on the most elaborate set ever built, put together by hundreds, even thousands, of designers, builders, and prop masters. Station had been in orbit just long enough for it to feel experienced; its sharpest edges had been worn down and its fresh-from-the-factory luster had been scratched and tarnished. But it was also new enough for it to feel as if it was still being built, even invented—which, of course, it was. As with a house stuck in the middle of a perpetual renovation, there was a kind of sketched-out order to things, but there was also plenty of chaos and dust. Until the last module had been dreamed up and launched, until the final piece of the puzzle had been put into place, it would always feel as though the workers had gone home for the night but were ready to come back and pick things up again tomorrow, having left their chop saw on the kitchen table in the meantime.
When the International Space Station is finally finished, it will look like an enormous mobile, revolving around an axis of modules—silver,vaguely cylindrical rooms bolted to each other mostly end to end—built and equipped by one or more of sixteen countries: principally the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan, the eleven nations of the European Space Agency, and Brazil. Although the station’s blueprints have been continually scribbled over and updated since its inception, the long list of planned modules includes at least six laboratories; a couple of dedicated living spaces with room for as many as seven astronauts; a checklist of nodes, adapters, and docking ports; and an ever-ready
Soyuz
capsule, Russia’s age-old means of space exploration, now fulfilling the role of lifeboat. The entire structure, running perpendicular to the backbone of trusses that
Endeavour
’s crew had just added on to, will be powered by almost an acre’s worth of solar panels. And at an estimated final dimension of 356 feet across and 290 feet long (weighing in at more than one million pounds), the completed station will easily eclipse the next largest manmade object ever in space. It will be more than four times as large as Mir, the world’s first multimodule space station. It will look as though we’ve slipped another star into the sky.
But in November 2002, the International Space Station was still a long way from throwing off its own light. Only three principal modules had been strung together, making it look more like a tin-can telephone than one of the wonders of the modern world, the whole of it electrified by just eight slim solar panels. The truth of it was, Expedition Six had moved into a home that was more dream than reality, and Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit were left trying to make themselves comfortable in a basement that had just been poured.
· · ·
At one end was Destiny, the scientific laboratory built and financed by the Americans. It was also one of the newest modules, launched less than two years earlier, in February 2001. Where the shuttle had been docked, there was now a closed hatch. Sometime in the future, it might be propped open, leading the way to another, as yet absent module. But for Expedition Six, it was a portal only to nothingness.
Turning their backs to it, they saw a long, narrow space about the size of a school bus, packed with a tangle of power cables, computers, panels, and scientific gear. For most of us, it would seem cramped to the brink of collapse. For someone like Don Pettit, it was the only playground in the universe that stood a chance at satisfying his insatiable curiosity.
He liked it so much that he slept in it, in the most isolated of the station’s three sleeping compartments. Inside, a sleeping bag had been strapped to one of the walls. (When the station is complete, this particular sleeping compartment will be moved to one of the proposed habitation modules; for now, it was just the most convenient place to stow another body, among the racks of plants, fluids, combustibles, and
When the International Space Station is finally finished, it will look like an enormous mobile, revolving around an axis of modules—silver,vaguely cylindrical rooms bolted to each other mostly end to end—built and equipped by one or more of sixteen countries: principally the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan, the eleven nations of the European Space Agency, and Brazil. Although the station’s blueprints have been continually scribbled over and updated since its inception, the long list of planned modules includes at least six laboratories; a couple of dedicated living spaces with room for as many as seven astronauts; a checklist of nodes, adapters, and docking ports; and an ever-ready
Soyuz
capsule, Russia’s age-old means of space exploration, now fulfilling the role of lifeboat. The entire structure, running perpendicular to the backbone of trusses that
Endeavour
’s crew had just added on to, will be powered by almost an acre’s worth of solar panels. And at an estimated final dimension of 356 feet across and 290 feet long (weighing in at more than one million pounds), the completed station will easily eclipse the next largest manmade object ever in space. It will be more than four times as large as Mir, the world’s first multimodule space station. It will look as though we’ve slipped another star into the sky.
But in November 2002, the International Space Station was still a long way from throwing off its own light. Only three principal modules had been strung together, making it look more like a tin-can telephone than one of the wonders of the modern world, the whole of it electrified by just eight slim solar panels. The truth of it was, Expedition Six had moved into a home that was more dream than reality, and Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit were left trying to make themselves comfortable in a basement that had just been poured.
· · ·
At one end was Destiny, the scientific laboratory built and financed by the Americans. It was also one of the newest modules, launched less than two years earlier, in February 2001. Where the shuttle had been docked, there was now a closed hatch. Sometime in the future, it might be propped open, leading the way to another, as yet absent module. But for Expedition Six, it was a portal only to nothingness.
Turning their backs to it, they saw a long, narrow space about the size of a school bus, packed with a tangle of power cables, computers, panels, and scientific gear. For most of us, it would seem cramped to the brink of collapse. For someone like Don Pettit, it was the only playground in the universe that stood a chance at satisfying his insatiable curiosity.
He liked it so much that he slept in it, in the most isolated of the station’s three sleeping compartments. Inside, a sleeping bag had been strapped to one of the walls. (When the station is complete, this particular sleeping compartment will be moved to one of the proposed habitation modules; for now, it was just the most convenient place to stow another body, among the racks of plants, fluids, combustibles, and
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