Calls for the crew of the Russian Mir space station to abandon ship after its recent spate of problems ignore two critical points about human spaceflight: it's bound to be risky, but human intervention is the primary element. Gaining experience in human space operations and learning from technical as well as human errors is all part of going there in the first place.
The cosmonauts are, within limitations, overcoming problems with well-trained procedures and on-the-spot decisions. Not everybody would agree with one crewmember's view that the collision which triggered the latest drama was not a crisis, more "-a rather exciting moment which certainly got my attention". More, however, would agree with him that"-we are going to have events like this in the future and the way we are learning from it is very useful".
The doom-merchants might believe that the Mir is due for the scrap heap. It is true that the core module was launched in 1986, but several elements are almost new. With the power problem solved, it could go on for another two years.
The Progress M35 collision with the Mir's Spektr module could have been a catastrophe. Some of the other problems highlighted recently, however, have not only occurred more than once before, but overcoming them - including restoration of attitude control - has been considered part of the regular operation for years.
The Mir has 12 gyros, which the Russians call gyrodynes, to maintain attitude control automatically, without recourse to thruster firings. It needs at least seven of them to be working fully, but this has not always been the case.
Likewise, the environmental-control system cannot provide the required oxygen to support fully a crew greater than three, so the lighting of oxygen-generating canisters is a normal procedure when more people are on board. There is always a risk igniting the canisters - indeed, fire and depressurisation are the main fears of any space crew. Some of the fires which have occurred have been more life-threatening than the aftermath of the Progress collision.
Operational problems must be expected when the International Space Station (ISS) is up and running. If the US Laboratory module springs a small leak, though, will NASA abandon ship immediately as many would have the Russians leave the Mir?
Things are going to break on the ISS, and crews will need to repair them, sometimes from outside the craft. There will be a lot of commuting to and from the ISS, with manned and unmanned craft docking and undocking. A mild collision is quite possible.
As John Pike at the Federation of American Scientists says: "The problems we've seen on Mir are a preview of the problems we're going to have with the ISS-this is basically what long-duration spaceflight looks like. The Russians have more experience improvising and more confidence that they can do it successfully. That's alien to American spaceflight culture, which is extremely choreographed."
When the US Skylab space station was crippled by solar-panel problems in space after its launch in 1973, it was not abandoned. It was saved during a risky spacewalk by astronauts using improvised tools and techniques. To expect human spaceflight to continue without accident is dangerous. In some 200 manned missions, only four out of 359 travellers have died in space - all of them Russian. (Seven Americans were killed in the Challenger launch failure in 1986, and three died in the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire in 1967.) The chances are that more will die - but they are lower now because of the lessons learned with craft such as the Mir.
The risks of manned spaceflight must be balanced against the likely rewards for society as a whole. The lessons learned from the incidents which have not turned into disasters are important. Nobody would choose to go to space in a 12-year-old ship, but, if that is all that is available, that is what must be used. If the ISS project had not already been beset by so many problems, there would be no need to keep on repairing the Mir. To abandon a successful laboratory before its successor is ready would be to miss the point of the most important lesson of all.
Source: Flight International
