the moon...
Thus after last week's triumphant repair mission, relieved NASA officials are now saying, "Thanks, Endeavour, we really needed that." The mission proves that astronauts can handle construction and repair work in orbit -- the skills essential to NASA's pan to build and operate a space station by the end of the decade. Yet space extravaganzas are no longer enough to keep the public and Congress behind the space program. The questions that haunted NASA before the Hubble mission won't go away. Why does the U.S. need a space program anyway? Should the nation be risking lives and spending...