The Space Station

Abstract

The era of manned spaceflight began in the early 1960s. Now, only a quarter of a century later, the foundation is being laid for permanently manned space stations which, a century ago, were the domain of visionaries whose dreams of space habitats and their uses were not that far away from current plans. The first space stations were the Soviet Salyut 1 and the American Skylab of the early 1970s. The Russians built a succession of Salyuts, the last of which was Salyut-7, launched in 1982. This was succeeded in 1986 by Mir, to which a first expansion module has already been added. Mir is planned to become a multimodule facility. The Americans have chosen a different path to their space station. From 1975 to 1981, they developed their Space Transportation System (Space Shuttle) of which Spacelab is a part. Built by Europe and flown first in 1983, it is the world's only reusable, manned space laboratory. The Space Shuttle is to be the logistics vehicle for the US-directed International Space Station, which includes cooperation from Europe, Japan and Canada. As currently planned, the ISS will consist of a rectangular framework of trusses at the center of which will be a core of laboratory, habitation and logistics modules. Unattached space station elements are to include polar-orbiting platforms and a co-orbiting, automated laboratory.