Great chronicler of the space odyssey supports rescue of the ISS

One of the world’s leading storytellers about the almost mythical birth and life in the sky of the International Space Station believes the ISS should be reserved for the explorers of the future.

In recognition of its role as a heroic icon of the space age, the space station should be placed into a protective orbit, says Roger Launius, NASA’s former chief historian.

“I would love for the ISS to be saved,” Launius told me in an interview, so that its epic space adventure can continue into a new era.

Current NASA officials have decreed that the space station will suffer a two-stage death in six years – first by burning up in the atmosphere and then by exploding upon impact with Antarctic waters.

But this ruling should be overturned, say leading figures from NASA.

“It is a noble cause,” says Launius, to move the space station to a higher port instead so that it can orbit the Earth in the future.

As NASA’s most famous scribe, Launius chronicled the birth of the International Space Station in the starry sky as the new millennium approached, and then reported on its rocket-fast development as astronauts from around the world lingered at this celestial outpost – like demigods observing the ever-changing Earth.

He left his mission at NASA to take up an even dreamier and dreamier post – in the world’s greatest stronghold of the wonders of space travel and space technology, the National Air and Space Museum in the coveted epicenter of Washington DC

At the same time, Launius produced a big bang-like explosion of books and articles about the ISS and alternative future scenarios of humanity in the cosmos, including outstanding manuscripts such as Space stations: base camps to the stars.

Dreams of building space stations orbiting the globe and the actual assembly of these orbital beacons by astronauts and robots have transformed humanity. These floating lighthouses – especially the ISS – have become super-icons of a rapidly globalizing culture, he notes in his book.

Fantastical flight stations first came to life in the futuristic imaginations of writers and rocket engineers around the world, taking shape with the colossal, ring-shaped outpost designed by space flight prodigy Wernher von Braun – immortalized in the mesmerizing masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey”, he says.

Von Braun, who outlined his rotating station in a series of compelling magazine articles that would ultimately lead to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and even chronicled its mission history for decades to come, saw his planned spacecraft captivate moviegoers on every continent with the release of A Space Odysseywhich “set a milestone for the depiction of a wheel-shaped space station based on von Braun’s model,” writes Launius in his own masterpiece. “Kubrick depicted a humanity moving into the solar system, and the station essentially served as a base camp for the stars.”

A Space Odyssey Incredibly prescient previews of space shuttles carrying their explorers to the station and of independent spacecraft operators gathering at the rotating spaceport would spur the construction of the International Space Station and its centripetal pull on a flotilla of spacecraft launched by a circle of space powers.

“In a hundred years, people may look back on the construction of the station as the first truly international endeavor by peaceful nations.” The multinational coalition of Americans and Russians, Japanese and Europeans that jointly constructed the ISS, Launius continued, wanted to “revive the dream of space travel” and may have laid the groundwork for human explorers to begin terraforming other worlds.

In an addendum to the book he wrote ten years ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey – More than 2001he says he was fascinated by 2001s “Complex, sometimes surreal story” and fascinated by “the film’s message about human evolution and its possible relationship to extraterrestrial intelligence.”

“The message that humanity’s destiny is to explore the universe still rings true to me today,” he says.

Yet in passages written before Russia’s revanchist regime began to once again threaten nuclear war against Western democracies – and thereby upend life on Earth and in orbit – Launius noted how completely the world had changed since the superpower skirmishes over A Space Odyssey Published in the 1960s.

“The Cold War, which was so much a part of the film’s subtext, has disappeared,” he wrote, “and with it the sense of a humanity on the brink of self-destruction through nuclear annihilation.”

In fact, he stressed, the former arch enemies had joined forces to plan and build the International Space Station – a scenario that 2001′The director and screenwriter could hardly have imagined the race for ever more powerful hydrogen warheads that was taking place from Moscow to Washington.

Kubrick and his screenwriter Arthur Clarke and later Roger Launius redesigned the two and a half millennia old Greek epic The Odyssey to create their masterpieces, but Kubrick was more of an oracle who predicted the future of manned space travel in a remarkable way.

In contrast, Launius formulated The Odyssey starring the International Space Station, who takes on the role of a New Age Homer to portray the station’s trials and tribulations in the new millennium.

Like the protagonist in the Greek original OdysseyThe ISS must now avert its fate on the high seas.

Despite NASA’s current plans to crash the ISS into semi-frozen seas in 2030, “the historian in me advises preserving it,” says Launius. “I would love it if that happened.”

There has been a strong reaction in the US and Europe to NASA’s “deorbit” strategy. The former directors of the European Space Agency and NASA, who jointly led the station’s construction, are now calling for it to be protected as an unprecedented treasure trove of technology – a masterpiece of human civilisation that could be lifted out of the busy zone of low Earth orbit through which it currently flies.

Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General during the construction of the ISS, and his American counterpart, former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, jointly drafted a global appeal calling for a new future for the ISS.

The two aerospace titans pointed out that the same booster that NASA commissioned to destroy the space station could also provide the ascent to a higher trajectory, making it a savior rather than a killer for the space icon.

“If you could use the same booster to put the ISS into a higher orbit, that would be cool,” Launius told me.

Launius is one of the world’s top space journalists with a passion for the breakthroughs in space technology that are transforming human civilization. He says he “would also love to see the Hubble Space Telescope brought back to Earth for rescue and put on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.”

Aerodynamic drag is slowly reducing the Hubble telescope’s altitude, but NASA has not yet presented a plan to save it from a violent re-entry into the atmosphere.

The fact that no rescue mission was launched is extraordinary, considering that NASA itself has called the Hubble telescope “one of its most revolutionary observatories” – one that “changed humanity’s understanding of the universe.”