Freedom International Space Station
International Space Station Freedom.
Image found on the internet
Space Station Freedom was intended to be a great leap in international cooperation, employing parts and crew from just about every major space agency on Earth, the US National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA), the Russian space program, and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Space Station Freedom
Image found on the internet
Throughout the construction of the Freedom, NASA's Enterprise class space shuttle fleet came into its own as the workhorses which brought most of the materials up to orbit for construction. After construction, the space shuttle was the primary crew transfer vehicle, as it's seven crew capacity meant that most of the crew of Freedom could be switched out in one launch. If anything were to happen while a shuttle was not docked to the station, causing the crew to have to eveacuate, then they had a couple of options. They could either use a modified Soyuz space capsule which was always docked to the station or an X-38 crew transfer vehicle. The X-38 is very reminiscant in design to the lifting bodies that NASA used in the 1960's to test the feasability of unpowered, gliding descent in preparation for the space shuttle program. For refueling purposes, the space station used a Russian Soyuz-Progress cargo ship with a capacity of 6000 pounds.
The space station had a total of six preasurized laboratory sections supplied by the various countries which were in cooperation in the space station program. There were also various external areas on the station truss used for unpressurized experiments.
Specifications:
Length: 79.9 meters
Diameter: 108.6 meters
Crew: 7
- Propulsion:
- Chemical attitude control thrusters
- 4 photvoltaic power cells, each generating 23 killowatts of power
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