UK engineers and scientists - with the support of the British Interplanetary Society - are urging the UK government to fire the public's imagination and catch the vision for future space exploration by joining the International Space Station (ISS) programme.

A new contribution to the debate about how the UK should be involved in future space exploration is featured exclusively in the latest edition of Spaceflight magazine, the British Interplanetary Society’s monthly space publication.

Article author, Mark Hempsell, of Bristol University’s aerospace engineering department says: “Our proposal is for UK industry to design, build and launch a habitation module to enhance the everyday living facilities for astronauts.

“This proposal shows what Britain could still achieve at a relatively modest cost.”

As well as inspiring both the public and a new generation of young people, Hempsell claims such a project would significantly raise the UK's profile in the space-faring community around the world.

“It would allow UK scientists to use the Space Station for experiments, pave the way for British astronauts, and bring significant development and investment to the country's industry,” he said.

Hempsell argues that current options under consideration are very limited and would not allow the development of the full potential of the UK science or engineering communities.

“Such low-scale programmes are not a good basis for later participation in any international human lunar and Martian programmes because they have no engineering contribution,” he stated.

The British Habitation Extension Module (HEM) proposal would provide extra crew support facilities that would enable more effective crew use of the existing science laboratories.

“The design study illustrates that the many requirements for a late, but full, entry into the ISS programme can be met by a single system and is still a possible option for Britain,” explained Hempsell.

Two HEM modules would extend Node 3 and add around 100 m3 to the Space Station’s living areas.

The total cost of developing building and launching - on a Russian Souyuz/Fregat rocket - the two HEMs would be £530 million, spread over five or six years to 2015.

“It does now seem to have dawned on decision makers that the earlier exclusion of the UK from manned spaceflight in general and the ISS in particular was not in the national interest – at least from the science and motivational aspects,” says Hempsell.

“Eventually it may also dawn on them that the damage to the aerospace industrial base is also severely detrimental. The HEM study shows it is still possible to rectify this damage as well.”

Notes

The London-based British Interplanetary Society has an international membership of several thousand and was formed in 1933 to promote the exploration and utilisation of space.

In the 1930s, the BIS came up with plans for a manned lunar spacecraft, three decades before Apollo. In the late 1970s, it prepared a detailed design for a robot star-probe, Project Daedalus, to explore the system of Barnard's Star.

It publishes the monthly magazine Spaceflight and a technical periodical Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

See also the Society’s ‘British human spaceflight campaign’ http://www.bis-spaceflight.com/sitesia.aspx/page/1191/l/en-gb

[Source: Campaign for UK Astronauts]
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Read my response: The Hempsell plan: Boldly Going the Wrong Way.