What occurs if an astronaut refuses to return from space?(Part1)

J44U...zSeP

28 Jan 2024

Space is now more accessible than ever. Many countries have their own space programs and commercial astronauts are now going into space. What occurs if an astronaut refuses to return from space?

Alper Gezeravcı recently became Turkey's first astronaut as he went to the International Space Station (ISS). This shows that space is no longer out of reach, and countries like the EU, US, China, Japan, and India are making efforts to explore deep space. However, have you ever considered what would happen if an astronaut refused to return from space? This is a true story with significant implications. Let's delve into this event while the topic of space is prominent in our country.

What Is the International Space Station? (ISS)

The International Space Station is a large spacecraft in orbit around Earth. It serves as a home where crews of astronauts and cosmonauts live. The space station is also a unique science laboratory. Several nations worked together to build and use the space station.

No fix, no return.

"If you don't give me a chance to fix my tool, I won't come back"

Just like Turkey, China was once a nation that never went into space. Even though we were much later, the first Chinese-born astronaut went into space in 1985. Some of you may have heard of him; he was Taylor Wang, a physicist specializing in fluid mechanics. When Taylor Wang first went into space, it was probably the ultimate moment of pride for the Chinese nation. But what awaited him on his second day in space would make history.

Wang was the principal investigator of an experiment called the Drop Dynamics Module, which aimed to reveal the fundamental physical behavior of liquid drops in microgravity. He had largely developed the experiment himself, and his expertise in this field proved to be a lottery ticket when NASA selected him to fly on STS-51-B, the 17th flight of the Space Shuttle program. Wang, along with six other crew members, launched aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on April 29, 1985. On the second day of the mission, Wang tried to activate the Drop Dynamics Module to test his experiment in space. Unfortunately, the experiment to which he had devoted so much of his life did not work. When Wang saw that the experiment was not working, he asked NASA flight controllers if he could spare some more time to troubleshoot the problem and perhaps fix the experiment.

For those who don't know, for the ISS and NASA's Space Shuttle missions, time is everything. And while you're doing an experiment, there are crews waiting behind you, and they have experiments to do too. There's a very detailed timetable for each crew member, so it's frankly not possible to take extra time for an experiment. So the flight controllers said "no" to Wang's request. Wang, however, was eager and pushed for more time: "Listen, I know my system very well, give me another chance." Time was running out and the schedule was getting tighter. Flight controllers were still hesitating and reluctant to grant additional time. Wang was desperate. And that desperation gave him the courage to give an answer he would not normally have thought of:
"Hey, if you don't give me a chance to fix my dick, I'm not coming back!"

The first astronauts not from NASA

One of the primary objectives of the Space Shuttle missions was to conduct research in microgravity. Working with the European Space Agency, NASA developed a pressurized module called Spacelab and flew it on several missions. The STS-51-B mission was the second flight of this Spacelab module and involved 15 different experiments ranging from astrophysics to the behavior of liquids in microgravity.

Since these missions did not involve things like deploying satellites, NASA started flying "payload specialists" who were tasked with completing experiments on board.

The two highest-priority experiments on this Challenger mission were materials science and fluid mechanics. Accordingly, two payload experts - Lodewijk van den Berg, a Dutch-born American chemical engineer, and Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, a Chinese-born American physicist - were chosen for their expertise in these fields.

As a teenager, Wang continued his studies in the US, earning a PhD in low-temperature superfluid physics and joining NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1972. A few years later, he became a US citizen. His research involved the behavior of droplets and other sphere-like objects in zero gravity, and he eventually flew on NASA zero-gravity flights. To take this work to the next level in space, he developed the "Drop Dynamics Module" experiment.

However, NASA did not give the same training to payload specialists as to the original NASA astronauts. Payload specialists received lighter and shorter training. So some of the traditional astronauts viewed payload specialists as outsiders who were not to be trusted completely.

Eventually Wang went into space for a week-long mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Because there was so much research to be done, the crew was divided into "Silver" and "Gold" teams, with Wang on the Gold team led by Robert Overmyer.

When Wang went to operate the Drop Dynamics Module on the second day, the experiment did not work.

Wang later recounted his feelings in a 2002 Smithsonian book, Space Shuttle, which includes many photographs and excerpts from interviews with astronauts from the first 20 years of the Shuttle program.

Wang's explanations here help us to understand him very well:

"When I turned on my own device, it didn't work. You can imagine my panic. I had spent five years preparing for this experiment. Not only that, I was the first person of Chinese descent to fly the shuttle and the Chinese community was very interested. You have to understand Asian culture. You are not only representing yourself; you are representing your family. The first thing you learn as a child is not to bring shame to the family. So when I realized that the experiment failed, I could imagine my father saying to me, "What's wrong with you? You can't even do one experiment right?" I was really in a very desperate situation."