Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  Many at the ESA also hoped that NASA would give a price break to them for future shuttle flights after Spacelab’s delivery. But NASA had to explain that the price being charged to the Europeans for flights was unfortunately going to be the same as the price charged to American customers, even though many of the same potential customers had also spent money and resources developing the space shuttle. This was standard practice in U.S. government contracts, and they couldn’t waive the process for Europe. This resulted in some bruised feelings between NASA and the ESA during the early years.

  Working Together

  On the surface, the relationship between NASA and the ESA was similar to that of a customer and a contractor, but what made Spacelab different is that European industry prior to this point had no experience in designing equipment for manned space missions. They had to get up to speed quickly since the initial timeline for Spacelab called for its first flight to take place sometime in 1979.

  NASA temporarily assigned several engineers from all the NASA centers to work at locations in Europe during Spacelab’s initial development, giving valuable guidance to the ESA on how things should be done. Several ESA engineers also made frequent visits to the United States to sit in on shuttle design meetings, inspect relevant shuttle hardware, and analyze the impact of shuttle design changes on their own efforts. Gradually, the Europe-based NASA workforce was reduced as the ESA and their contractors got up to speed. Improvements in long-distance communications also streamlined the coordination. But for important meetings, such as design reviews, many high-ranking NASA managers and engineers had to travel to Europe to attend those sessions in person.

  There are universal constants in the development of hardware for spaceflight, and the primary one is that weight will go up when a design is turned from a paper drawing to a piece of hardware. The Spacelab had to undergo several phases of refinement during its development in order to shed the pounds it gained as the first pieces of hardware were built. This was no different than what happened during the Apollo program.

  Another constant is that the command and control computers selected for a spacecraft during its design are going to be considered obsolete by the time they fly. Computers needed for spaceflight operations don’t need to be too advanced, just very well understood so that no unforeseen bugs crop up during use. But older computer hardware can limit processing capabilities as experiments often have to be adapted to use the older equipment.

  While NASA initially wanted an off-the-shelf computer system based on the one flown on Skylab for use in the Spacelab, the Europeans wanted a homegrown computer instead. Ultimately the unit selected was a French system of similar capability to the U.S. system but still not as advanced. The computers of both the shuttle and the Spacelab were developed just prior to the PC revolution in the United States, so they did not benefit from the constantly evolving microprocessor architecture of the next decade.

  The prime industry contractor for Spacelab, with its major responsibility being the pressurized laboratory module, was a consortium of several German aerospace companies that were part of VFW Fokker and ERNO (Entwicklungsring Nord, a German phrase meaning “Northern Development Circle”). In the mid-1980s, this company came to be known as MBB-ERNO. Co-contractors for the project included Aeritalia of Italy, responsible for the module structure and thermal control; Engins Matra of France, responsible for the command and data computers; AEG Telekfunken of Germany, responsible for the electrical systems; Dornier Systems of Germany, responsible for environmental control; Hawker Siddeley Dynamics of England (which today is part of British Aerospace, also known as BAE), responsible for the pallet structures; Bell Telephone of Belgium, responsible for ground support electrical equipment; Inta of Spain, responsible for mechanical ground support hardware; Fokker VFW of the Netherlands, responsible for airlocks; Sabca of Belgium, responsible for additional structures; and KAMPSAX of Denmark, responsible for computer software.

  There would be U.S. contractor work as well. TRW would offer design and liaison support to their European colleagues, since it had vast experience in aerospace projects going back to the early days of ICBM development. Making sure the ESA hardware would be fully compatible with the shuttle would be the task of the McDonnell Douglas Technical Services Corporation (MDTSCO), acting as NASA’s integration contractor. The combined experience from MDTSCO’s parent companies, the recently merged McDonnell and Douglas corporations, made the firm a valuable resource. MDTSCO would also develop the transfer tunnel that would allow astronauts to enter the Spacelab’s pressurized module from the middeck of the shuttle. Their design experience on the MOL transfer tunnel for the Gemini-B came in handy for this project.

  NASA and the ESA selected joint Spacelab program directors. On the NASA side, Douglas R. Lord would represent the program until his retirement in 1980. Lord would primarily direct the program from the Office of Manned Spaceflight in Washington DC, with the program’s management being run out of Huntsville, Alabama. ESA management became a revolving door, though. The first head of the ESA side (still ESRO at that point) was Heinz Stoewer. Later, the job fell to Bernard Deloffre, who served in that capacity before abruptly resigning in 1976. The job finally was given to Michel Bignier. Prior to joining the ESA, Bignier was the director general of CNES in France from 1972 to 1976 and was considered to be a very approachable individual who also provided a firm hand of guidance for the ESA at the time. He also spoke very fluent English, which NASA program director Lord found to be very comforting. Bignier served in this capacity until 1980 when he became director of the ESA’s Space Transportation Systems, from which he retired in 1986.

  Early on in the program, personalities between NASA and European industry clashed somewhat, partly due to the cultural differences and the management structure of some of the contractors. The biggest problems in the early days were with ERNO, as the Germans resented the presence of NASA representatives and considered them a distraction to the work being done. NASA tended to favor a sideways management style where different departments could work with one another independent of high management, while ERNO favored a top-down structure instead, with problems being taken up the chain of command and relayed to the other departments by the management teams. It took a while to smooth things over. But ultimately the problems were worked out, and mutual respect was earned as the Spacelab program matured.

  European industry also provided a bit of a culture shock to some NASA representatives. At some contractor factories, the work seemed to be a throwback to the early days of aviation, with equipment being hand built by skilled artisans in open-air factory buildings. Other factories featured high-tech manufacturing techniques more familiar to the Americans. Many of the firms working on Spacelab were also involved in building hardware for the European aircraft and defense industries. ERNO was involved in construction of the Ariane launch vehicle for the ESA and had clean rooms that rivaled any U.S. space firm. For the most part, these companies were able to deliver hardware to the required specifications with very few problems cropping up during manufacturing.

  Throughout the Spacelab design process, astronauts were brought in to offer their input. Skylab astronauts Ed Gibson, Paul Weitz, and Joe Kerwin, along with Skylab backup astronaut Bill Lenoir, were on hand to inspect one of the Spacelab engineering mock-ups during a preliminary design review in 1976. Bill Thornton and Owen Garriott also provided their input on experiment matters. Astronaut input was critical to the design of the Spacelab systems, since ultimately it was the astronauts who would be operating the experiments in orbit and dealing with any problems that developed.

  Europe’s First Astronauts

  Once Spacelab began flying, there was the question of who would conduct the research. By this time, NASA’s astronaut corps had been organized along the ranks of pilot and mission specialist. The pilot group included shuttle commanders, and their job would be operating the shuttle as needed for mission support. The mission specialists would be responsible for the EVAs, run
ning the robot arm and tasks related to shuttle systems. While some mission specialists would be assigned to conduct scientific research on missions, some payloads had a need for a crewmember that had more in-depth knowledge into the hardware being flown and less need to operate the shuttle systems. This required a new classification, the payload specialist.

  A payload specialist is essentially a part-time astronaut. They would get a minimal amount of spaceflight training, usually only six months to a year, while the pilots and mission specialists were career astronauts with at least two years of training under their belts. Some payload specialists would be little more than VIPs, on hand to conduct satellite launches for their countries. Others would be integral to operating the payloads that were flown, as they knew the experiments better than anyone else.

  In 1978, the ESA selected three astronauts to fly as payload specialists, and the trio journeyed to Houston for training. They were Ulf Merbold, Wubbo Ockels, and Claude Nicollier. Ulf Merbold was born in what became East Germany after World War II, but escaped to the West before the Berlin Wall was erected. He became a physicist and holds a PhD in that field. Prior to joining the ESA, Merbold worked for the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart. Wubbo Ockels was born in the Dutch town of Almelo and has PhDs in both math and physics. His primary field of research before the ESA was the creation of radiation particle detectors. Before being accepted for a job with the ESA, Claude Nicollier was a pilot with the Swiss Air Force and studied physics while holding down a job as a commercial airline pilot.

  The first two men would get to fly as payload specialists, with Merbold taking part in several missions and Ockels only one. Claude Nicollier, on the other hand, wouldn’t fly for many years, but he added a diploma from the Empire Test Pilots School at Boscombe Down, England, to his resume in 1988; he became one of the ESA’s first mission specialist astronauts. He took part in several high-profile shuttle missions, including the first repair mission of the Hubble Telescope on STS-61 in 1993. A fourth astronaut candidate, Franco Malerba of Italy, was also selected by the ESA, but he didn’t journey to NASA for training and remained in Europe. Malerba eventually flew as a payload specialist on STS-46. He holds a PhD in physics, specializing in biophysics.

  Mission Simulations

  While the hardware was being designed and built, parallel work was underway on the science. New procedures were needed for selecting experiments, operating them, and determining the best methods for data collection. All this work had to take place long before the first operational Spacelab mission, in order to iron out as many bugs as possible. NASA instituted a Concept Verification Test (CVT) program starting in 1974 utilizing a mock-up at Huntsville that mimicked the Spacelab. It had a cylindrical laboratory section and a pallet module. Five simulations were made in the mock-up lab over the next couple of years before the project was canceled due to lack of funding. Even with its brief existence, the CVT program provided invaluable data.

  Additional simulation studies were carried out using a Convair 990 passenger airliner converted for use as an airborne science laboratory by the NASA Ames Research Center. Known as the Airborne Science/Spacelab Experiments System Simulation (ASSESS), the aircraft would fly simulated Spacelab mission profiles and test out experiments that were under consideration for spaceflight. The experiment evaluations would be conducted over about a week’s time period, simulating a whole Spacelab mission from beginning to end. The aircraft would fly for several hours each day with investigators on board conducting their experiments. At the end of the day, the plane would park next to a housing facility, so the mission participants would remain isolated from the ground support crews.

  The Convair 990 aircraft, nicknamed the Galileo II, provided invaluable data on many of the celestial-observation systems and spectrograph experiments being considered for Spacelab. NASA and the ESA both got valuable data on how the hardware performed in a sealed aircraft environment, drawing power from the onboard electrical equipment. The ESA also got an excellent run-through on their procedures. After one round of flights in 1975, the ESA asked for and was granted permission to conduct a second set of flights in 1977 to give their experiment managers more experience. Several ESA candidates hoping to become payload specialists took part in these missions, as did some of NASA’s astronauts who would be flying as mission specialists on the early Spacelab missions.

  Spacelab Hardware Anatomy

  The Spacelab system was designed to conduct research missions with either instrumented pallet racks or a pressurized laboratory module, usually as a combination of both. If the lab module was being flown, once the equipment was powered up, astronauts would gain access to it by floating down a long transfer tunnel. Early plans called for the tunnel to be equipped with an airlock on top for EVA activities, but budget cuts meant that this capability was never developed. The shuttles were each equipped with an internal airlock; if an emergency space walk had to take place to service either the shuttle or a Spacelab system outside, the lab would have to be deactivated and a flexible part of the tunnel would have to be partially retracted.

  The reason why the tunnel was so long had to do with center of gravity issues of the shuttle. If the pressurized module was mounted too far forward, the shuttle might not be able to glide or land properly. So on every Spacelab flight where the pressurized module was flown, typically the entire complex would only occupy the rear half or two thirds of the payload bay. This left empty space up front except for the tunnel. If heavily loaded pallets were carried with the lab module, it could be located farther forward in the bay. Lab module flights were typically flown with the lab only or a lab module with a single pallet.

  The lab module itself was 13.8 feet (4.17 meters) in diameter and made up of two segments just under 9 feet long (2.7 meters) each. The original Spacelab design allowed for use of a single segment, but all sixteen shuttle flights that used the pressurized laboratory module only used the two-segment configuration. Inside the module, both walls were lined with standardized equipment racks, and the roof of the lab was typically equipped with either a view port or a scientific airlock for exposing samples to space. The floor of the lab could be kept empty or have biomedical and exercise equipment mounted to it.

  The internal equipment racks could be fitted with experiments of many different types, from life science experiments with microbe samples, insects, mice, and monkeys in self-contained cages to materials-processing and celestial-observation equipment. Any project that required human presence could be flown in the module. After taking delivery of the first pressurized lab module, NASA was impressed with what they saw and purchased a second one from the ESA.

  The external pallet racks were 3 meters (9.8 feet) long by about 4 meters (13.12 feet) wide. They were U shaped and could handle many sizes and types of experiment hardware. In addition to the ESA-delivered pallets, NASA also had a couple of engineering-development pallets that were not originally intended for spaceflight. But since the production pallets were not available yet, the development pallets were converted into operational hardware for use on two early shuttle test flights (STS-2 and STS-3). The development pallets could not be used for many missions and had a reduced load limit, but they did the job well. As for the production pallets themselves, they remained in use even after the lab modules had been retired in the late 1990s.

  To help with celestial-observation missions, the ESA developed the Instrument Pointing System (IPS). It was a telescope-shaped housing with a multiaxis mounting bracket and star-tracker ports built into it. Its job was to house and point scientific instruments at targets of study on Earth and in space with more precision than what the shuttle alone could provide.

  The IPS proved to be the item that caused the most headaches, as problems with its specifications and management led to delivery of the unit falling far behind schedule. Ultimately the unit required a major redesign effort, delaying things further. Eventually the IPS was delivered and utilized with great success, but the slip in th
e schedule resulted in the delay of its debut on the Spacelab 2 mission (the first pallet-only mission to fly), causing it to be postponed until the pressurized lab module flew for a second time as Spacelab 3.

  Like any other program, the Spacelab experienced delays in its production. The delivery dates for the first pieces slipped by a couple of years. Not all the problems were on the ESA contractor side, though, as NASA’s almost-constant revision of shuttle design specifications meant that Spacelab had to change its load parameters. All these changes affected the design and testing of the first pieces of hardware in many small ways, and each of these problems had to be dealt with one at a time.

  34. A diagram of the hardware that formed the Spacelab system. Courtesy NASA.

  The ESA wasn’t just supplying the Spacelab, either; it was also supplying an engineering model for integration with the testing hardware in the United States. This engineering model was essentially a Spacelab that would never fly, and its sole purpose was to make sure that new experiments selected for flight would work before incorporating them into the flight hardware. As expensive as it is to fly payloads, a spaceflight is not the best time to find out that there is a major experiment problem, or a lot of time and money can be wasted in the process.

  Development of the TDRS System