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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 1254.PDF
On 12 May the UK's Helen Shar man, a research scientist from Mars (the confectionery com pany), will insert herself into the right-hand seat of the Soyuz TM12 flight cabin on top of a Soyuz booster on Pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and prepare to be blasted into orbit, becoming the first Briton in space. She will be responsible for operating cabin atmosphere and space-suit controls, radio systems, navigation computer, waste water dumps and the manual override for the cabin oxygen supply, as well as televi sion cameras. Travelling with her will be Soviet commander Anatoli Artsebarski and flight engineer Sergei Krikalyov. The trio will spend two days orbiting the Earth before docking to the forward port of the Mir space station. After eight days in space, Sharman will return to Earth aboard Soyuz TM11 with cosmonauts Anatoli Afanasyev and Musa Manarov, who were launched to Mir last December. For six of those days aboard Mir, Shar man will operate 17 biotechnological, medi cal and technical experiments —all Soviet. The British element of the Project Juno mission will be Sharman herself. While it is understandable that, because of lack of British science involvement, Juno is receiving some bad press, one positive result of the project is that Sharman, her back-up, Maj Tim Mace (both fully quali fied and trained cosmonauts), and 14 other Juno finalists have been put forward as candidates for the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut corps. One will probably join the new corps but since the UK Government has decided not to participate in the Hermes spaceplane and hardly at all in Columbus, the chances of flying may be slim indeed. MIRTH AND ANGER The Juno mission will no doubt create some interest in space but, realistically, it will not do much for the British space programme. Indeed, to other ESA members such as France and Germany, which are forking out $50 million between them to fly two nationally-funded missions to Mir with a complement of national scientific experi ments in 1992, Britain's hitch-hike into space is the subject of much mirth and, in some quarters, anger since it is costing its Soviet, rather than British, sponsor a mere $5 million. The whole affair seems to typify the story of missed opportunity that has plagued the British space programme. Britain was on the verge of flying a Ministry of Defence-funded astronaut aboard Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS61H in June 1986, but the Challenger accident cancelled the flight. A manned flight to the Mir space station was discussed soon after, when Roy Gibson, then director-general of the newly formed British National Space Centre, was given the JUNO- The story of Project Juno typifies the tale of Britain's missed opportunity in space, reports Tim Fumiss. brief to formulate a strong space pro gramme with the promise of three times more funding. A year later Gibson's space plan was kept in the wings by the Government, which refused him more money. He resigned and, as if to put the final nail in the coffin, the then "space minister" Kenneth Clarke, re fusing to join the Columbus and Hermes programmes in 1987, described manned spaceflight as a "great frolic in the sky". In 1986, the London-based insurance company Jardine Glanville formed a space subsidiary, Jardine Interplanetary, as mar keting agent in the West for Soviet space agency Glavkosmos, with a view primarily THE JOLLY FOLLY? to winning Proton satellite launch con tracts. Leading the effort was Jardine's Mark Raggett who, despite several forays into the Soviet Union, failed to make much head way. Raggett was convinced, from conversa tions with the Soviets, that he could arrange a manned flight to Mir by a British astro naut, however. 30 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 15 - 21 May, 1991
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