Outlining myriad hazards of space travel, starting with zero gravity

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LEAVING EARTH: SPACE STATIONS, RIVAL SUPERPOWERS AND THE QUEST FOR INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL

By Robert Zimmerman

ISI, $27.95, 544 pages

REVIEWED BY CHARLES ROUSSEAUX

Every spectacular spacecraft failure proves the same thing: Space travel is a tough, expensive, risky business. Computers crash, rockets explode, probes miss planets and satellites smack into the atmosphere. And then there are human tragedies -- the Challengers, the Columbias.

Yet for every glitch, space travelers find a fix, for every disaster, they find a renewed determination. Sometimes the solutions happen in mid-mission, sometimes, they aren't found until the accident review board finishes its work.

Space enthusiasts worried about where the manned space program is headed will take some heart from reading Robert Zimmerman's "Leaving Earth: Space Stations Rival Superpowers and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel," in which the author tells how determined men and women have mastered, if not totally overcome, many of the hazards of living in space.

Mr. Zimmerman shows that space, for all it's promise, can be a Murphy's Law paradise, in which everything goes wrong, often at exactly the most critical moment. There are the physical difficulties -- the hostile environment outside and the constricted spaces inside space stations. There are physiological challenges of space sickness and bone loss, and the psychological challenges of boredom and claustrophobia and of mismatched teammates stuck together in inescapably tight quarters. Then there are the technical difficulties -- balky computers, leaky space suits, tools that don't work well in zero gravity. Perhaps the greatest problems are created by politicians and space bureaucracies.