With increasing cadence, humans from various nations are firing into Earth orbit and soon some will head outward. the moon. Given the momentum of commercial and government flights, the chances of a stranded crew requiring a rescue in space increase.
But the U.S. government and commercial spaceflight providers have no plans to make a timely rescue of a distressed spacecraft crew. Earth orbit or anywhere else in space. Without orchestrated rescue planning, current space travelers will travel at their own risk.
For example, this week Inspiration4 mission is the first trip to the world in fully civilian orbit. It will take four private citizens into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon during a three-day excursion.
Then there is the dear Moon project, a lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. It will use a SpaceX spacecraft on a private space flight that makes a circumlunary trajectory around the moon. This one-week trip by Maezawa and crew members is expected to take place before 2023.
Related: Inspiration4: when to look and what to know
Live updates: SpaceX’s totally civilian private orbital mission of Inspiration4
Current position
As a private space tourism some experts claim that flowers and other nations perfect their own human space travel adventures. It is time to review space rescue policies and establish measures to address this issue. They argue that the current stance – of not planning the rescue in space and not having rescue capabilities in space – must be addressed before the need for a rescue materializes.
A report published last month called “The gap in rescue capacity in space“seeks to raise awareness of the need to review space rescue policies and implement measures to address this issue.
The author of the 21-page report, Grant Cates, is a senior project leader in The Aerospace Corporation’s Department of Space Architecture. Previously, he served as NASA’s “flow director” for the space shuttle Columbia, integrating, programming, and performing ground processes for the vehicle. He was Columbia’s flow director from 1995 to 2001, before the ship’s tragic disintegration on February 1, 2003, when it re-entered the atmosphere and killed all seven crew members.
Columbia it broke due to damage during launch, when the insulation foam displaced from the shuttle’s external fuel tank hit the shuttle wing. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that if NASA had acknowledged the damage at the start of the mission, a rescue mission using the next space shuttle planned for launch, Atlantis, would have been feasible, it said. Cates at Space.com.
This rescue would have involved maneuvering Atlantis alongside Columbia and then transferring the crew members through individual spacewalks. “This rescue was considered challenging but feasible,” the Columbia Accident Investigation Board wrote in the first volume of its report.
Related: No nervousness on the launch day for SpaceX’s Inspiration4 civilian astronauts
Human nature
Fighting the fog of history is hard to do.
“Human nature is about being optimistic and having confidence in systems, especially when the last accident, Columbia, is getting further and further away in the past,” Cates said. The in-orbit rescue piece of the puzzle is where more attention should be paid, he added.
“If something goes wrong in orbit, we haven’t fully thought about all the ways we might need to do a rescue and how we can do that rescue,” Cates said.
“A space rescue capability it’s likely to be highly synergistic with the much-desired ability to have sensitive launch capability, ”Cates wrote in“ The In-space Rescue Capability Gap ”.
Both goals can be achieved with the right political goals, he added.
“It should be the policy of the United States to develop and implement the rapid launch capability it needs to support: timely rescue of astronauts into cis-lunar space; rapid reconstitution of important space resources nationwide; and the ability to put in place new space capabilities in response to emerging threats in near real time, ”Cates wrote.
Imagine the public outcry, Cates added, that could arise if Inspiration4, DearMoon or a similar manned mission were trapped in a low Earth orbit or in a lunar space by a disabled spacecraft. How long could a crew survive inside their broken spaceship?
In his report, Cates noted that the plan for the Inspiration4 Crew Dragon spacecraft was to remove the docking port from the International Space Station and replacing it with a display window. “Removing the docking port nullifies any rescue potential,” he wrote.
If a manned cis-lunar mission encountered problems near the moon, they could reach the city Front door, a small space station orbiting the moon that NASA plans to build in the coming years and wait to be rescued there.
“But in the short term, the only suggestion is to consider sending people beyond low Earth orbit with spacecraft that have autorescate capability,” Cates said. Or we could also send several ships traveling together in a flotilla, as the old sailors did, he said.
Harmful impact
“Regardless of whether this is a mission where NASA astronauts fly, private astronauts fly or so-called space tourists, if there is a mishap, it will have a short-term impact and be detrimental to the industry,” Cates said. According to him, there would be a halt until the accident investigation is completed and mitigations were put in place to prevent a similar calamity from occurring in the future.
“To me, avoiding that kind of thing seems like the best course of action. That’s what drove the newspaper. We’re trying to figure out the rescue in space before we really need it,” Cates said.
Cates points to historical analogues, such as ocean explorers who embarked on epic voyages with multiple ships; successful submarine rescue operations; and the rich history of human space flight.
The paper offers a number of conclusions:
The United States has no current capacity or policy to conduct space rescues. This situation exists today although experts have been studying rescue and space rescue systems since 1959; although NASA demonstrated an ability to self-rescue during abortions Apollo 13 mission to the moon in 1970; although NASA launched rescue capabilities for the Skylab project conducted from 1973 to 1974; and despite the loss of the Columbia space shuttle and its seven-person crew, a tragedy that could potentially have been avoided if a rescue capability had been available.
Rescue and return
In 1967 Treatise on outer space alludes to the potential need to rescue astronauts in space. The following year a second treaty known as the 1968 Rescue Agreement came into force. However, the latter treaty focuses mainly on the rescue and return of astronauts who have made emergency landings in some place of mainland.
“What the treaty doesn’t do,” Cates said, “is that it doesn’t require anyone to develop capabilities to do space rescue.”
A key point Cates highlights is having on-demand launch capability. And that ability is close. “Essentially, someone somewhere on this planet launches something into orbit about every three days, on average. And that will increase,” he said.
With more and more nations wanting people in space, the need to have rescue capabilities will become more evident, Cates said. Second, the ability to implement space rescue steps is likely to be easier. “This is a way to bridge the current gap,” he said.
Another area that needs attention is to take a look at the international standards of the coupling system. The coupling mechanisms used by various nations are fully complied with, allowing them to link not only with the International Space Station but also with others? Cates said there seems to be some debate about this compatibility issue.
Related: Construction of the International Space Station (photos)
And now what?
One option is not to have a centralized government space rescue capability. Since manned commercial launches from the United States are authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), perhaps that agency could invoke rules and regulations to make a space rescue requirement mandatory.
Perhaps an international consortium approach should be considered, for all space nations to pool their collective resources to develop and maintain rescue capabilities.
What about expanding U.S. duties Space force to include space rescue responsibilities? It has also been suggested that the United States could create a “space guard” analogous to the Coast Guard to implement rescue in space.
The report highlights the fact that the United States, as a space-dominant nation, has the means to establish space rescue capabilities “and to do so with a sense of urgency.”
These skills will no doubt be developed in the future. “The only question is whether they will develop before or after the next crisis that this capacity requires,” the report concludes.
Leonard David is the author of the book “Moon Rush: The New Space Race,” published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime Space.com writer, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.