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A half million pounds of hardware for the ISS is waiting until Russia launches the Zvezda module.
By Todd Halvorson
Cape Canaveral Bureau Chief
posted: 07:00 am ET
11 July 2000
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zvezda_jump_start_000711 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The floodgates are about to open. A Russian Proton rocket and the long-awaited living quarters for the International Space Station are scheduled to thunder away from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (04:56 a.m. GMT) Wednesday.And if all goes well during the launch and a July 25 docking at the fledgling outpost, look for NASAs stalled station construction project to roar to life with a yearlong torrent of shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center. | After Zvezda: | | Anatomy of a Launch Day: On Wednesday, July 12 the work of personnel at the launch pad 23 here in Kazakhstan will determine the future of manned space flight for the international community for years to come. Here is the look at the schedule, which everybody here hopes will lead to the successful delivery of the Zvezda Service Module into orbit:Want to Learn More | 
NASA's Space Station Launch Schedule: In what would amount to an earthshaking fury of shuttle flights, NASA plans to ramp up its long-stalled International Space Station project over the coming year. Want to Read More? |
The Pieces of the Puzzle: Some of the most important parts of the International Space Station particularly labs and components being built byNASAs 15 global partners -- wont arrive at the outpost until late 2001 or beyond. Want to Read More? | "Its kind of like the starter gun going off," said Dave King, NASAs director of shuttle launch operations at KSC. A half million pounds (225,000 kilograms) of hardware -- or 85 percent of the U.S. segment of the outpost -- is shoehorned into a huge processing hangar at KSC -- essentially waiting in the wings until Russia launches the stations long-delayed living quarters.Off in one corner is a U.S. lab dubbed "Destiny" -- the stations hub for scientific research. Up against a wall are two Italian-built "moving vans" cargo carriers that will haul supplies, equipment and experiments to and from the station.Theres a colossal Canadian construction crane, power-producing solar arrays and parts of the 356-foot (108-meter) metallic backbone of the next-generation space complex, which ultimately will weigh 500 tons and span an area nearly the size of two football fields.With station construction on hold now for 19 months, all this hardware and more dome-shaped station gyroscopes, heat-rejecting radiator panels and a dish-like communications antenna, among other components now are in the final stages of launch preparation. 
Watch the video animation of the completed International Space Station.
And once Russias Zvezda module finally launches July 12, a yearlong onslaught of shuttle flights will be staged to piece the parts together during the most ambitious series of space missions since the Apollo moon-landing project. 
Artist's representation of International Space Station over Gibraltar "This is the kick start to station assembly," said Pat Dasch, executive director of the National Space Society in Washington, D.C. "Weve been in a holding pattern now for a long time, and getting this module up allows us to move ahead." ~ Between Labor Day 2000 and the same holiday next year, NASA plans to launch nine shuttle crews on station-construction missions. Piece by piece, the modular station would begin expanding at a rapid pace from todays relatively tiny two-roomer to a full-fledged space complex playing host to rotating construction and research crews. By the end of 2001, the station would grow to the size of a three-bedroom house that has 1,800 square feet (162 square meters) of living space and eight-foot (2.4-meter) ceilings. And during that same time, the international outpost would become at least the fourth-brightest object in the night sky, dimmed only by the moon, Venus and Jupiter in magnitude. "I dont think the general public has any idea how fast it is coming," said James Hartsfield, a spokesman for NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "By the end of next year, it will be the largest and most powerful spacecraft ever built, and it will have the largest volume of any spacecraft by far." If, that is, all goes according to plan. NASA during the past two years has only been launching an annual average of four shuttle missions a relatively low flight rate largely due to delays with the Russian Zvezda module. The nine upcoming flights would tie the agencys record for the most shuttle missions in a 12-month period. That record, however, was set in 1985 the year leading up to the January 1986 Challenger explosion, which was blamed in part on schedule pressures. Complicating matters is the fact that during the past seven years, aggressive downsizing halved the agencys shuttle work force. Those job cuts, in turn, prompted two separate independent safety panels to raise red flags earlier this year, questioning whether NASA could ramp up station construction without jeopardizing the lives of astronauts and endangering its $8 billion shuttle fleet. 
"By the end of next year, it will be the largest and most powerful spacecraft ever built." The agency, however, responded quickly. In what amounted to an admission that shuttle safety might be compromised, NASA lifted a longstanding hiring freeze. Some 750 NASA engineers and quality-control inspectors, in fact, are being hired at Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center, as well as Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Another 200 engineers, inspectors and technicians are being hired by shuttle prime contractor United Space Alliance to shore up its KSC work force. And while the upcoming flights each will be as daunting as a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) repair mission, NASA managers say the beefed-up work force is ready to take on the job. "Each mission is going to be very complex, so its going to be a significant challenge for us. Its going to be like HST times 10, but we all recognize that," said NASA shuttle-program manager Ron Dittemore. "Weve known that this was coming, so its not like a big eureka for us, or like weve all the sudden just awakened to it. Weve been planning for this for years," he said. "Its like the prizefighter that trains and trains and trains for his big day in the ring. Well, weve been training, and our day in the ring is coming over the next year."
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