Original subtitles

Today we’re stepping into uncharted territory,

boldly going to check out a construction project

that’s like nothing on Earth,

a structure so incredible, it’s out of this world.

No, literally out of this world.

How do you construct humanity’s greatest technical achievement

250 miles above the earth?

Would all these things fit together

for the very first time meeting in space?

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t go per plan.

How do you convince Earth’s

brightest minds to dedicate decades to its creation?

The number of people

involved worldwide to make this a success...

It’s an engineering wonder.

How do you build it when the technology

doesn’t even exist?

It’s all brand new equipment being used

for the first time.

We had to deal with failure after failure.

How do you get people

to live where the risks are enormous?

It has to be perfect because it has to sustain human life.

And so are the rewards.

It’s possible in the future that we could be printing full

organs and transporting them back to Earth.

Welcome to a world where anything is possible.

The space where innovation and creativity collide.

This isn’t just impressive. It’s revolutionary.

Where the only limit is human imagination.

This wasn’t just ambitious. It was audacious.

No one had ever attempted anything like it.

Unpacking the miracles and mysteries of construction.

Sometimes buildings can change the world.

And this is one of them.

To ask, How Did They Build Tha?

What am I talking about?

The International Space Station, 250 miles up there,

traveling 17,500 miles an hour.

It’s an amazing achievement with an incredible story.

It’s 1984

and President Ronald Reagan has ambitions to conquer space.

The first is a commitment to build

a permanently manned space station,

to be in orbit around the Earth within a decade.

It’ll be a base for many kinds of scientific,

commercial, and industrial activities,

and a stepping stone for further goals.

But America won’t be taking this giant step alone.

International cooperation has long been

a guiding principle of the United States space progra.

Our friends and allies

will be invited to join with us in the Space Station project.

Three, two, one, zero... All engines running.

The International Space Station became fully operational

on May 19th, 2011, but its story begins many years earlier,

back in time and down here on Earth.

The idea of building a space station has existed

for about a hundred years at this point.

There had been some efforts in the 1970s independently,

so the United States and the Soviet Union,

to build a space station.

They both had success.

We in the United States had the Skylab mission.

And the USSR had Salyut.

But these were small and sat in a low orbit,

which meant they only lasted a few years

before they were abandoned to burn up

in the atmosphere.

This new station not only has to last for decades,

but, very importantly, it needs to be a research center

where the boundaries of science are pushed.

When you’re in a microgravity environment,

you can do these things that are just not possible on Earth.

There are incredible advancements

that we can find when we research in microgravity.

From everything from vaccine development

to research in muscular dystrophy

to even growing organs in orbi;

from looking at stem cells

and maybe bringing those back down to Earth one day.

The plan is to create an orbiting space laboratory

for research that’s impossible to do on Earth.

And over its 15 year lifespan,

test technologies that will allow

longer term space travel.

On board, there will be room

for seven permanent residents and guests for the occasional

sleepover as it travels around the Earth every 90 minutes.

But building it comes with some pretty big challenges.

First, they need to figure out how to get it into space,

because the space station will be

bigger than anything carried up there before.

And they have to make sure that when they do,

whatever they build it from

won’t explode under the enormous pressure

in space and can survive

being hit by debris traveling at thousands of miles per hour.

Next, they’ll have to find a wy for the space station

to provide its own power and deal

with the increasing demands as the station grows,

and a system to provide clean air and water

to sustain the astronauts’ long term missions.

Finally, they will build a viewing portal

which needs to be super strong in this harshest

of environments but will give them an out of this world view.

This is going to be one of the most technically

complicated projects ever undertaken by humanity.

So it’s good news that some of the bravest and brightest

from the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe are working

on how to build this boundary-pushing structure.

Starting with how to get it up there.

The finished station will

weigh more than 300 automobiles with the length of almost

an entire American football field.

That’s bigger than anything we’ve ever put in space before.

You cannot launch that one big giant structure in one piece,

so you have to build it in a modular fashion.

The plan is to build 14 modules here on Earth,

which will be joined together in space.

From providing life support systems and laboratories

to sleeping quarters and even a gym,

each will be unique,

but they all have to be incredibly tough.

It’s a bowling alley up there. There’s...

There’s orbital debris everywhere in space.

It’s not improbable that something really...

catastrophic could happen in the future.

In space, everything wants to kill you.

Obviously, there’s no breathable air,

but you’re also being bombarded with radiation.

And then the temperature goes from a plus 250°F

in the sunlight to a -455°F in the shade.

And the laws of physics

dictate that any air squeezed into a spacecraft under pressure

will really want to find its way out.

If there are any weaknesses,

the atmosphere on the station will find them.

If there is a sudden leak,

it can cause a decompression event where air rushes out

suddenly and it could tear the entire station apart.

The perfect shape for pressure is a sphere because all loads

are the same and stresses are the same throughout the sphere.

Which is why it’s been used for unmanned satellites.

But spheres don’t have much usable space inside

for astronauts and they’re difficult to build.

A cylinder would be the next best shape

because you’ve got curvature in one direction,

so you get nice, uniform pressure.

If you think of a soda can, for example, it’s a cylinder,

and that’s to withstand the immense pressure

that’s coming from inside the can.

And it’s the same on the space station.

But then you have to figure out

what to make them from.

The space station module needs

to be made of a material that’s light enough

to launch into space, because every pound

that we launch is actually really expensive,

but it also needs to be really strong.

W e’ve made a mess of our orbits up there.

We have a lot of orbital debris in our low Earth orbit,

and then God himself likes to throw

little micrometeorites at us from deep space.

Micrometeorites are incredibly small,

usually less than a millimeter,

tinier than a grain of sand.

But at space speeds, they are lethal .

So these things are traveling incredibly fast,

you know, five kilometers a second.

And then when they hit these things, they’re stopping very,

very quickly or they’re going right through them.

A collision like this in space

could be catastrophic for the crew inside.

Your skin would dry out

and you would lose all the water in your body.

Imagine building a skyscraper

where the lobby’s made in France,

the parking lot in Texas, and the penthouse in Japan.

Now imagine stitching those pieces together under the ocean.

Only it’s about a million times more difficult.

Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in the late 1980s,

when the U.S. has welcomed friends and allies

from around the world to join the most complicated

construction project in human history.

The first big challenge is to design modules

that can survive the harshest environment... space.

One, you would freeze to death

and two, you wouldn’t have any air to breathe and your skin

would dry out and you would lose all the water in your body.

The team turns to something originally developed

by astronomer Fred Whipple in 1946 to protect spacecrafts.

It’s called the Whipple Shield.

The way it works is that it’s made up of multiple layers

with a gap in the middle,

and that helps to distribute the energy

of the impact across those layers.

So a typical construction of a Whipple Shield

is basically two aluminum plates, right?

With a standoff.

When a particle comes,

it hits the aluminum shield and it penetrates.

The particle basically

breaks up and it creates almost like a plume.

But the space station can’t leave anything to chance.

The energy released at the moment of impact is extreme.

Temperatures spike to thousands of degrees,

instantly melting both the micrometeorite

and whatever it hits.

So these Whipple Shields will have extra protection.

The third layer of a Whipple Shield is Kevlar,

and you might be familiar with that

from something like a bulletproof vest, for exampl.

When micrometeorites hit Kevlar,

the energy dissipates across the fibers.

No shattering,

no bending, just pure strength holding everything together.

Next comes another layer of a fabric called Nextel.

The Nextel can resist very high

temperature and Kevlar has very strong mechanical properties.

So the combination of the two can

disintegrate those particles.

Work gets underway

on the cylinder-shaped modules with their protective skin.

But creating this extraordinary structure is slow going.

And by the early 1990s, Congres is becoming increasingly

concerned that the project is over schedule and over budget.

While it might have been budgeted at a very specific

dollar amount, the space station, of course,

grows beyond in terms of costs,

like, materials certainly increase in cost.

Originally budgeted at eight billion USD, in 1993,

the space station has already cost nine billion,

and the final figure

is estimated to be as much as $35 billion.

That’s where we really

see this sort of pushback from Congress about exactly

what kinds of things they’re willing

to invest money in.

Arguments are being made about the jobs

and the future scientific advancements

that will be lost if the program is ended.

But costs have spiraled with the project

already $1 billion over budget

and the space station still firmly on planet Earth.

On June 23rd, 1993,

Congress votes on whether

to continue with President Reagan’s space projet

or whether to abandon it altogether.

It was a very somber mood.

We were going to lose the vote, most likely.

When the votes are counted,

the outcome stuns everyone.

It was 216 votes to 215.

The project survives by a single vote.

A last minute campaign by a group

of bipartisan Representatives saves the day.

I think one brave politician stood up

to save this marvel that we are talking about today.

The space station survives.

But President Clinton insists that budgets are cut.

It’s a very expensive effort.

And so the more collaborators

you have contributing technology and research and, of course,

money to the effort makes it easier.

It paves the way for Russia

to become a partner in December 1993.

MIR for Discovery.

Discovery for Velodia.

We’re bringing our nations

closer together.

For the first time in many years,

the two Cold War rivals will work together to conquer space.

The next time we approach,

we will shake your hand and together

we will lead our world into the next millennium.

Phase one of this new partnership will see astronauts

and cosmonauts meet on Russia’s Mir One Space Station.

The Mir Space Station becomes a great opportunity

to learn how to do these things together.

In 1995, the first American astronaut arrives.

Six more will follow.

Take the space shuttle up

to a space station, dock.

Houston Atlantis, we have capture.

- Exchange astronauts. - We’re lucky,

and we’re honored and privilegd to be part of this.

Allow Americans to live on a space station

with people from other countries.

Then I remember having some wonderful meals there,

and they had Russian pop music playing in the background.

It was really, really a neat cross-cultural experiene

with our... our cosmonaut colleagues.

They had something called Courvoisier,

which is, like, a cognac.

You take a couple of slurps and then Vasily

put the top back on and he put it away.

And it really, I think, helped us bond and become friends.

While it’s great

for fostering international relations,

Mir has been in space for ten years, and it highlights

how different the International Space Station needs to be.

They’d had a fire as well as a collision

on the outside of the space station,

so they had power outages.

So it was mildewy dark and dank, and I was very thankful to not

have to spend four and a half months up there, quite honestly.

The next challenge the team

faces is how to get the space station into space.

Previous space stations had ben

transported in traditional rockets,

but this limited their size.

It also was incredibly expensie because the rockets

were only good for one flight.

Fortunately, NASA was thinking ahead.

Three... two,... one... liftof.

The space shuttle is envisioned

as basically a truck that can move things into space.

It is the mechanism by which something else can happen.

The Space shuttle was conceived and approved

knowing that someday we would have a space station

and the space shuttle would build that space station.

Designed in the 1970s, the five space shuttles are NASA’s

Swiss Army Knife space vehicles ready for any job.

The shuttle had the crew compartment,

and behind that you had this payload bay,

which the doors kind of opened up.

It was a huge compartment

and had all the right dimensios and structural and mechanical

interfaces for launching the space station elements.

Shuttle was also outfitted with a remote arm,

a perfect thing to build ISS.

Without that, we could not have done it.

Then it can reenter and land ready to fly again.

So all these fantastic abilities.

In 1998, after nearly 15 years of planning,

the team is ready to launch

and then assemble the first two modules in orbit.

It was a bit of a concern,

especially early on, would all these things

fit together for the very first time

meeting in space.

This was a project on a scale like never before.

15 different countries

assembling components across the globe,

using countless technologies,

and speaking almost as many languages.

Even with the measurements, it’s to-may-toes/to-mah-toes.

When I think about the International Space Statio,

in all honesty, the first thing

I think about is: Did we use metric units or English units?

The answer is actually both.

For the U.S., it’s all in feet and inches.

Of course the Russian program was all metric.

So you know, you’re watching your decimal points

and your units is very, very important.

The problem is metric

and imperial connections aren’t compatible.

The engineering solution

to joining the modules together is both brilliant and simple.

The Common Berthing Mechanism

is a mechanical system that is shared

with all of our international partners

so that if we’re bringing, say, a European modue

together with one of the U.S.

modules or a Japanese module, t allows us to mate them togethe.

On December 4th, 1998,

the docking system is put to the test when NASA

launches Space Shuttle Endeavor carrying the central hub module

for the International Space Station named Unity .

The Russian module Zarya, which has a basic life support system

and will provide initial guidance, power, and propulsion

for the space station, is already orbiting Earth.

Now, the two have to be joined,

but to do that, Unity first has

to be moved out of the cargo by and onto the shuttle’s roof.

The arm operator, Nancy Currie,

she basically grabbed the Unity module,

where she positioned the module right above

the orbiter docking system,

and then she positioned the arm to capture the free flying

Zarya which is a challenge in itself to actually

capture a free flying vehicle with the arm.

Traveling at 17,500 miles per hour,

that seems like a bit of an understatement.

But now, slowly and steadily,

Nancy uses the arm to catch Zarya.

The time has come to join the two modules

and it’s not going to be easy.

Docking mechanisms require kinetic energy to capture,

using the momentum of two vehicles

essentially smashing together.

But the arm is not good

at providing high speed momentum because it’s...

I guess the way to look at it

is when it maneuvers payloads in free space...

it moves those in a very slow and methodical manner.

So there is a basic

incompatibility between the two systems.

This was a cause of concern

for mission control leading up to the mission.

After many, many months

of analyzing this particular situation,

we came up with something that’s known as SMRS-assisted docking.

So this is the way it works.

This is kind of crazy. Sorry.

It’s December 1998 and mission control holds its breah

as the first two modules

of the International Space Station

inch towards each other in space.

This is the way it works.

The commander of the shuttle

initiated down firing control system jets to essentially

slam the two modules together,

while the arm is still holding on.

It’s a difficult thing to do because,

if the two modules

were not aligned properly,

you could potentially have a bounce off

and that would that would not be good.

It’s a tense moment.

Commander Bob Cabana has to hit the two modules together hard

enough that the docking mechanism locks.

But if the modules aren’t perfectly lined up,

Zarya could bounce off, flying out of orbit.

Bob Cabana basically pulsed some jets

and brought the two spacecraft together.

Everything worked just perfectly.

We were ecstatic. It was the very first element.

We were proud. We were happy.

It takes three seven hour spacewalks to fully

connect the modules, but then they’re

ready to open the hatch

between Unity and Zarya.

On December 13th, 1998,

Space Shuttle Endeavor, uncouples and the first section

of the space station floats free.

The fact that they got it up there and they fit together

as they are supposed to, it’s a wonder.

So that was the first stack of a space station.

It was an amazing feeling

to actually see the two systems working together on orbit.

We were on the phone

with our Russian colleagues and we were all celebrating.

Over the next two years,

a third module with advanced

life support systems to create water and oxygen arrives.

And in October 2000, astronaut Bill Shepherd

and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev check in.

The first long term residence

at the International Space Station...

The early years were mostly construction.

A lot of spacewalks took place.

Do the external connections on the cables

and everything else... And make space station ready.

One of the first jobs is to fit

two solar arrays that arrive in December.

The size of a Boeing 777 wing

and covered with over 262,000 solar cells, the solar arrays

are the largest electrical powr system ever put in space.

While on the ground,

a team of specialists focuses on keeping the crew alive.

At first,

maintaining the life support equipment was challenging.

Most of the equipment that we have on the space station

had never been flown in a space-like environment,

so it was all brand new equipment being used

for the first time.

Ensuring there’s enough air is job number one.

If you just use stored gas,

you would go through it in a matter of days.

So you have to have a more...

sustainable source of oxygen and we do that with water.

500 gallons of water can be stored on board,

taking up much less room than pure oxygen would.

So to make oxygen,

we add electricity to it through a process called electrolysis.

We split the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water,

so the water then turns

into breathing oxygen for the crew.

So you could ask, "Where does the water come from?"

The answer to that is why you

can’t be squeamish and be an astronaut.

So the water is initially brought to the space station

in storage tanks, and the crew drinks it.

We collect their urine, distill it,

process it through specialized filters,

then turning that back into drinkable water

water that is better

than the water that you can find in your tap at home.

And the recycling doesn’t stop there.

We even have the crew, after they’re done exercising,

wipe off their sweat with towels

and hang up the towels and dry off the towels.

And we collect that as well.

So we want every little bit of drop of water.

The life support technologies

that they are developing on the ISS will allow us

to go back and live on the moon, to travel to Mars,

and perhaps one day even leave the solar system.

Two years later,

NASA’s Destiny laboratory is added.

It’s the first of six research

modules where the astronauts will conduct scientific

experiments that are impossible to do on Earth.

It brings the space station

to about a third of its final size.

Also in space, carrying out their own experiments,

is the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

One... We have booster ignition and liftoff

of Space Shuttle Columbia.

When on February 1st, 2003, disaster strikes.

They were about maybe 15, 20 minutes from landing,

and they stopped answering the radio calls from Houston,

and I started...

"There’s something not normal here."

Fido, do you have any tracking?

No, sir.

So I started changing channels on my television,

and I got to a major news station,

and it showed this burning debris...

across the sky in Texas.

And I immediately knew that the crew

could not survive that.

Returning from a 16 day flight,

Columbia explodes on reentry.

And there was, like, the worst day of my life.

Following the Columbia disaster, all space shuttles are grounded.

No modules are going anywhere until they figure out exactly

what went wrong and how to make sure it can never happen again.

Analysis of the accident reveas

the cause of the disaster actually happens during takeof.

A piece of foam

fell off of the external tank, about the size of a briefcase.

It impacted the port side underside of the wing.

It basically punched a hole in the wing.

Although the falling foam is spotted on takeoff,

the damage to the wing isn’t and two weeks later the shuttle

is given the go ahead to return to Earth.

While the shuttle was reentering, due to the damage,

the heat flux went in

and basically melted the structure, right?

And that’s how Columbia disintegrated.

Commander Eileen Collins

is scheduled to fly to the space station

on the Shuttle Discovery,

a month after the Columbia disaster.

Her flight is delayed two years and takes on new meaning.

It became what was now called the Return to Flight mission.

Test techniques to make the shuttle safer again.

Including testing the heat shield tiles.

We did a lot of experiments in vacuum chambers.

We had to simulate reentry tests, right, in arc jets.

The team also develops a shuttle repair technique,

which on Earth would be simple.

But to work in space, they need materials that don’t exist yet.

Our crew is very actively

involved in that, and we had some material called The Goo

and a little gun that was the goo deployment gun,

and practiced fixing these pieces of broken tile.

It’s like a caulking gun you use on your bathroom tiles,

let’s say, right?

It took a good amount of time,

about a year and a half, two years to develop that material.

In July of 2005,

Eileen and the Discovery crew are ready for takeoff.

But during launch...

The unthinkable happens.

A very large piece of foam fell off the other side

of the tank from where the Columbia foam was,

and boom, that piece of foam fell off the Pell ramp

and went right underneath our right wing.

It’s 2005, and during launch, on a mission

to the International Space Station insulating foam

falls off of the Space Shuttle Discovery .

The same thing that caused the Columbia disaster.

To see if it’s damaged the shuttle,

Commander Eileen Collins, carries out a daring maneuver.

Say, this is the space station.

Now, normally, the shuttle will come up from below,

stop at 600 feet, pause,

but then start a maneuver and very, very slowly...

I think it was about one degree per second.

Flipped the shuttle

around to expose the bottom of the shuttle,

which is the tiles, as well as the leading edge of the wing

to the astronauts on board the space station.

Discovery start photos, okay?

Executing this maneuver so cloe

to the International Space Station requires incredible

precision and perfect timing.

The astronauts inside the space station

could actually look out their window

and take photographs of the underside

of the space shuttle,

so to really analyze all parts

of the space shuttle using imagery.

T hankfully, the heat shield hasn’t been damaged,

and this extraordinary backflip in space becomes standard

for all future Space Shuttle missions.

The RPM maneuver that was developed

in the Space Shuttle program could have very likely

saved the lives of astronauts on future missions.

We have booster ignition and liftoff

of the Space Shuttle Endeavor.

But the challenges are far from over

from over because the team has to constantly

reconfigure the space station as different pieces are added.

The KIBO module is open.

In 2007,

astronaut Scott Parazynski is preparing a new docking system.

And the most challenging part of the mission was

to relocate a large solar array truss

with a catchy name: P6.

At the time of our arrival,

this P6 truss was on the very top of the space station.

It was the very first

solar panel set that had been delivered to the ISS,

and so it had been in space for many,

many years at this point.

So when we talk about solar arrays,

they’re basically the same as solar panels

that you might have on the roof of your house.

But for space, they have to be a lot

lighter weight and a lot higher performance.

They’re also huge.

The 82 panels, each the size of a Boeing 777 wing,

were folded into boxes to get them into space.

So when it deployed out,

it kind of all unfolded out like an accordion with...

using guide wires to guide that deployment out.

Now the old solar array needs to be folded back up,

moved, and then deployed again.

Solar array deploys starting on my mark.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t go per plan.

Three... two... one... mark.

We were about maybe 80%, 85%

out when one of the cables snagged and it tore that joint.

We saw five tears

and they were very long tears, and we got worried.

The concern was that even if we were to undock at that point,

it could rip apart.

It could damage the space station or the space shuttle.

Damage to the station could be catastrophic.

For three days, engineers in Mission Control

and the astronauts in space wok on a solution.

It wasn’t like we could go to a local hardware store

and get a solar array repair kit.

You know, we had to build it with the things

that we had with us

on the shuttle space station complex.

We create a cufflink type of design

where we have this long wire and a flat piece at each end.

And just somehow try

to put those through those hols and maybe that could work.

On November 3rd,

the robotic arm is used to move Parazynski

to the end of the broken solar panel.

Repairing it will be a very dangerous operation.

It was a fully-energized solar panel.

We couldn’t turn it off.

So I had to be very careful not

to have any direct contact.

On Earth, air acts as an insulator,

preventing electricity from jumping easily between objects.

But in space with no air to slow it down,

electric arcs can jump further,

burn hotter, and last longer.

Any activity you do could cause motion,

and you need to be ready to lean back away from it.

But I’m ready.

Electricity could arc into my spacesuit

full of 100% oxygen

and there could be a fire or an explosion,

which to me sounded like a really bad thing.

Scott Parazynski... brave guy.

We had to essentially stitch it back together.

And that was a beautiful thing, though,

to see that cufflink go into the hole.

Yes, it was.

So we’re doing a surgery out at the end of the space station.

I’m gonna apply a little force, get it fully engaged there.

For seven hours,

all mission control can do is watch and wait.

One by one, just installed these cufflinks,

just a beautiful job.

- That’s how you do it. - Looks good.

And then he waved and we were all sitting there...

Those three days, I don’t think we slept.

It’s the moment of truth as the solar array finishes unfolding.

We’ve got deployed discretes,

two deployed discretes.

- All right. - Beautiful.

Great news. What an accomplishment.

- Nice teamwork. - Phenomenal.

It was really a... quite an exciting day on the job.

While P6 has been a success,

by 2007, the solar array has been in space for seven years.

So NASA decides it’s time for an upgrade.

The new system is called ROSA.

ROSA stands for the Roll-Out Solar Array.

It’s a product we’ve been developing

for over a decade or so.

And it’s different than most solar array technologies

that are flying in space and that it actually

rolls out kind of like a carpet rolling out, if you will.

It makes things a lot simpler than the older accordion style.

There’s a lot less moving parts going on.

Each mat is covered in thousans

of individual solar cells.

Compared to the original ISS solar arrays, they’re...

the PV technology is anywhere

from two to three times more efficient.

After more than a decade in development,

the first ROSAs are ready.

It was an exciting day.

Um... This was a big milestone

achievement for... for ROSA and us as a company.

It’s a little bit of nerves.

Once the astronauts

released a special bolt that lt the wings go,

the Roll-out Solar Array just rolled right out,

just like it was supposed to.

It’s another space station firt

that could mean big things for our future in space.

We’re putting ROSAs on geo-communications satellites.

We’re looking at using ROSA on the lunar surface.

So there’s really endless possibilities

of where we could use this ROSA technology in space.

By 2009, the space station is almost complete.

13 of the 15 modules have been attached,

but what it’s missing is a room with a view.

Seeing your home planet from space

is a life changing experience.

You’re traveling at 17,500 miles an hour,

and you’re seeing a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

You’re seeing the world without boundaries.

And it was just a dreamlike experience.

And liftoff of Shuttle Endeavo.

So in February 2010, a 180-degree window,

called The Cupola

is taken to the space station on Space Shuttle Endeavor.

N ASA’s final space station crew compartment

to bring the bay window view for our celestial backyard.

As well as protective doors mae

from the Whipple Shield,

the glass is made of four layers,

an outer layer of fused silica to protect from impact,

then two layers that withhold pressure.

In the event of a failure of the primary pressure pane,

that second pane we call a redundant pane is capable

of carrying that load, holding the pressure.

And finally,

an inner scratch pane to protet it from the astronauts.

The crew are going to be looking out the windows.

They’ll put their camera lenses on these.

It’s an instant hit.

Just the imagery coming through there

and the fact that they spend all their time,

their free time, in that location,

tells me a lot about how...

endeared they are to this piece of hardware.

The view from low Earth orbit is absolutely gorgeous.

It’s really not even just what you see.

It’s how it makes you feel.

Put your face up against the window

and stretch out your arms, and you’re floating.

You just cannot put a price on it.

It is just one of the most magical things

that you can do in space.

In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavor delivers

the final module to the International Space Statio.

I would like to thik

that the International Space Statio,

in the words of many of the astronauts who I’ve spoken

with who have been there, has become a model for international

collaboration in really unique and difficult circumstances.

It is amazing to think

that for over two decades,

the International Space Station has circled our planet,

pushing the boundaries of science and engineering

as well as being a place that over 280 astronauts

from all over the world have called home.

What ISS is doing that is for everyone on this globe.

There are very few things you can

talk about that will do that.

Over 3000 experiments have taken place

on the space station,

some that will bring about huge change back down here on Earth.

That’s the ultimate goal of putting people in spac.

It’s not just to be there

and to observe Earth or to observe space.

It’s really about being able

to develop new things that coud be useful back on Earth.

A lot of our water filtration technology is being utilized

in third world countries taking water supplies that are

really undrinkable and using our technology

in such a way that we can provide drinking pure water.

We also have a bio-fabrication facility

where we’re doing things like D printing human tissue.

That is not possible on Earth with gravity.

So it’s possible in the future that we could be doing things li

like printing full organs, transporting them back

where people could use them here on Earth.

In 2030,

46 years after President Reagan announced his vision,

The International Space Station

will come to the end of its life.

Spacecraft have a limited life.

You can’t keep it up there indefinitely.

The space environment is very harsh

on these big structures.

It’s with kind of sad emotion,

but, uh, a lot of the experience and capabilities

that we’ve learned from the space station...

I mean, those are invaluable.

Despite its imminent end, the International Space Station

will live on in the space stations that follow.

There are companies that are now

planning to build separate space stations where companies,

maybe tourists, could go live in and spend time in spac.

And so I think that’s really exciting.

Using the technology developed

through the space station, in the next few years,

NASA’s Artemis missions will be putting a permanent

human presence on the moon... and maybe beyond.

I see the ISS is at the foundation of all the really

audacious things that are in store for us in the future.

As human beings, we tend to be explorers.

We tend to want to know what’s across the next hill,

what’s in the next horizon,

and the space station was that major stepping stone

for maybe exploring our solar system.

After several millennia in pursuit of the most ingenious,

awe-inspiring structures on Earth,

we’re now sending them into orbit 250 miles above our heads,

circling our planet.

Where will we try to put up a building next?

Who knows?

Although I hear there’s plenty of cool real estate on Mars.

MTV!