Firm Shows Off Space Station Plant

The U.S. space effort entered a new era Tuesday as McDonnell Douglas executives rolled open the doors of a huge new facility in Huntington Beach for assembling key components of the world’s first orbiting space station.

Completion of the five-story, 22,500-square-foot clean room--the largest dust-free manufacturing facility the company has ever built--”marks the transition” from design to actual production of U.S. components for the international scientific station, said Rodney Linford, the physicist who heads the firm’s space station program.

The space station, which will take five years to complete once construction starts in orbit about 220 miles above the Earth late next year, will provide a stable platform for long-term scientific and medical experiments.

Until now, astronauts and scientists have been limited to relatively brief stays in space, orbiting the Earth in small satellite capsules or in space shuttle vehicles.

The first parts are scheduled to be taken into orbit in November 1997 by a Russian crew. The cylindrical module will serve as the space station’s central storage unit.

An American mission will be launched the next month from Cape Canaveral carrying the first of the McDonnell Douglas-built units. The mission will be “a major leap for the space program,” said astronaut Robert Cabana, the mission commander. Cabana and three other members of the shuttle crew attended Tuesday’s dedication ceremonies for the facility.

Subsequent missions will add living quarters, scientific labs, power equipment and other units to the station, which will grow steadily over a five-year period until it reaches its scheduled full size--”big enough to fill the entire Rose Bowl,” Linford said.

The station is being funded primarily by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency. McDonnell Douglas has a $2-billion piece of the action as a major subcontractor to Boeing Co.