Your Future in Space

Alan L. Bean

When I was growing up, airplanes were my great love. With my parents, I would visit the nearest airport to watch planes roar off into the sky. Their power and grace excited me. But I never dreamed of the much more explosive power of the Saturn V rocket that one day would send me to the Moon. Even less did I guess I would spend 59 days in space as commander of an orbiting laboratory known as Skylab Mission Two.

Astronauts of the future will have the opportunity to go even farther in space. The National Commission on Space predicts that someday we will not only complete a planned space station in Earth orbit, but will also return to the Moon to establish a lunar base. Mars is also waiting. Someday, readers of this magazine may venture into the outer reaches of our solar system. When you think about space it's hard to dream too big a dream.

Living in Space

The space station will become our first permanent settlement beyond Earth's atmosphere. Crews will shuttle to and from Earth on a regular basis. They'll live in more comfort than the Apollo astronauts did on their trips to the Moon, or our Skylab crew. Each crew member will have a private compartment for sleeping and relaxing. Food, packaged in individual containers, will be similar to that on the shuttle: dried meats, fruit and vegetables, but there'll also be refrigerators, so there will be some fresh foods too. Crew members will be able to shower; and engineers are designing washers and dryers to work in zero gravity.

The lack of gravity on board will help scientists develop experimental metals, crystals and other materials, all with properties that can't be produced on Earth. At this point, we can barely imagine the potential of the space station.

Some of the things we discovered in Skylab will help in planning space stations. Skylab was the first American program in which the goal was living and working in space. On previous missions, the main goal was exploration. On Skylab, Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott and I spent 59 days in space performing experiments.

Moon Base

By the early 21st century, we may have a lunar base. Wendell W. Mendell, who was with NASA's Solar System Exploration Division, suggested that Moon settlers eventually will grow their own food and will mine the Moon for minerals, including fuel to propel rockets farther into space. But in the more immediate future, in addition to pilots and scientists, NASA will need to recruit geographers, oceanographers, astronomers and medical doctors.

Unlike the space station, which must continuously be resupplied, Mendell said, the lunar base has the potential of becoming self-sufficient.

Mars and Beyond

Meanwhile, we'll continue sending probes to Mars, as well as to its moons, the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter. The probes will be robots, directed by human and artificial intelligence to explore and to perform tasks similar to those we did as astronauts during the Apollo program. Computer engineers and automation experts will be needed to design these machines.

Man will eventually step onto the surface of Mars—but not merely to plant a flag and come back home. Mars is 49 million miles from Earth. Bridging this gap takes nine or more months; the round trip is nearly two years.

Beyond these great adventures, it's difficult to make reasonable guesses concerning our progress farther into the universe. Who knows what new tools science will offer us?

How to Get There From Here

When I ventured into space, the only route was by learning to fly. As we explore space in the future, we will need not only pilots, but also technicians, scientists—and probably people with jobs nobody has yet imagined or described.

Those interested in space careers should first get a good education, says Joseph Loftus, assistant director of engineering at the Johnson Space Center. He recommends a college degree in science, including mathematics, physics, engineering and biology.

Perhaps equally important is having a desire to succeed in space. During my learning years, I was never the smartest student. After I joined the Navy, I was never the best pilot. But I tried hard, studied hard and worked hard to improve because I loved what I was doing. I enjoyed the thrill of exploring the unknown.

I have seen fellow pilots killed in crashes of experimental aircraft. Three astronauts died in a launch-pad fire during the Apollo program. Risk will always be a part of the dream of reaching farther into space. We were all shocked by this realization once again, Jan. 28, 1986, when the Challenger crew died in an explosion just after the launch.

Attempts to pioneer can sometimes be painful. But the pioneer spirit also leads to moments such as the one when Neil A. Armstrong stepped onto the Moon on July 21, 1969, saying, "That's one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind."