In the early 20th century, space pioneers such as Hermann Oberth, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Noordung and Wernher von Braun dreamed of huge space stations in Earth's orbit. These scientists believed that space stations would be excellent preparation points for space exploration. You remember the “KETS Star”?

Wernher von Braun, the architect of the American space program, integrated space stations into his long-term vision of US space exploration. Accompanying von Braun's numerous articles on space topics in popular magazines, artists decorated them with drawings of space station concepts. These articles and drawings contributed to the development of public imagination and fueled interest in space exploration.

In these space station concepts, people lived and worked in outer space. Most of the stations looked like huge wheels that rotated and generated artificial gravity. Ships came and went, just like in a normal port. They carried cargo, passengers and materials from Earth. Outgoing flights were heading to Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond. At that time, humanity did not fully understand that von Braun's vision would become a reality very soon.

The US and Russia have been developing orbital space stations since 1971. The first stations in space were the Russian Salyut, the American Skylab and the Russian Mir. And since 1998, the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Canada, Japan and other countries have built and began to develop the International Space Station (ISS) in Earth orbit. People have been living and working in space on the ISS for more than ten years.

In this article we will look at the early space station programs, their current and future uses. But first, let's take a closer look at why these space stations are needed at all.

Space stations also provide a frontline for research that cannot be done on Earth. For example, gravity changes the way atoms organize into crystals. In zero gravity, an almost perfect crystal can form. Such crystals can become excellent semiconductors and form the basis of powerful computers. In 2016, NASA installed a laboratory on the ISS to study ultra-low temperatures in zero-gravity conditions. Another effect of gravity is that during the combustion of directed flows, it generates an unstable flame, as a result of which the study of them becomes quite difficult. In zero gravity, you can easily study stable, slow-moving flame streams. This could be useful for studying the combustion process and creating stoves that will pollute less.

High above the Earth, the space station offers unique views of Earth's weather, terrain, vegetation, oceans and atmosphere. Additionally, because space stations are higher than Earth's atmosphere, they can be used as manned observatories for space telescopes. The Earth's atmosphere will not interfere. The Hubble Space Telescope has made a lot of incredible discoveries thanks to its location.

Space stations can be adapted as space hotels. It is Virgin Galactic, which is currently actively developing space tourism, that plans to establish hotels in space. With the growth of commercial space exploration, space stations can become ports for expeditions to other planets, as well as entire cities and colonies that could relieve an overpopulated planet.

Now that we know what space stations are for, let's visit some of them. Let's start with the Salyut station - the first of the space stations.

Salyut: the first space station

Salyut 1 was 15 meters long and consisted of three main compartments, which housed restaurants and recreation areas, food and water storage, a toilet, a control station, simulators and scientific equipment. The Soyuz 10 crew was originally supposed to live aboard Salyut 1, but their mission encountered docking problems that prevented them from entering the space station. The Soyuz-11 crew became the first to successfully settle on Salyut-1, where they lived for 24 days. However, this crew tragically died upon returning to Earth when the capsule depressurized upon re-entry. Further missions to Salyut 1 were canceled, and spaceship"Union" has been redesigned.

After Soyuz 11, the Soviets launched another space station, Salyut 2, but it failed to reach orbit. Then there were Salyut-3-5. These launches tested the new Soyuz spacecraft and crew for long-duration missions. One of the disadvantages of these space stations was that they only had one docking port for the Soyuz spacecraft, and it could not be reused.

On September 29, 1977, the Soviet Union launched Salyut 6. This station was equipped with a second docking port so the station could be resent using the Progress unmanned vessel. Salyut 6 operated from 1977 to 1982. In 1982, the last Salyut 7 was launched. It sheltered 11 crews and operated for 800 days. The Salyut program eventually led to the development of the Mir space station, which we will talk about later. First, let's look at the first American space station, Skylab.

Skylab: America's first space station

The first crew of Skylab 2 launched 10 days later to repair the slightly damaged station. The Skylab 2 crew deployed the remaining solar panel and set up an umbrella awning to cool the station. After the station was repaired, the astronauts spent 28 days in space conducting scientific and biomedical research.

Being a modified third stage of the Saturn V rocket, Skylab consisted of the following parts:

• Orbital workshop (a quarter of the crew lived and worked in it).
• Gateway module (allowing access to the outside of the station).
• Multiple docking gateway (allowed several Apollo spacecraft to dock with the station at the same time).
• Mount for the Apollo telescope (there were telescopes for observing the Sun, stars and Earth). Keep in mind that the Hubble Space Telescope had not yet been built.
• Apollo spacecraft (command and service module for transporting the crew to Earth and back).

Skylab was equipped with two additional crews. Both of these crews spent 59 and 84 days in orbit, respectively.

Skylab was not intended to be a permanent space retreat, but rather a workshop in which the United States would test the effects of long periods in space on the human body. When the third crew left the station, it was abandoned. Very soon, an intense solar flare knocked it out of orbit. The station fell into the atmosphere and burned up over Australia in 1979.

Mir station: the first permanent space station

• Living quarters (where there were separate crew cabins, a toilet, a shower, a kitchen and a garbage compartment).
• Transition compartment for additional station modules.
• An intermediate compartment that connected the working module to the rear docking ports.
• The fuel compartment in which the fuel tanks and rocket engines.
• The astrophysical module “Kvant-1”, which contained telescopes for studying galaxies, quasars and neutron stars.
• The Kvant-2 scientific module, which provided equipment for biological research, Earth observations and space walks.
• Technological module "Crystal", in which biological experiments were carried out; it was equipped with a dock to which American shuttles could dock.
• The Spectrum module was used to observe natural resources the Earth and the Earth's atmosphere, as well as to support biological and natural science experiments.
• The Nature module contained radar and spectrometers to study the Earth's atmosphere.
• A docking module with ports for future dockings.
• The Progress supply ship was an unmanned resupply ship that brought new food and equipment from Earth, and also removed waste.
• The Soyuz spacecraft provided the main transport from Earth and back.

In 1994, in preparation for the International Space Station, NASA astronauts spent time aboard Mir. During the stay of one of the four cosmonauts, Jerry Linenger, an onboard fire broke out on the Mir station. During the stay of Michael Foale, another of the four cosmonauts, the supply ship Progress crashed into Mir.

The Russian space agency could no longer maintain Mir, so together with NASA they agreed to abandon Mir and focus on the ISS. On November 16, 2000, it was decided to send Mir to Earth. In February 2001, Mir's rocket engines slowed down the station. It entered the earth's atmosphere on March 23, 2001, burned and collapsed. The debris fell in the South Pacific near Australia. This marked the end of the first permanent space station.

International Space Station (ISS)

Assembly of the ISS in orbit began in 1998. On October 31, 2000, the first crew from Russia was launched. The three people spent nearly five months aboard the ISS, activating systems and conducting experiments.

In October 2003, China became the third space power, and since then it has been fully developing its space program, and in 2011 it launched the Tiangong-1 laboratory into orbit. Tiangong became the first module for China's future space station, which was planned to be completed by 2020. The space station can serve both civilian and military purposes.

The future of space stations

Other interesting idea lies in the location of the space station. The ISS requires periodic acceleration due to its location at . However, there are two places between the Earth and the Moon called Lagrange points L-4 and L-5. At these points, the Earth's and Moon's gravity are balanced, so the object will not be pulled by the Earth or the Moon. The orbit will be stable. The community, which calls itself the L5 Society, was formed 25 years ago and is promoting the idea of ​​locating a space station at one of these locations. The more we learn about the workings of the ISS, the better the next space station will be, and the dreams of von Braun and Tsiolkovsky will finally become a reality.

The mid-1960s was truly NASA's golden era - in 1966, the agency's budget was 4.41% of the US federal budget, and it employed 410 thousand people (plus another 370 thousand contract workers). Neither before nor since has the agency ever had comparable resources. For comparison, today NASA's budget is 0.49% of the federal budget, and it employs 79 thousand people (plus 19 thousand contract employees).

Nowadays, most people associate the Apollo program exclusively with flights to the Moon. However, in those years, NASA had a lot of projects on how to use lunar technology in other missions. The collection of these proposals is known as the Apollo Application Program (AAP). The most famous application projects were:

• Additional flights of Apollo 18, Apollo 19 and Apollo 20. The Copernicus and Tycho craters were considered as possible landing sites for such missions.


• A 28-day mission in polar lunar orbit.


• Creation of a lunar base.



• Creation of the ATM space observatory for observing the Sun based on the lunar module.


• Re-equipment in low-Earth orbit of the third stage of the Saturn-5 rocket with the aim of creating a large orbital station on its basis.

Due to the cancellation of the last three Apollo missions, NASA was left with three unused Saturn V rockets, as well as a stockpile of Apollo command modules. This freed the agency from having to stick with the old plan to refit the Saturn V's third stage in orbit, which would have required a minimum of two launches: an orbital station, called Skylab, was built on Earth from the third stage's casing and launched in May 1973.

Thanks to its “rocket” origin, the station could boast phenomenal dimensions for those times: length - 24.6 meters, maximum diameter - 6.6 meters, weight - 77 tons. The total internal volume of the Skylab cylinder was 352 m³. This gave the astronauts a lot of freedom of movement - they had personal cabins, a shower stall, they could easily jump from wall to wall during gymnastics, and even flew inside the ASMU spacewalk rig. How it was possible to imagine from the video data.

And this is how the in-station testing of the installation for moving in outer space took place.

However, all this might not have happened, because when the station entered orbit an accident occurred - a torn heat-insulating screen knocked out one solar battery and jammed another. Without thermal protection, the temperature inside the station began to quickly increase, so the first expedition to Skylab SL-2 was mainly focused on rescuing it, changing solar panels and installing a special panel instead of the lost heat shield.

The successful resuscitation of the station was greatly facilitated by the ATM solar observatory, the second implemented element of the extended Apollo program. It was launched in conjunction with Skylab and had its own solar panels, which were able to provide the station with a minimum of energy during the repair period.

Subsequently, two more expeditions flew to Skylab. The SL-3 crew worked in orbit for 59 days, and in addition large quantity experiments and observations, marked one of the most famous in history. In addition, the astronauts left a “gift” for their replacements - when the crew of the next expedition arrived at the station, they probably found, to their great joy, three “figures” in flight suits silently looking at them. The third expedition worked at the station for 84 days, which at that time was quite a good achievement. It was blocked only by the Salyut-6 crew in 1978.

Interestingly, a special rescue ship was built along with the station, which was a converted Apollo command module capable of accommodating five people. Once, a rocket with a rescue ship installed on it was even launched onto the launch pad, but fortunately everything turned out okay.

Another interesting fact is that only two Skylabs were built. There was a proposal to use the second station for an experiment to simulate gravity by spinning it in orbit. Another option was to use it as part of the Soyuz-Apollo program with the possibility of Soviet crews visiting the station (the so-called International Skylab). However, due to ongoing cuts in space budgets, the station remained on Earth.

As for the original Skylab, after the third expedition left the station in February 1974, it was left with supplies of water for at least six months and oxygen for 420 days. An option was considered to launch a short-term fourth expedition in 1974, which would raise the station's orbit (Skylab did not have its own engine), but it was canceled - it was believed that Skylab would exist in its current orbit (440 kilometers) at least until the early 1980s.

The start of operation of the shuttles was planned for 1979. An option was considered in which, during one of the first flights (initially, the sixth mission), the shuttle would raise the station's orbit. After that, as part of the following missions, the station would be significantly refurbished: it was planned that Skylab would be equipped with its own engine, a new docking port and airlock compartment, additional scientific modules, and by the mid-1980s it would accommodate a crew of 6-7 people, and it could function as a kind of base for receiving shuttles.

However, like all good undertakings, this idea did not survive the meeting with reality. On the one hand, the shuttle program was faced with a lot of delays and postponements. On the other hand, engineers underestimated solar activity and its impact on the lifespan of orbital objects. Already in 1976, NORAD experts calculated that the station would enter the atmosphere in mid-1979.

As the first shuttle flight was postponed and postponed, it became clear that the station would be lost. The military quickly offered its “services” to get rid of the station using missiles, but this proposal was immediately rejected. The second option was to send an unmanned, powered module that would lift Skylab into orbit. It required two launches to assemble it in orbit.

But by this time, supporters of the idea of ​​​​creating a new modular orbital station had won on Earth (this project later became known as Freedom). Skylab was built using 1960s technology, many of its components needed replacement, and the station itself was designed for visiting expeditions, and not for long-term residence. Another problem was that, like on Apollo, the pressure on the station was 0.35 of Earth's, and the atmosphere consisted of pure oxygen, while the shuttles maintained an atmosphere similar to that of Earth. So, to get inside the station, new crews would have to undergo decompression in the airlock compartment. But at the same time, it was precisely these aspects that aroused the interest of those who defended the need to revive Skylab: it was important for engineers to collect information about what condition the station would be in after five years of being without a crew and the effects of its long stay in space. And shuttle crews could use Skylab as a kind of training ground where they could hone their space repair skills.

Freedom orbital station concept

Now this and other fragments are in various museums. As their analysis showed, the station showed amazing survivability and crumbled into debris at an altitude of only 16 kilometers. Esperance County authorities ultimately billed NASA A$400 for “contamination of the area.” It was paid only in 2009, not by an agency, but by a Californian DJ on his own initiative.

So the only one completed project The Apollo application program was completed and the final line was drawn under the entire space era. The first flight of the space shuttle Columbia took place on April 12, 1981. As for the Freedom station, after a number of budget cuts and transfers, it evolved into the American segment of the ISS, the assembly of which began only in 1998.

Since the late 1950s, the first projects of orbital stations began to appear in the USSR and the USA - spacecraft that would allow people to stay in near-planetary orbit for a long time and conduct research there. In the 1960s, the United States, encouraged by successes in the Apollo space program, began serious development of large space stations that were expected to create a habitable scientific base on the Moon, and in the future even to carry out a human flight to Mars.

The Americans' ardor was cooled by two important events.

One of them was the Vietnam War, in which the United States intervened in 1965 - it caused significant damage to the country's economy. The second was the completion of the Apollo program in 1975. The budget allocated for space research has been severely cut.

However, after the cancellation of the Apollo lunar expeditions, the Saturn 5 super-heavy rockets, the largest rockets of those years, were still available. By that time, designer Wernher von Braun had already developed a design for an orbital station, where it was proposed to use the upper stage of the Saturn-1B rocket as a living space. The station performed in two guises - first it launched itself into orbit as a rocket stage, then the vacated liquid hydrogen tank was retrofitted, and the stage turned into an orbital station. A docking station, solar panels and other equipment were provided. The more powerful Saturn 5 could launch a fully equipped station into orbit, which made the option of retrofitting a hydrogen tank unnecessary.

Skylab was built on the upper stage of the Saturn 1B rocket.

The hull was covered with thermal insulation, the interior of the tanks was adapted for life and scientific research crew of three.

At the bottom of the station there was a household compartment with rooms for rest, cooking and eating, sleeping and personal hygiene. Above was the laboratory compartment where the astronauts worked. Water, food and clothing in quantities sufficient for the work of three crews of three astronauts were stored in special containers before the launch. The water was in reservoirs located at the top of the station. Food was stored in food cupboards, refrigerators and freezers, also located in the upper part of the station and in the rooms for rest, preparation and eating.

Solar panels were mounted on the outside of the station's body, which were pressed against the body during the station's launch into orbit. On the outside, the station was surrounded by a thin cylindrical aluminum screen, which, after being launched into orbit, was moved away from the surface of the station using special levers and, being at some distance from it, served to protect the body from impacts of micrometeorites and from the effects of intense solar radiation.

At the head of the station's orbital block there was an equipment compartment, an airlock chamber and a berthing compartment. The station also had a shower, where water was supplied through a hose under pressure, which was then removed using a vacuum system - otherwise the drops could damage the equipment. Just one trip to the shower consumed about 3 liters of water and took two and a half hours.

“It takes a lot longer, but then you smell good,” Paul Weitz, one of the astronauts, later shared.

It was assumed that Skylab would go into orbit on May 14, 1973, and the next day the first expedition - astronauts Charles Conrad, Paul Waitz and Joseph Kerwin - would arrive at the station.

The launch took place on time. However, after Saturn 5 put the station into orbit, problems began - in the first minute of the flight, a high-speed air pressure tore off part of the protective screen and one of the six solar panels near the station. Another panel did not open. As a result, the power generated by the batteries turned out to be much less than the calculated one, and on-board systems and scientific equipment could not function normally. Soon the temperature at the station began to rise catastrophically, reaching +38 °C inside and +80 °C outside. The ability to operate Skylab was in jeopardy.

In order to bring the station into working condition, it was decided to urgently manufacture a “protective umbrella” attached to the Skylab body on four spokes. And carry out emergency repair and restoration work. This is exactly what the first crew, launched on May 25, 1973, did for almost the entire 28 days of their stay on board. He performed several spacewalks, also uncovering a jammed solar array.

The next two expeditions were already engaged scientific work. The second, however, also had to play the role of repairmen - Jack Lausma and Owen Garriott had to install a second heat-insulating screen and replace the gyroscopes.

The second expedition became famous for a practical joke staged by Garriott. When the crew once again contacted the control center, a woman’s voice sounded on the air: “Welcome, Houston. I haven't talked to you for so long. Bob, is that you? This is Helen, Owen's wife.

The boys had not eaten homemade food for so long that I decided to bring them something warm.

Reception... Okay, I have to go. I see the boys flying up to the command module, and I wasn't allowed to talk to you. See you later, Bob!

While those on Earth were trying to understand what was happening at the station, the astronauts laughed and explained: Garriott took a voice recorder with him, into which his wife spoke several phrases in advance. The dialogue itself was rehearsed with the operator.

Later, the same crew played a prank on the members of the third expedition: when they arrived at the station, three silent figures were waiting for them, exercising on simulators and sitting in the toilet. It turned out that the previous crew took three old overalls, filled them with all sorts of garbage, and attached “heads” to them from paper bags. Since the team had a lot of work to do, they had no time to clean up the figures for some time. Astronaut Edward Gibson later recalled:

“I felt like they were looking at me, checking everything I did, but not providing any help. Creepy."

The third expedition, consisting of rookie astronauts Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue, staged a real riot on the ship.

The two previous expeditions spent 28 and 59 days in orbit, respectively, while the new crew went there for 84 days. In addition, their missions were much more tightly scheduled than those of previous crews. In particular, big role was dedicated to medical research, so the astronauts had to do a lot of physical exercise, running in place.

After this, the rebels turned off communications and rested all day, contemplating the Earth through the observation window. The next day they reestablished contact and continued working.

This case became indicative for psychologists - no one had previously studied the consequences of such a long stay of people in space. After this, it was decided to more carefully consider the scope of work in accordance with the psychology and stress level of the crew. NASA specialists carefully worked with the crew's requests, reducing their workload in the following weeks.

Despite numerous difficulties, expeditions to Skylab carried out great amount biological, technical and astrophysical experiments. The most important were telescopic observations of the Sun in the X-ray and ultraviolet ranges; many flares were filmed and coronal holes were discovered. Spacewalks during the expeditions involved regularly changing the film of astronomical instruments mounted on the outside of the station.

The astronauts also observed the behavior of mice and mosquitoes in space, conducted observations of the Earth, and studied how metal melting and crystal growth occur on board the station. One of the experiments was devoted to how spiders weave webs in zero gravity. In addition, they were able to observe Comet Kohoutek.

After the third crew returned to Earth, the station was mothballed.

Its further use was supposed to be resumed when the shuttles, reusable spacecraft, began flying. With their help, NASA intended to enlarge Skylab by adding several more orbital modules to it and increase the number of research crew members to six. However, no final decision on funding was made.

Meanwhile, increased solar activity led to an increase in the density of the atmosphere at the height of Skylab's orbit, and the station's descent accelerated. Raising the station to a higher orbit was impossible, since it did not have its own engine - the orbit was raised only by the engines of the docked Apollos, in which the crews arrived at the station.

According to MCC calculations, the station was supposed to enter the atmosphere at 16:37 GMT on July 11, 1979. The station's flooding area was assumed to be a point 1,300 km south of Cape Town, South Africa. However, due to an error in the calculations and the fact that the station collapsed more slowly than expected, some of the debris fell in western Australia, south of the city of Perth.

When NASA realized that some of the debris ended up on an Australian farm owned by a family of four, US President Jim Carter himself called its owner in the middle of the night with the words: “Mr. Siler, I personally and the US government sincerely apologize to you for this incident.” . Please tell me, was no one hurt on your farm?”

"A! I’ll look at the bulls now... Apparently not, don’t worry!” the farmer replied.

By an amusing coincidence, on July 20, the Miss Universe competition was held in Perth and a large fragment of the station's shell was displayed on the stage where the contenders performed.

Now this and other fragments found in Australia are exhibited in museums. After this, the United States did not create orbital stations for several decades.

The American orbital station Skylab was launched into orbit on May 14, 1973. According to the plans of NASA specialists, it was supposed to be in operation for almost a hundred years. However, the Americans flooded this station already in 1979. And the reason for its liquidation still remains an unsolved mystery.

Experts, having looked at the published photographs of Skylab, also noticed that in the front part of the station there is a power truss weighing about 11.4 tons, thanks to the existence of which the station’s fairing seemed to be an extra element. The question arose: why put almost 12 tons of extra cargo into orbit, if every kilogram of the weight being launched turns out to be literally golden in terms of costs?

Some scientists have expressed the opinion that there was no damage when Skylab was launched into orbit. And the astronauts of the first expedition, who went into outer space three times, prepared the station for docking with a gigantic UFO.