Where Are We Headed in Space?

THE SPACE STATION A Personal Journey. Hans Mark. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1987. 288 pp $24.95 SPACE The Next Twenty-Five Years. Thomas R. MoDonough. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1987. 228 pp. $17.95. SPACE 2000 Meeting the Challenge of a New Era. Harry L Shipman. Plenum Publishing Corp., New York, 1987. 442 pp. $19.95. The Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy of 1986 and the rash of launch failures that followed it left the U.S. space program in a quagmire of uncertainty and recrimination. Although the soul-searching and reorganization convulsions seem to have bottomed out finally, the United States has a long rocky road to negotiate before it can regain its leading role in space exploration and development. These books offer three authors’ viewpoints on traversing that road, drawing on the past and the present as a guide to what will come next. Hans Mark was an inside observer and frequent key player in the decision-making process that led to the present situation and created the environment in which the future will develop. He was a scientist who served as director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, secretary of the Air Force and deputy administrator of NASA. In The Space Station he leads the reader from the early euphoric days of U.S. space successes to the critical shuttle decisions and the extensive governmental infighting that created the present space-station program. A true “personal journey,” the book takes many detours, some pertinent to the subject, others not, but all fascinating in the insight into the complex, devious decision-making processes typical of any major government undertaking. Mark believes firmly in the U.S. space program’s intrinsic value: whenever people have ventured into the unknown and taken great risks, the horizons and the welfare of humanity have both been expanded.” Despite the difficult and tortuous path ahead, he is optimistic that eventually we will regain our equilibrium and that NASA will resume the leadership role that it has held for so long.” Unlike Mark, who provides a highly personalized account of the individuals who shaped the U.S. space program, both Thomas McDonough and Harry Shipman dwell mainly on the program’s developments and accomplishments—the specific technologies, projects, applications and implications of past and planned space missions. McDonough, a lecturer in engineering at the California Institute of Technology, provides a too-brief summary that takes the reader through the history of space flight, its major efforts in science and applications, the principal “infrastructure” developments (the shuttle and the space station), and future projects such as lunar and Mars bases and interstellar flight. The book’s scope is, however, overly ambitious for so brief a volume; it skims the surface rather than providing the depth needed for the reader to understand and appreciate fully the often-complex subject matter. McDonough has included large numbers of excellent excerpts, many well over a page in length, from others who have written on the subjects covered. Many of these offer considerably greater insight than the rather shallow text is able to achieve. For those who want to learn what the space program was, is and could become, Shipman’s book is by far the best of the three. Although sprinkled with some naivetés and oversimplifications of how space hardware works, his coverage of present and future space applications, military uses and implications, and the various space systems are thorough, entertaining, and in sufficient depth for clear and complete understanding by the non-specialist. The book really shines, however, in Shipman’s own field of astronomy. His discussions of space exploration—the inner planets, gas giants and asteroids of our solar system, and particularly the distant universe—are superb. Shipman highlights the now-dominant role of space technology in astronomy and astrophysics, and projects what we might learn with the sophisticated instruments that will be launched in the coming decade. His discussion of the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life is entrancing and complete. Like McDonough, Shipman includes his personal view of the future, not only in space science and applications but also in new roles for humans, both in the space station and on the surfaces of the moon and Mars. His cautiously, supportive view of such activities offers a perspective that makes it required reading for visionaries as well as cynics. This book is one of the best space overviews published for the non-specialist audience. Grey is director, science and technology policy for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 370 L’Enfant Promenade, S.W, Washington, DC 20024.

Where Are We Headed in Space?

THE SPACE STATION

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