History of ISS - Part 1

An Orbital View

ISS Long Exposure Photograph - Credit: Mark Humpage

I was fishing in my in-law’s backyard pond one night. It was a late spring evening in Kansas and, overall, cool weather with a nice breeze. I hadn't caught any fish, therefore there was a bit of creeping jealousy since my, then soon-to-be, wife was catching fish on nearly every cast. Once it was time to go, I was clearly upset. Not a single fish for me.

While walking back to the house, I gazed up. The stars had just started to come to be after the sun fell far enough below the horizon. It was a beautiful crimson blue with only the brightest points showing their glory. Right then is when I saw it. There was a bright star-like light moving in the sky. It wasn't blinking in the traditional way that airplanes do when they go by, so I knew exactly what it was. It was the International Space Station. For a space geek, there was no better way to reverse my mood.

The International Space Station, or ISS for short, is one of the greatest science and engineering projects that gets very little press. Why is that? After all, it is the largest object ever assembled in space: just over the size of an American football field. It has a mass of over 450 tonnes and when the sun reflects off its gigantic solar arrays down towards the viewers eyes, nothing in the night sky is brighter, save for the moon. Six people regularly inhabit this point of light, moving around the world every 90 minutes at nearly 28,000 kilometers per hour.

Those star sailors conduct cutting edge research, from fluid dynamics, to plant growth, and the study of the human body in ways that could never be done on earth with hopes to better understand cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and so much more. Crews are inspiring thousands of young kids into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) with their regular live streams to classrooms across the globe. The ISS is arguably a bigger, greater, and more challenging project than going to the Moon was over 45 years ago, but the average person rarely hears about it, let alone knows its amazing story.

The ISS shares a similar problem that the recently retired space shuttle fleet had: its apparent routineness. Another problem it shares, is how NASA communicates ISS information. To the average person, the latest twerks from some celebrity meltdown is much more juicy office conversation than the fact that six people just zipped above their heads over 400 kilometers high at over 20 times the speed of a bullet.

Tracy Caldwell Dyson in Cupola of ISS - Credit: NASA

This is a very unfortunate situation because, as a student of history, I find the ISS to have quite a story. Its story includes the fall of a superpower, a government pressuring a company to fail, a program near congressional cancellation, major on orbit failures, near misses from space debris, and yes, even international cooperation for the betterment of the world, just to name some.

The story starts before the space race and is still ongoing. It is the story of our lasting presence in space, the beginning of a private space industry, and the changing from a cold war mentality to something new and sustainable. This encompasses the lives of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of person hours of lifetime work. The ISS is about more than just science research; it is about our future in space. Will the ISS be just a blip in the history of the world, literally falling into the ocean after its use, or will it be the first symbol of a species that grew up on a tiny, fragile world and ventured out to settle others?

Read Part 2 Here