Rescue in Space
For many years, the idea of a rescue while actually in space was viewed as somewhat unrealistic, since it was unlikely that any state would have a craft ready to reach astronauts in distress in time to rescue them. The situation has evolved over time, however.
Mir and later the International Space Station have each maintained docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft to be used as an escape mechanism in the event of an on-orbit emergency.
A significant shift in attitudes toward in-flight rescues came as a result of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, after which NASA took steps to prepare the STS-3xx or Launch on Need missions to provide for rescue in certain scenarios. However, no rescue mission was subsequently required through the remaining duration of the Space Shuttle program.
Read more about this topic: Rescue Agreement
Famous quotes containing the words rescue and/or space:
“When in the sea-light every early game
Was played with love and, if death’s waters came,
You’d rescue me. How I would take you from,
Now, if I could, its whirling vacuum.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)