WEEKLY WHINE

Yearly transition

Once again, GoobNet is here to make your trip from 1999 to 2000 much easier. Check our Welcome to 2000 section for all the lookback/lookahead fun you expect from GoobNet when a new year begins.

For the aerospace industry, 1999 was a nasty year. CNN has a summary of how 1999 wasn't fun for NASA. In fact, it wasn't all that fun for other players in the space community either. First and foremost amongst 1999 space events was the fact that Mir is no longer occupied. The pride of the Russian Space Agency in recent years had been Mir, the station that had been continually inhabited for over ten years.

Viktor Afanasyev, Sergei Avdeyev, and Jean-Pierre Haignere were the last inhabitants of Mir. At 14:17 PDT on FRI 27 AUG 1999, they closed the hatch and began their trip back to Earth. Since then, only seven more people have been in space. The crew of STS-103 lifted off at 16:50 PST on SUN 19 DEC 1999, repaired the Hubble Space Telescope, and landed at 16:00 PST on MON 27 DEC 1999.

So 1999 saw only three Space Shuttle missions. Several missions had to be delayed, mostly due to problems preparing the Zvezda service module and to wiring damage found in the Space Shuttle orbiters. Schedules in MAY 1999 showed that at this time, the International Space Station would comprise three modules: the Zarya cargo module, the Unity node, and the Zvezda service module. So far, the ISS is lacking Zvezda, which has forced the delay of another Space Shuttle mission that will outfit the new module. As a result, the first ISS crew will not move in until spring, or perhaps even summer.

Another critical event in 1999 space exploration was the exploration of Mars - or lack thereof. Three missions - Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2, were all failures. Why? Shoddy work throughout the mission could be the culprit. For example, MCO was lost because of a units mistake that was never corrected. The facts of MPL are not yet in, but a number of problems were possible: incorrect pyros, rough terrain, a bad descent stage, or something else. Nearly all of these problems could have been resolved before launch.

So what is ahead for space exploration in 2000? In the commercial side of the business, expect far more launches. More Atlases, more Deltas, more Protons, and more Soyuzes are scheduled for launch. But Arianespace still leads the way. The Ariane 5, which made its commercial debut at 06:32 PST on FRI 10 DEC 1999, is scheduled to lift off six times this year. Arianespace's two commercial launchers, the Arianes 4 and 5, are likely to secure the company's place atop the international launch industry.

Meanwhile, the United States is playing catch up. Boeing's Delta 4 and Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 are still being prepared for debuts in 2001. These are heavy lift boosters comparable to the Ariane 5, but it remains to be seen how they compare in the critical categories of cost and reliability.

Perhaps the most intriguing event expected in 2000 is China's first foray into manned space flight. At 14:30 PST on FRI 19 NOV 1999, a Long March booster lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center carrying a test capsule. The capsule was said to be similar to a Russian Soyuz or American Apollo capsule. With its successful first test, China will proceed to further tests and eventually a crewed mission, possibly early this year. China will then become the third nation, after Russia and the United States, to have a humans in space program.

So as we proceed into 2000, I'd like to remind you of the importance of space exploration. Were it not for all those communications satellites launched by Arianes and Deltas and Soyuzes and Atlases and Titans, you wouldn't have been able to watch the New Year celebrations in the Philippines.