The American space shuttle programme has, after 30 years, come to an end. Officially designated the Space Transportation System by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) – hence, the STS prefix to shuttle flight numbers – the programme originally involved five reusable winged spacecraft which took off vertically from launch pads as rockets and landed horizontally on runways as aircraft (the shuttles were the biggest and heaviest gliders ever developed).

These spaceships – the Atlantis, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Endeavour, of which the Columbia and Challenger were tragically destroyed in accidents with the loss of 14 lives – between them, Nasa reports, flew 135 times into space, carrying 350 people, and travelling more than 850-million kilometres – far enough to reach Jupiter. The first flight of the first shuttle was on April 12, 1981, the twentieth anniversary of the first-ever human spaceflight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Thus, the shuttle has dominated the American component of the short history to date of human spaceflight. And now, it is gone – the surviving craft destined for museums across the US.

The most striking thing about this, however, is not the final retirement of an incredibly complex craft – said by some to be the most complicated machine ever developed – that was becoming old and increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain, but the fact that the US has no replacement manned spacecraft ready to take over. This is unprecedented.

True, the Americans have a number of programmes under way. Nasa is developing a new spacecraft, called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (also known as Orion), which reverts to the capsule concept employed by the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, and a new set of rockets to launch it. This will be employed on exploration missions beyond earth orbit – to the moon, the asteroids and Mars. Separately and in parallel, a number of US-based companies are developing rockets and spacecraft to carry US and other astronauts to the Inter- national Space Station (ISS), which is in low earth orbit, on a commercial basis.

But none of these systems are ready. And, given the financial and economic problems afflicting the US, some observers fear that the Orion spacecraft and its rockets could fall victim to budget cuts and never enter service.

This, in turn, has given rise to stories about the end of the space age, or, to be more precise, the end of human (as distinct from robotic) exploration in space. Nonsense!
Although these stories are not all by Americans or published in America, they are rather Americancentric.

How are Nasa astronauts going to get to and from the ISS from now on? On Russian spacecraft. How will the ISS crews be supplied with food, water and air? By Russian and European Space Agency (ESA) vessels.

Russia’s current manned spacecraft is the Soyuz TMA-M, which entered operational service in October 2010. This is the latest version of the Soyuz spacecraft, conceived in 1960 and which first flew (unmanned) in 1966, but the TMA-M has very little in common with the original model, being the fruit of decades of steady development. (The tortoise and the hare fable springs readily to mind when considering the states of the American and Russian human spaceflight programmes today.)

The TMA-M, like all Soyuz variants, comprises three modules: the habitation module, which contains essential life support supplies for the crew, extra living space and toilet facilities, and which has a docking port and can act as an airlock for spacewalks; the service module, which contains instrumentation (including communications and control systems), oxygen tanks and mounts a rocket motor and manoeuvreing thrusters and their fuel tanks; and the re-entry capsule, which is actually the Soyuz’s control centre, and which the cosmonauts occupy for launch, during entry into orbit, deorbiting, descent and landing. The re-entry capsule is the only part of the Soyuz that lands back on earth. Each Soyuz spacecraft can carry up to three people.

Until now, the Soyuz has only ever been used in earth orbit. But, whereas the shuttle, by virtue of its design, could never leave earth orbit (which is why a number of American space experts have always regarded it as a dead-end design), the modular, capsule- concept Soyuz, in theory, could. Indeed, there were various plans for lunar mission Soyuz versions, but the funding was never available. Until now.

The original space tourism company, Space Adventures, which took rich clients to the ISS on Russian spacecraft (for, if my memory serves me correctly, $20-million each), announced in late April that it had reached agreement with RKK Energia, the Russian company which designs and builds the Soyuz spacecraft, to develop a lunar mission version of the spacecraft. This will carry two space tourists on an eight-day trip to and around the moon and back (there will be no lunar landing). Each tourist will pay about $150-million for the voyage – and one seat has already been sold. The company forecasts that the first lunar tourism trip will happen in 2015.

The key difference between the lunar Soyuz and all previous Soyuz versions will be the addition of a second habitation module. There will be two launches; the first will put the Soyuz into orbit, while the second will orbit a booster rocket stage with the second habitation module attached. The Soyuz will then dock with the second habitation module and booster rocket, which will then be fired to push the space craft out of orbit and to the moon.

The wider significance of this is that the Russians will be able to develop a lunar spacecraft at almost no cost to themselves. The initial tourist flight will almost certainly be followed by national Russian scientific missions. In due course, it is easy to imagine the second habitation module being replaced by a lunar landing module. And the Russians finally landing people on the Moon. Given the slow but steady approach of the Russians, once they get there, they’re not going to leave.

Meanwhile, back on earth, ESA continues its own slow but steady advance to independent crewed spaceflight capability, with a re-entry technology development programme. Couple this with the agency’s tremendously successful robot freighter, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (which cannot re-enter the earth’s atmosphere) and ESA could have its own, four-person space capsule by 2020.

And, of course, the Chinese have already put three manned spacecraft into orbit so far, and are planning to launch a one-module space laboratory in the near future. China has, as yet, no manned lunar programme, but is considering one.

The space age is far from over, even if the Americans are taking time out.

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