Original subtitles

Today on "Impossible Engineering"...

The international space station,

the largest structure ever built in space.

The engineering that's gone into the international space station,

it is phenomenal.

To create a base that's out of this world...

To see this amazing invention fly

into the international space station

is the most incredible thing I could possibly hope for.

Engineers must turn

to revolutionary innovations of the past...

Oh, my god, it's actually flying!

To make the impossible possible.

Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

space exploration is entering a new era.

After decades of innovation, aerospace engineers

are preparing to send the first astronauts

to Mars and beyond.

And this giant leap could provide the key

to colonizing the galaxy.

And central to making this possible

is the International Space Station.

The International Space Station's hugely important

in the future of human space flight and exploration.

We have to master a number of things, though,

so we can go further into space.

For astronaut major Tim Peake,

his first visit was career-defining.

I had a huge "wow" moment when you look and see it

in all of its glory in the sunlight.

It is a marvel of human engineering.

Orbiting the planet every 90 minutes,

the $100 billion cosmic laboratory

is the largest human-made object in space.

Measuring over 320 feet end to end

and weighing around 450 tons,

it has the same habitable space as a Boeing 747.

Powered by over 32,000 square feet of solar arrays

and producing its own air and water,

the I.S.S. can host six astronauts in a completely

unique working environment.

And the interplanetary work being done here

has never been more crucial.

We're conducting research into how humans and robots interact.

This is going to be very important moving forward

for lunar missions and for our martian missions.

So, five plants from the top.

We're also growing food in space.

We're trying to learn how can we make

a closed life-support cycle.

This is the kind of research that's going to help us

with those future space exploration missions.

But as research intensifies,

so too must the journeys to the station.

And back on Earth, private aerospace engineers

like John Curry must overcome a specific problem.

The space shuttle was retired in 2011.

And when we lost the space-shuttle capability,

we lost a huge amount of capability

to service the space station.

To make the journey, astronauts must now travel

to Kazakhstan for a costly ride

aboard the Russian's Soyuz rocket.

So NASA is turning to the private-space-flight industry

for a more cost-effective approach.

Re-usability of hardware can play a really important role

in trying to reduce the cost

and improve access to space.

So, how do you build an inexpensive reusable spacecraft?

To do this, engineers must look to the pioneering

innovators of the past.

Space historian Amy Shira Teitel is exploring Edwards air force

base deep in California's

Mojave desert to discover the breakthrough engineering

that seemingly defies the laws of physics.

Oh, wow.

Okay, this is awesome.

Nicknamed "the flying bathtub,"

the M2-F1 was a prototype plane built in 1963.

If you look at, it doesn't look like it should be able to fly.

But in reality, it actually pioneered

a whole new way of flying.

American engineer Dale Reed designed this unusual aircraft.

Because of the high cost of disposable space capsules,

NASA wanted a reusable vehicle that could land on a runway.

But the wings of a traditional aircraft

would burn up during reentry from space.

So engineers had to completely rip up the aerodynamics handbook

and start again.

The shape of a conventional wing

is what gives an aircraft its lift.

As air flows over the curved top, it speeds up,

creating an area of low pressure

while airflow underneath remains constant.

This pressure difference between the two airflows produces lift.

But Reed got rid of the wings altogether.

And in April 1963, he tested a prototype that relied

on the turbulent airflow underneath the body,

hoping to generate lift.

Now, because the M2-F1 didn't have any motor,

he had to find an alternate power source...

A Pontiac Catalina.

The plan was to tow the lifting body behind the car

to see if it would actually generate lift.

So even though the vehicle itself doesn't have wings,

Reed hoped that because the body is shaped like a wing,

it would fly under the same principles.

During the original test,

the Catalina towed the M2-F1 across a dry lake bed.

All right, we're rolling.

And it's rolling, and that's exciting.

It looks like it's trying to nose up every so slightly.

Ooh!

Come on, come on!

It looks like it might get off the ground.

It's flying!

Oh, my god, it's actually flying!

I can't believe it actually got off the ground.

As the M2-F1 reached 86 miles-per-hour,

it lifted off the ground.

Although only by a small amount,

Reed's theory stood up to the test.

John Curry and his team

at the Sierra Nevada corporation in Colorado

are taking Reed's concept to a whole new level.

This design is one of the most incredible pieces of engineering

I have ever been lucky enough to be part of.

It is going to change the world of space transportation.

The all-new dream chaser is revolutionary.

This reusable lifting-body spaceplane will carry both cargo

and up to seven crew to the space station.

To make this epic journey,

it will launch on an atlas V rocket.

Once in space,

it will make the two-day voyage to the I.S.S.

Using it's own propulsion.

We use our thrusters to get us there.

Nitrous and propane, 22 of them that can both orient the vehicle

and can actually push the vehicle through space.

Wonderful capability.

But the return trip into the Earth's atmosphere

is where Reed's innovations come into play.

When you start in space, you're moving at 17,500 miles an hour.

As you go through the atmosphere now,

the dream chaser then is able to take

that 17,000 miles-per-hour

and absorb all that heat that the atmosphere creates

onto this shape

and protect the cargo and the crew inside the vehicle.

The wings here, they're just on the edges

and they're just providing the control

like sails on a sailship.

Whereas all the lift is being provided by the body itself.

And in October 2013, that theory is put into practice.

Engineers conduct a series of drop tests high above

the California desert.

Three, two, one, release release release.

When the dream chaser returns from its first mission in 2020,

this new spaceplane will touch down

using a unique nose skid landing system.

The great thing about the lifting-body design

is it does so well at the high altitudes

and then also does well at the low altitudes

such that we can touch down at about 200 miles-an-hour,

and then roll out to a wheel stop on any conventional runway.

Because of its transformative design,

each dream chaser will be used for at least 15 missions.

The opportunity for us to get to see this amazing invention fly

into space to the international space station

and back again is the most incredible thing

I could possibly hope for.

But to ensure regular cost-effective missions,

NASA needs more than one type of spacecraft.

And to design them safely, engineers must look to

the trailblazing innovators of the past...

Oh, my god!

It looks like it could potentially break his neck.

To produce more impossible engineering.

The international space station...

The largest structure built beyond Earth.

Travelling over 17,000 miles-per-hour,

this cosmic laboratory

orbits the world every 90 minutes,

providing a staging area for deep-space exploration.

Liftoff of Tim Kopra, Yuri Malenchenko,

and Timothy Peake.

That 8-minute 48-second ride into space

is just the most thrilling ride you could possibly imagine.

But with increased demand for travel to the I.S.S.,

cost-effective spacecraft are crucial.

And the American aerospace company Boeing

is rising the challenge.

Aerospace engineer Melanie Weber is helping to design

the company's first reusable space capsule.

The Boeing CST-100 starliner is a space-transportation system

which is comprised of a pressurized crew module

and a service module.

But unlike NASA's capsules that landed in the water,

the starliner will be the first U.S. crew module

to land on solid ground.

This is going to be incredibly difficult.

In the past, water landings were favored

because water was good at attenuating the impact.

But unfortunately, it's not really good

at reusability of a vehicle.

Landing on land, or course,

presents a unique set of challenges.

And there's been a lot of analysis and models

that we've had to go through.

There is no second chances when it comes to landing on land.

So, how do you design a module that can survive a ground impact

after travelling from space?

To attempt this feat, engineers must look

to an unexpected innovation from the past.

Once upon a time, crashing wasn't really a problem

because the world moved so slowly.

- Ooh. - Oh, terribly sorry, old chap.

Not at all, old bean.

But as transport became faster...

Yee-ha!

Accidents became more dangerous.

Aah!

Consarn it!

However, it wasn't until the invention of the automobile...

Yoo-hoo!

Hey, girls!

That safety was taken seriously.

And in 1959, Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin

released the patent for the three-point seat belt

that we know today.

But as the automobile really took off,

it became clear that more safety was needed.

At the Thachum vehicle testing centre in the south of England,

physicist Suzie Sheehy is investigating

how the need for better car safety

led to an engineering breakthrough.

We're about to run a test simulating a frontal impact

as if this rig was being hit from the front

exerting a force of 16 gs on our dummy friend here.

But unlike traditional methods of crash testing

where the test car moves towards an object,

this pneumatically-powered

sled will fire the test car backwards,

replicating the forces of a head-on impact

at 31 miles-per-hour

in a mere 125 milliseconds.

Do you think he knows what's coming?

Three, two, one.

That was so fast!

It almost gave me a heart attack!

Playing the footage back in slow motion

reveals the true force of the collision.

So, I can see him sliding forwards

really violently towards the dash.

It's quite disturbing.

Oh, oh, his head's come all the way down, craning his neck.

Okay, that looks painful.

It looks like it could potentially break his neck.

Early attempts to solve this potentially-fatal problem

had little success.

But then in 1968,

explosives expert Allen breed

discovered a dynamic solution.

Breed that realized that an explosion

could create a lot of gas really quickly,

so what he used was a trigger sensor

and a compound called sodium azide

which releases a lot of nitrogen really quickly when it's heated.

And that was all packed into a section in the center

of the steering wheel.

But that didn't solve all the problems of the airbag.

This is the problem that breed had to overcome.

This roasting bag here represents my airbag.

If I squeeze it, rather than being soft,

the air pressure inside makes it actually quite hard.

And rather than absorbing the impact of the crash,

you would just bounce straight back off it,

which would potentially make the injuries much worse.

What Allen breed came up with

was a system of vents specially

designed to let gas escape after it had been inflated.

So if cut some vent holes in this one...

this time, the bag deflates slowly,

cushioning the blow and absorbing the impact.

It's a simple but ingenious solution to the problem.

To test the effectiveness of breed's design,

engineers run the test again.

I feel nervous.

But this time, the team installs a modern airbag system.

Three, two, one.

Oh, my god!

In slow motion, the explosive breakthrough becomes clear.

Just there, just before he hit the bag,

it was actually already deflating

because the vents in the side are designed to release

just the right amount of gas

and then start deflating so that as he hits it,

the deflation is absorbing the impact of the crash.

It's estimated this incredible innovation has so far saved

the lives of over 40,000 people

in the United States alone.

Boeing engineers are taken the principle of Allen breed's

revolutionary car airbag and super-sizing it.

What we have in front here is a flight-like

full-scale outer airbag assembly.

As we're reentering the atmosphere,

we'll be going supersonic

and the parachutes will decelerate us to about 10

to 30 miles-per-hour on landing.

And that's where the module's air-cushioning system

comes into play.

Positioned underneath the capsule's heat shield,

six giant airbags inflate

as the capsule drifts back down to Earth.

They are filled using a series of high-pressurized gas bottles

that are flowed into the airbag assemblies

through a series of manifolds and valves.

And just like breed's car-airbag innovation,

ensuring the vent size is correct is crucial

to the capsule's safe landing.

As we land, the airbags will cushion the vehicle

and vents will open up to allow the gas

in the airbags to escape.

That's important because if they didn't escape,

these bags would be rigid

and you could actually bounce off upon landing.

Although this may appear to be an abrupt landing,

this breakthrough system cushions the capsule

so effectively that each starliner

will be able to make the 250-mile journey to the I.S.S.

Up to 10 times.

In my opinion, the airbag-inflation system

is one of the most unique engineering marvels

to come out of spaceflight.

Providing cost-effective travel to the space station

is one challenge,

but maintaining its structure once there is quite another.

This step requires more help from history's innovators...

to create more impossible engineering.

The international space station.

As the latest cosmic laboratory ever built,

it is a hotbed of cutting-edge research.

In any six-month period, we will conduct about 250

to 300 experiments on board the space station.

Orbiting the Earth for almost two decades,

this monumental piece of space hardware

is the definitive proving ground

for all future space technology.

And NASA project manager Rajib Dasgupta is focusing

on one of the station's most epic challenges.

Eventually, when we go to moon or the Mars,

we will need long-duration habitats

for the astronauts to live.

Habitation modules like those on the station

are 26x13 feet high-grade aluminum,

and were delivered by the space shuttle.

But as the emerging fleet of new space vehicles

only have a fraction of the shuttle's capacity,

engineers are developing a mind-boggling solution...

Expandable modules.

What you see is a full-scale mockup

of the Bigelow expandable activity module.

The main advantage of an expandable module

is to provide a permanent habitation system

that could be launched at fraction of its final volume.

Right now, this module is on the international space station.

Packed for launch, this module measures

just eight feet in diameter.

But once inflated, its internal habitable volume expands

to an impressive 550 cubic feet.

Composed of two metal bulkheads and multiple layers of fabric,

including the same Kevlar-like material

used in bulletproof vests, this expandable module

withstands both internal air pressure

and the extremes of space.

When you put air in there,

the Kevlar-like structural restraint

is taking the loads

that resists the action to burst.

In April 2016, the Bigelow expandable

activity module begins its two-year trial.

After docking, air from inside the station inflates the module.

Once it reaches full length,

eight tanks inside the module open

and fill it to the appropriate air pressure.

The expanding process was very interesting to see.

It actually sounded like popcorn going off...

as slowly, the air pressure expanded the module,

breaking the small straps that were keeping it compacted.

Astronauts will monitor B.E.A.M.'S

performance with a view to colonizing the galaxy.

Expandables can really revolutionize

deep-space habitats.

Kevlar or Kevlar-like restraint materials,

they actually offer higher strength

than aluminum on an equal-to-equal weight basis.

So because of that, the structural integrity

of these expandable modules are extremely good.

As the station evolves in the harsh conditions of space,

engineers must maintain its structural integrity

in the face of constant threats.

When you think about how the space station started

and the demanding, harsh environment of the vacuum,

the thermal extremes, the radiation,

the micrometeorites,

it's truly a remarkable feat of engineering.

You can see chips in the window.

For example, in the cupola window,

one of them has a significant chip in it

caused by space debris.

The I.S.S. Is vulnerable to damage

from even the smallest particles.

An object the size of a speck of paint

made this chip in the glass.

To make repairs, astronauts must perform risky spacewalks.

But to enter an environment so completely hostile

to human beings, astronauts need extremely complex hardware.

And aerospace engineer rob Boyle is fitting them

for the many challenges.

The spacesuit has to allow you

to locomote around the spacecraft.

It has to provide pressure.

It has to keep you thermally comfortable.

And it has to allow you to communicate

with your other crew members.

So every subsystem you think of in a normal spacecraft exists

in a spacesuit.

One of the most complex problems

is how to provide astronauts with enough oxygen

over a long period outside the station.

You need an enormous amount of air to do a six-hour

spacewalk with straight tankage.

So, since oxygen's such a critical resource in space,

we want to use it as efficiently as possible.

With oxygen in limited supply, how can engineers provide life

support for astronauts on an eight-hour spacewalk?

To keep astronauts alive,

engineers must look to a great innovator

from the past...

to make the impossible possible.

The international space station is the largest machine

ever built in space.

But to keep astronauts alive outside of it

in the harsh environment of space,

engineers must look to a great innovator from the past.

Engineer Luke Bisby is diving in an aquarium

in Manchester, England, to discover

how scientists first mastered the art of breathing underwater.

But in 1878,

when pioneering dive engineer

Henry Fleuss experienced these problems firsthand,

he developed an ingenious solution.

When we breathe, we convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.

But not all of the oxygen that we breathe in is converted.

In fact, about 75% of that oxygen remains

in the air that we exhale.

Now, Fleuss' idea was to recycle our breath,

filtering out the carbon dioxide

and topping up the oxygen.

This breathing apparatus once used by firefighters

reveals Fleuss' radical innovation.

When they exhaled, the gas would pass through this tube

and down into the scrubber bag here.

And this is where the carbon dioxide is removed.

The gas would then pass up through this valve

where the oxygen levels are topped up

using this tank of oxygen that's on my back.

And the air then passes into this chamber where it mixes

before then passing back up

to the mouthpiece to give the makeup air for the diver.

And this is called a rebreahter, and it allows divers

to safely use all of the oxygen in the air

rather than just a small proportion of it.

And on the biggest engineering project of his time,

Fleuss had to use his revolutionary

but still untested rebreather.

I'm inside the Severn tunnel underneath the Severn river.

And this was a project of astronomical proportions

when it was first conceived.

Starting in 1873,

this rail tunnel, more than four miles long,

was designed to connect England and wales,

but soon, disaster struck

when workers on the welsh side hit an underground spring,

flooding the tunnel completely.

A series of watertight doors had been installed to isolate

any serious leaks.

But in the rush to escape the flood,

the workers didn't manage to get them shut.

Engineers couldn't begin pumping out the water

without closing the doors.

Desperate to get beyond the limitations

of a surface-fed breathing tube,

the tunnel engineers summoned Fleuss.

With Fleuss' experimental rebreather,

a diver was able to go a much greater distance

to close the doors,

spending nearly three hours underwater.

Today, the great spring is safely sealed

behind the tunnel walls.

With the tunnel secure, the water could be pumped out

and the work completed.

For 100 years, this remained the longest underwater tunnel

anywhere in the world.

And this incredible engineering achievement

couldn't have been possible without Henry Fleuss

and his amazing rebreather.

Back at NASA, the team is expanding on Fleuss' invention

to create a one-person spacecraft.

This is the NASA e.M.U.,

or extra vehicular mobility unit.

It's what astronauts use on the international space station

when they do a spacewalk.

The NASA spacesuit has life-support backpack.

That's on the back.

Like Fleuss' rebreather, the primary life-support system

worn on the back provides breathable air.

A centrifugal fan draws exhaled breath into the unit.

Carbon dioxide is filtered out,

and humidity is removed before more oxygen is added

and fed back into the helmet.

A supplement of only 1.2 pounds of oxygen

is all that's needed for an eight-hour spacewalk.

The oxygen tankage, as far as efficiency in this suit,

is very state-of-the-art.

You can't build a smaller oxygen system

that would provide what we need.

It's an incredible piece of engineering.

But to work inside them, low air pressure must be established,

so the astronauts must breathe pure oxygen

for several hours.

This rids their bodies of nitrogen,

which alters at low pressure.

Once conditioned, they're ready to de-pressurize and go outside.

The advanced spacesuit teams,

they come to us for state-of-the-art.

They say, "what are you guys doing, and how can we adapt

that to go back to the moon, to go to Mars..."

Go wherever they want to go.

It's fantastic to be part of it.

But this is only part of the challenge.

To take the next giant leap in space,

engineers must look to

the trailblazing innovators of the past...

Wow. This is cool.

A testament to the brilliance of the men and women involved

in this incredible piece of engineering.

To create more impossible engineering.

Constructed over 13 years across 40 missions,

the international space station

is the largest human-made object in space.

Consisting of 15 revolutionary pressurized modules,

including three science labs, the I.S.S.

Has the internal volume of a six-bedroom house.

But not all of the scientific work is conducted inside.

For the crew to leave the station,

flight operations engineer Aaron Decker

must prepare them for a complex procedure.

You can imagine if you just opened up a hatch,

all the atmosphere in the space station

is going to go out into space.

So we need the ability to break off just a small volume

so the astronauts can go outside

and we don't waste all of the atmosphere

that's in the rest of the space station.

So, how do you maintain the pressure inside the station,

but allow the astronauts to walk outside?

To do this, the team at NASA must rely

on another great innovator from the past.

This is amazing.

Physicist Andrew Steele is on top of the Eiffel Tower

to unEarth the groundbreaking design

that keeps this iconic marvel standing.

Wow. This is cool.

Normally, you'd never be able to come here.

And this is a beautiful view of Paris.

Built by renowned French engineer Gustave Eiffel

and standing nearly 1,000 feet tall,

the Eiffel Tower is one of the most

well-known structures in the world.

But actually, although this is a great view of Paris,

it's not what's up here that we're interested in looking at.

Work on the towers' foundations

began on the 28th of January, 1887.

And for the south and the east towers,

the condition to the ground were perfect.

Compact Clay and gravel provided solid support,

but the ground under the north

and west towers, nearest the river seine,

was much more problematic.

This side of the tower was waterlogged.

If Eiffel's tower was going to get built,

they'd need to find a way to dig through

that waterlogged soil to the solid bedrock beneath.

To prevent water from flooding these excavations,

French mining engineer Jacques Triger

developed an innovative pressurized tube system.

Originally, he designed it to prevent groundwater

from flooding mine shafts.

So, imagine that this tank

represents that waterlogged ground.

Obviously, we can see it's not really working out

very well here for our little worker, Claude.

So what we need is this thing, which represents Triger's tube.

And I just pop that into the water there.

It's got a little hole in the bottom

which you can poke through.

But as you can see, so far, not much use.

He's still very much under the water.

So what we need to do is increase the pressure inside

that bottle and force the water out.

And I'm just going to do that by blowing.

Ooh, there we go.

And as long as I keep my thumb safely over the end here,

then that pressurized air stays in there

and forces that water to stay outside the bottle.

But we quite quickly encounter a problem,

because once he's finished with that pickax he wants to go home

and have his dinner...

How is going to get out of this bottle?

Well, let's imagine that he wants to come out of the tube.

Then, we open it up.

Oh, no. Poor little guy.

The water level just comes back up

to where it was, and I think he's drowned.

So, obviously, what we need is some kind of mechanism

that can allow him to leave that chamber

without changing the pressure.

That thing was called a pressure box.

And these days, we call it an airlock.

To leave the working chamber,

the central chamber was pressurized

to that same atmospheric pressure.

Workers then entered the central chamber,

which was gradually de-pressurized

to the normal atmospheric pressure.

They could then open a second door leading outside.

To enter, the process was simply reversed.

Triger's revolutionary metal boxes,

or pneumatic caissons,

worked at the Eiffel Tower with great success.

When they eventually hit the bedrock about 22 meters down,

they poured quick-drying cement into the holes

and topped it off with limestone

and layers of cut stone.

When construction was completed, Eiffel had the names

of 72 engineers, scientists,

and mathematicians who he thought had been essential

to the success of the project engraved

on the side of the tower.

And one of those names is Jacques Triger.

But using Triger's innovation

below Earth's floor is one thing.

Adapting it for the harsh conditions of space

is another story.

To make the airlocks on the I.S.S. Work without a hitch...

It's probably the moment of most apprehension,

when you know that you're losing all the air

from the space around you.

Engineers must make the impossible possible.

The international space station

is the largest machine built in space.

But transitioning astronauts

from Earth's atmospheric pressure

to the vacuum of space relies on an innovative

breakthrough of the past... The airlock.

And at the Johnson space center in Houston,

NASA engineers are giving airlocks

a 21st-century makeover.

This is the joint airlock module

on the international space station.

This module gives us the ability to go out and do a spacewalk.

Measuring over 16 feet long and 13 feet wide,

the airlock is the astronaut's doorway

into the vacuum of space.

They'll go into volume here, which is the crewlock,

and then we close this hatch.

And that allows us to de-pressurize

the crewlock portion to vacuum.

When the astronauts step outside and perform

a spacewalk for the first time,

it's an outstanding feeling.

And Tim Peake has experienced this firsthand.

For a rookie spacewalk, it is probably the moment

of most apprehension

when you know that you're losing all the air

from the space around you.

And for me, when Tim Kopra then opened the hatch

and the sunlight kind of flooded in,

that was the best moment because I was just

so ready to go outside

and get to work and start the spacewalk.

It was wonderful.

All right gentlemen, looking great.

Glad to see you both out there together

on the tip of the world.

Spectacular.

Every spacewalker gets a few minutes

just to adapt to that new environment

at the beginning of the spacewalk.

Great news. Thanks, Tim.

For me, that was a wonderful opportunity

just to look down on planet Earth.

And that was just wonderful to be able to see that.

The international space station is humanity's gateway

to the rest of the universe.

The engineering that's gone into the international space station,

it is phenomenal.

Our future in terms of humanity's exploration

of the solar system, for me, is very important.

And the space station is going to help us

take those next stepping stones.

And supported those steps are some of the brightest minds

in aerospace engineering.

I'm extremely excited to be a part of this.

It's something that I've lived my whole life for.

I love being part of human space exploration.

By drawing on the innovations of the past,

adapting them,

improving them,

and making discoveries of their own,

these groundbreaking engineers

are making the impossible possible.

Whilst on the ground there can be differences

between the nations involved,

it seems that in space we have a great example

of how we all work together towards a common goal.

And it's a huge privilege to be part of that.

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