New control centers, new ground teams, new software, new language, new international partners. He is lead spacewalker on the first assembly flight. This is going to be a tremendous step in human history in space. But even if the first two construction flights go well, the undertaking faces a future fraught with relentless risks and hurdles, including the ever-present possibility of a catastrophic accident that could halt the program, and the potential for a total collapse of the already troubled partnership with the Russians as that country's economy unravels. Some aspects of the plan are still being worked out, including lingering problems with software for American components and fallback plans in case the Russians default on their commitments.
Experts caution that it is unclear whether either country can maintain the required flight rate.
Similar anxieties apply to the task confronting the crews that must assemble the outpost. To build the space station will require some 960 hours of spacewalking, more than 600 hours by U.S. astronauts. This dwarfs the 377 hours of American spacewalk experience in all of history to date, Harbaugh said, and is the equivalent of about 30 missions like the elaborately choreographed one required to repair the deformed Hubble Space Telescope. Harbaugh and others earlier told project managers bluntly that the demands had gotten out of hand. We drew a line in the sand. . . .