Launchpad Space News, June 2001

Are you from Venus or Mars? So goes the start of a best-selling book about the differences between men and women. According to Anatoly Grigoryev, Russian Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems referring to a potential mission sometime between 2015-2020, women will not be forming part of the crew to Mars, because they may increase the risk of a conflict occurring amongst the crew during the three-year mission. He favours a single-sex crew, but has missed the obvious. I can see a good few people wanting to have words with him about this, suggesting for example, that men should not be included in the crew for similar reasons. Being named after the Roman god of war seems to suit the planet.

If you've been looking at it at night, it's certainly putting on a good display. It's closer to Earth now than it has been for over a hundred years, and we get to see the sunny side all lit up nice and red. Many people forget that Mars is not the closest planet to Earth - that honour belongs to Venus - but I suspect that Mars has a better press agent.

But man and woman can live on the surface of Mars (provided they don't cause a domestic) without too much in the way of shelter, whereas on Venus they'd need phenominally heavy equipment to withstand the pressure. "The manned flight to Mars is a super-task," says Dr Grigoryev, "but it is quite workable technically. Certainly, there are still details to be worked on for the next few years." These aspects include growing food in space, and dealing with anything from an appendix problem to a brawl. While Mars is a laudable goal, there are many that think returning to the Moon and practicing permanent residence there would be a good first step.

ISS Still Disarmed

NASA were due to ship up a US$164 million Joint Airlock assembly on the next shuttle flight, but are reluctant to do this without operational backup systems in the arm. If the arm were to completely fail with the airlock assembly half in and half out of the shuttle's cargo bay, it would be inconvenient to say the least.

The shuttle Atlantis has already had its mission bumped up to July due to its heat-resistant tiles getting waterlogged, and it may have to wait even longer. The most likely option at the moment is to have the shuttle Discovery go up first, taking a replacement arm joint up with it. No, they can't use the Shuttle's arm to position the airlock, because it is too short. But once the ISS's arm is repaired, Atlantis can go up and deposit the airlock. Once this airlock is in place, astronauts and cosmonauts will be able to safely exit from the ISS to perform spacewalks - existing airlocks are a bit small for the job.Discovery was meant to take up the third ISS permanent crew, so what happens next is unclear.

Tito's Unscientific Statements

Safely back on the ground once more, Dennis Tito is saying things that have upset a few space buffs. He is apparently saying that manned space missions don't get much scientific work done because they spend most of their time doing everyday, mundane tasks and essential maintenance. Well, this is in part true. If the ISS had a bigger crew, more people would be available to do the science. But that means more lifeboats, and so less funding. But there is a way around this: Take tourists and ordinary boring industrial work. People like Tito are happy to stump up the cash, in his case US$20 million, which could pay for bits that NASA's budget has chopped out. Russia is keen to put its own commercial experimentation module on, which has a bigger effect on the equation than US-based commercial modules. Why? Because the Russian modules are cheaper to rent, and because a profit of x dollars goes a lot further in Russian aerospace companies than it does in the US.

Tito himself was only too happy to take on some of these mundane chores. He was also very critical of NASA's feeble reasons for not wanting him onboard: "Any responsible adult doesn't need months of NASA training not to push the wrong button. That's absurd, I was definitely over-trained for this mission." His view on the money being spent on the poor were also revealing: "This money should have been spent on the poor. And it was. One hundred dollars a month is the average salary of a Russian aerospace worker."

The best quote though came from Tito Junior: "Some men get a Harley Davidson motorcycle when they do through a mid-life crisis, but my dad was a little different."

The Robot Sets Slowly In The West

On the 8^th July, a 2 metre, 4-wheeled robot called Hyperion built by Carnegie Mellon University will start wandering round and round in circles in northern Canada. Looking like some strange, home made sand-yacht, this cunning contraption tilts its panel to follow the sun. If it is dropped close to the poles, it can wander around all day long at a top speed of about 1km/hr - but it does have to avoid falling into holes or ramming inconveniently located boulders. Here on Earth it can always radio home if it gets stuck. Not a convenient trip out for the repair guy, but much easier than repairing one left to roam on, say, Mars.

Of course, the export-quality version would be built slightly differently, hopefully on a larger budget than the current US$100,000. But as with all the autonomous robots that have been dumped in Earth's hostile environments before it, we will no doubt learn a lot about how not to build robots.

This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz. vik@olliver.family.gen.nz.