NASA Hoping For High Interest

Copyright (c) 1998, Dayton Newspapers Inc.

DATE: Sunday, November 8, 1998 TAG: 9811080117
EDITION: CITY SECTION: SPECIAL PAGE: 23A
SOURCE: By Timothy R. Gaffney DAYTON DAILY NEWS

NASA HOPING FOR HIGH INTEREST

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas - Has John Glenn's headline-grabbing returnto space fired up public enthusiasm over the space program?

NASA sure hopes so. Its biggest project since the moon landing, the
International Space Station, is finally about to get off the ground. A
Russian rocket is scheduled to launch the first element of the station on Nov. 20. Space shuttle Endeavour is already on the launch pad with the second
element, scheduled for launch Dec. 3.

When completed, it will be an orbiting behemoth the size of a football
field with living space for seven astronauts. NASA hopes to finish it in the
year 2004.

`If anything, I think STS-95 (Glenn's flight) has regenerated interest in
space flight and space exploration,' Endeavor commander Bob Cabana said.
Glenn made history in 1962 when he became the first American to orbit the
earth. His second flight after 36 years caused one of the biggest media
turnouts in the history of space flight, in sharp contrast to the lack of
media interest in most shuttle flights.

Unlike the space race, which created one daring adventure after another
until men landed on the moon, the 67 successful space shuttle missions since
the Challenger accident in 1986 have had a monotonous sameness that dulled
public interest.

Meanwhile, the space station has generated interest mainly by its cost
and its countless delays. The original plan announced by President Reagan in
1984 was to cost $8 billion and be finished by 1992.

Fourteen years later, the first pieces are just now on the launch pads
and the price tag is estimated at anywhere from $21 billion to $96 billion based on costs over the station's lifetime, according to a congressional estimate.

And NASA's schedule is still in doubt because a key piece, a Russia-supplied
service module needed to keep the station in orbit, has been delayed for
lack of funding because of Russia's economic crisis.

Even Glenn expressed disappointment in the station's progress during a
news conference from space. `I had hoped the space station would come along a little bit faster than it has,' he said.

NASA has touted the space station as the most complex construction
program in history and the biggest international space project ever, with 443 tons of hardware being built by 16 nations.

But it isn't the first space station ever. Russia has had a series of
space stations over the years, culminating in the still-occupied Mir. America
cobbled Skylab together in 1973 from Apollo hardware left over after
President Nixon canceled the last scheduled moon flights. It fell out of orbit in 1979.

Science journalist Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon , worries
that Americans' attention spans are too short to stay interested in a long-term project like the International Space Station. `I think we have an enormous problem in this country with the fact that it's harder to get people's attention for more than 10 minutes,' he said.

But the orbital construction work will provide plenty of high-wire drama,
predicts John Pike, a space analyst with the Washington, D.C. based
Federation of American Scientists. `It's certainly going to be a lot more interesting than the shuttle program, where they went up, tormented insects and came back down,' he said. In fact, Endeavor's mission next month will require three spacewalks to get the first two elements hooked up and running.

Like the moon program, space station construction will keep the public
interested because it has a storyline, Pike predicted. `(It) is going to take you back to the '60s where there is a beginning, a middle and an end,' he said. But, then what?

`The purpose of the space program really has been to extend our reach to
new worlds,' said rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, founder and president of
the Colorado-based Mars Society. `The challenge that's been staring NASA in the face since 1973 (the year following the last moon flight) has been Mars.'

Zubrin is the chief advocate for a grassroots movement to get the U.S. to
commit to a manned Mars program. He organized the Mars Society at an August founding conference that drew 700 people. He said the organization now has 50 chapters across the U.S. and 20 in foreign countries.

Zubrin believes the technology exists to put humans on Mars in 10 years.
What's lacking, he said, is the political will to do it. President Bush set a 30-year goal of sending an expedition to Mars but never pushed the idea. President Clinton has set no such goal.

Zubrin thinks Glenn's flight might help focus public attention on the issue. `It's had massive value as a stimulus for reflection' on America's space accomplishments in the 1960s, he said. `We had a space program to storm heaven. We developed hydrogen-fueled engines and nuclear space power, interplanetary navigation and data relays ... the entire bag of tricks NASA uses today.'

Glenn's flight, he said, `is putting to us the question of whether we should continue.'

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