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Phoenix in Space: Rising From the Ashes Into Orbit
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17194 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1990 |
2,659 Words |
| Author
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Henry Lansford
Henry Lansford is a free-lance writer and communication
consultant based in Boulder, Colorado. He has been writing
about the natural resources of the Rocky Mountain West for the
past twenty-four years. He is also scientific writer-editor
for the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center of the State
University of New York at Albany. |
Recycling newspapers and aluminum cans is fast becoming part of our mainstream culture, not just a far-out environmentalist fad. We are learning that it makes good sense, economically as well as ecologically. Now two companies, one based into foothills of the Colorado Rockies and the other on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., are planning a recycling project on an unprecedented scale. They want to recycle the space shuttle's throwaway external fuel tanks-35-ton aluminum cylinders the size of a Boeing 747, now manufactured at a cost of $30 million each - as orbiting facilities for scientific research and commercial development.
The tanks hold the liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel that boosts the shuttle to the edge of space. They reach 99 percent of orbital velocity before they are jettisoned back into the atmosphere, where they burn and break up into fragments that fall into the ocean. Many space scientists see this as a terrible waste of a potentially valuable resource. "When the external tank is jettisoned from the space shuttle, more than a quarter of a billion dollars in manufacturing costs and equivalent lift costs have been invested," explains John McLucas, chairman of External Tanks Corporation (ETCO), headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. "We intend to make the best possible use of this asset to create affordable space facilities."
Early in 1990, NASA formally agreed to make five space shuttle tanks available in orbit to be developed, marketed, and operated by ETCO and Global Outpost, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia. ETCO is pursuing a program known as Space Phoenix. The name symbolizes the company's determination that, like the mythical bird, the tanks will rise from the ashes that now mark the end of their journeys to the threshold of space. NASA experts have determined that they can be put in near-earth orbit without significantly increasing the shuttle's launch cost or reducing its payload. ETCO plans to convert the tanks into orbiting laboratories or "warehouses" for scientific and commercial projects that require large, relatively low-cost space facilities. The five external tanks allotted to Global Outpost will be used for simpler, unmanned commercial activities in space.
Big deposit, no return
When it is launched the space shuttle comprises three elements: the manned orbiter, an external liquid-fuel tank, and two solid rocket boosters. The external tank is the only component that is not used again on later shuttle missions. Each tank is 153.8 feet long and 27.6 feet in diameter, weighing almost 35 tons empty and
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