September 20, 2021 • 47 mins
After several false starts, NASA's plans for a space station got a leg up when the US invited Russia to become a part of a new, cooperative enterprise. The US, Russia, Canada, the European Space Agency and Japan would come together to create a phenomenal piece of technology: the International Space Station.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I
love all things tech and I think we're in the
penultimate space station episode, folks. So for those of you
(00:27):
just you know, tuning into this episode and not hearing
the others, this is a continuation of a series I've
done about space stations. So we started off talking about
monolithic stations, that is, stations that would launch into orbit,
all in one piece, like fully formed, and you would
use some sort of heavy lift launch vehicle to get
them up up, you know, into orbit. That includes stuff
(00:49):
like the Soviet Saliott stations, which also included a couple
of military platforms, and also the US sky Lab station.
Then and the following episode we focused a lot on
Mir the Soviet slash Russian modular space station, because that
particular space station was up in orbit and survived the
(01:11):
transition from the Soviet Union dissolving and becoming its various
you know, independent states. And then we followed that up
with an episode about NASA's attempts to get its own
modular space station up into orbit. That last one was
a real gut punch because it involves a series of
different proposals and attempts that you know, fizzled out at
(01:32):
least as far as NASA's original plans go. But this
all sets the stage for the International Space Station or
the I S S, which is what I had intended
to podcast about in the first place, because, depending upon
whom you believe, that station is starting to near the
end of its functional life. All right, so let's do
a quick look at what was going on as we
(01:55):
arrived at a point where the I S S becomes possible. First,
you had a Russia. Back in the Soviet days, the
Soviet Space Agency built several space modules that could serve
as the core of a space station. Mirror's core module
is an example of this. Another example was the Functional
Cargo Block or f g B. Now, this type of
(02:18):
module was originally intended for the Mirror space station, but
it never launched to join Mirror. It was also part
of a Soviet era anti ballistic missile system kind of
like the star Wars program was supposed to be here
in the United States, uh and similarly that also never
achieved orbit. Now, some in the West suspected that the
(02:41):
f g B module that would eventually become the first
I S S component in space, which would be called
zaria that that means dawn or sunrise in Russian. Anyway,
they thought that it's possible that this f g B
unit actually dated to the Soviet era, at least was
largely constructed in the nineteen eighties. However, other documents show
(03:05):
that while the design came from the Soviet era, the
actual construction would take place in the nineties. More on
that in just a bit. But the Russians also had
another module with the designation of Saliot Dose eight do
OS eight, And you might remember from the previous episodes
that the Saliot program included space stations that had the
(03:26):
DOS designation, and that Mirror's core module had the designation
d OS seven. While the d O S eight was
intended to serve as a core for successor space station,
the Mirror two. There's supposed to be a second Mirror.
The Soviets built d OS eight in the nineteen eighties,
but for various reasons, that program never got off the ground,
(03:49):
so to speak, and the module sat in storage in
the factory for many years, and it would eventually emerge
as Vezda, which means star in Russian, or possibly Zuesda,
since the V and W sounds are a little tricky,
I'll say Zvezda, but because I mean, I tried to
(04:10):
look it up. But honestly, the the resources I looked at,
I don't fully trust them because a lot of them
just had that robot telling me it's Vezda. It sounds
to me like it's just doing it, you know, phonetically. Anyway,
over in the United States and Europe and Japan, you
had various space programs all at work on the design
(04:30):
and development of modules for what was going to be
Space Station Freedom and then Space Station Alpha or Space
Station Fred as some would call it, and these included
a module from the European Space Agency that would be
called Columbus and one from Japan called the Japanese Experiment
Module or j E M or Keybo. But by the
(04:51):
early es all of those plans were starting to fizzle
out as the United States Congress began to bulk at
the prospect of paying out for a space station that
had made little progress since the Reagan administration had announced it.
In That also put international strain on NASA because it
had made commitments to these other space agencies, so the
(05:13):
collapse of the Soviet Union did a serious number both
on its own space program as well as the United
States space program. So for decades, the rivalry between the
United States and the USSR pushed governments to pour more
resources into the space program for numerous reasons. One was
to display technological superiority over an opponent in the Cold War.
(05:37):
Another was to establish technologies that could potentially be weaponized
in the future in a further escalation of the arms race.
And of course there were the countless engineers and scientists
who genuinely wanted to expand our understanding of space and science.
But without that political rivalry, a lot of them was gone,
(05:57):
at least on a political side. And you know, don't
get me started on that. I find that so frustrating,
as if, you know, pushing back the boundaries of ignorance
is somehow not priceless all by itself. You never know
what you're gonna learn or how you might be able
to use it, and it could be an enormous benefit,
but no, you know, unless there's that other guy to
(06:18):
race against, it doesn't matter anyway. There was a real
possibility to any space station plans from anyone, We're just
gonna get tossed aside at least put on a back
burner for a really long time. Russia was struggling with
a financial and political crisis. The United States was struggling
with the fact that the space station designs had moving
(06:40):
goalposts and budgetary issues. So every time NASA was trying
to readjust new criticisms were coming in and various politicians
were starting to pull money away from NASA budgets. Also,
by that point, Bill Clinton had become the president of
the United States, so with a change in presidential administration
comes another opportunity to salvage the work on developing a
(07:02):
space station. This time, Russia would be invited to join
that project rather than serve as some sort of antagonist.
Clinton's team saw the possibility to combine the efforts of
Russia with those of the United States, Canada, Europe, and
Japan to create an international space station. The big benefit
(07:23):
here would be that the pieces that were already either
fully built or in the process of being constructed, or
at least ready to go into manufacturing, could still be
put to use rather than just go to waste. To
that end, US Vice President Al Gore and the Russian
Prime minister whose name I'm not even going to attempt
to pronounce. First name, Victor, I can get that one anyway.
(07:46):
They together announced the planned partnership of the I S
S what would become the I S S, and the
agreement would also create bonds of international cooperation, which in
turn could mean a shift in the arms race as
well as a way to help Russia stabilize politically as
well as economically in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.
(08:07):
That's a good thing. You don't want unstable countries, especially
unstable countries that might have access to enormous stores of weaponry.
So the various countries all begin to form an inter
governmental Agreement or i g A. This would create the
three phases of the space station project. And actually this
(08:29):
was the second i g A. The first one actually
took place in nine, but that one was without Russia's involvement.
That was back when it was still going to be
you know, space station Freedom. The second agreement would come
out like a decade later in nine. All countries except
the United States in this agreement designated the i g
A as a treaty in in the US. It was
(08:52):
not a treaty. It was an executive agreement. Now that's
an important distinction, because in the United States, a treaty
with any foreign government requires that the United States Senate
has to ratify that treaty by a two thirds majority vote.
Executive agreements do not require that kind of ratification, and
in fact, they can pretty much hold the same sort
(09:15):
of powers as a treaty can. Now this is interesting
because there's no express clause in the United States Constitution
that actually grants US presidents this particular power. However, there's
also nothing in there saying that they can't do that.
So Clinton signed the executive agreement bypassing a congressional battle
over the whole matter. And as NASA puts it, the
(09:37):
new i g A established the overall cooperative framework for
the design, development, operation, and utilization of the I s
S and addressed several legal topics, including civil and criminal jurisdiction,
intellectual property, and the operational responsibilities of the participating partners.
Lower level bilateral memoranda of understanding or m o use
(10:00):
were signed that same day by NASA Administrator Daniel Golden
with his Russian, European and Canadian counterparts, and on February
twenty with Japanese representatives, the m O used described the
roles and responsibilities of the partners in more detail. A
third layer consists of bartered contractual agreements establishing the trading
of the partner's rights and duties end quote. Really interesting
(10:22):
that bartering was part of this, because I'm going to
cover a lot of the various components of the International
Space Station in this episode, and many of those were
part of this bartering, where you know, one party was
saying all right, well, I'll let you do this, but
you need to let me do this, and that all
kind of came about as international cooperation. So all of
(10:44):
this was going on while, of course Mirror was still
operational and an orbit. And as I mentioned in the
Mirror episode, US astronauts would actually visit the Mirror Space
station as part of preparations for creating the International Space Station.
There were ga gathering valuable information about life and space,
the effects of space on the human body, and more.
(11:05):
These findings would inform design decisions for the future space
station modules. In fact, I should add the Mirror state
in orbit until the spring of two thousand one, so
there was operational overlap between Mirror and the International Space Station,
so the Mere program continued while NASA, the E s A, Japan, Canada,
and Russia worked on components for the new International Space Station.
(11:29):
In things really got off the ground figuratively and literally.
And not only is that when the participating countries signed
that I G A and the m o US, it's
also when the first component of the International Space Station
launched into orbit. So ten months after that historic signing,
Russia sent the Zarya module up into orbit aboard a
(11:50):
launch vehicle called the Proton K, essentially a big old rocket.
All right, So let's address some stuff here. Now I
mentioned earlier or that Zaria's design at the very least
traces its origin to the Soviet era. Now, the purpose
of the Zaria module was to act as a station
keeping component. That is, it is a part of the
(12:13):
station that can work to maintain a fixed distance from
other stuff in orbit to allow for things like docking
maneuvers and all that kind of stuff. It's important for
the stabilization of the station. It would also serve as
a source of battery power for the station, including you know,
having having solar arrays that could help charge the batteries.
(12:33):
Are really not help charge the batteries, charge the batteries.
And uh. It was based off the f GB cargo
spacecraft design. Now the thing is a module that was
meant to do the very same thing as Zaria was
originally part of this Soviet anti ballistic program called Skiff,
which was an abandoned project. They tried to launch a
(12:57):
laser based anti ballistic weapon up into space. The Russians did,
but that launch failed. So there were some folks who
suspected that Zaria was not made in the nineties but
was actually a leftover, perhaps even a spare f g
B that was originally meant for this weapons program back
in the eighties. Now, if that was the case, then
(13:19):
the United States was essentially helping fund something that was
already built. Right because the United States paid the bill
for Russia to make this thing, it could be that
they already had it made and they were just like, yeah, no,
things are going great, keep sending the money, you know,
checks in the mail. It would largely explain how this
spacecraft managed to come in under budget and on time.
(13:42):
Those are two things that are pretty darn rare when
it happens in the space industry. Now, does that mean
for sure that it was actually built in the eighties
but passed off as being built in the nineties. No, No,
not at all, just that it's possible, but whether it
was constructed in the nineteen eighties or the nineties, Zaria
did launch into space on November twentie n It launched
(14:05):
from Kazakhstan and it got into orbit without any major problems. Now,
the intent was to have Zaria operate on its own
with no crew aboard for up to eight months, and
it would turn out that the module would be lonely
a bit longer than that. Now, broadly speaking, you can
think of the I S S as being made of
two major sections. There's the Russian orbital segment or r
(14:28):
O S, and there is the US Orbital segment or
U S O S. Zaria is the module that connects
the R O S to the U S O S,
or at least on the Russian side. So Zaria is
twelve point five six meters that's a bit more than
forty one feet long, and it's four point one one
(14:49):
ms or about thirteen and a half feet wide at
its widest point. It is sort of a uh you know,
it's a cylinder, but a stepped cylinder, so it's not
all the same diameter across the entire length of spacecraft.
Like I said, it also has a pair of solar
arrays that stretched out to either side, kind of like
wings to help you know to to generate electricity. Zaria
(15:10):
has three docking ports, one on each end of the module,
So like if you look at a cylinder, one on
one end of the cylinder, one on the other, and
there's a third one that faces Earth, typically on the
outer circumference near the forward end of the module. They
call this the Nader So you have the Nader ports.
Those are ones that typically face towards Earth in the
(15:32):
I S S normal orientation, and then you have the
zenith ports, which face away from Earth in I S
S is normal orientation. Then you also have port and
starboard uh ports, and some of these starboard being the
right hand side, assuming you're facing forward and your upright.
You normally don't have to say that because you're normally
(15:53):
talking about starboard import on a boat, and you're almost
always upright on a boat unless you're really sick, and
then port of course is the left side. So anyway,
those are the various directions. We try to keep them straight.
It's hard to do when you're talking about being in
a microgravity environment. We're up and down are more concepts
than anything else anyway. So three ports, one on either
(16:14):
end of this module, one on the nader or Earth
facing side of Zaria and uh Zaria links to the
Vezda module on the aft end, and it connects to
a U S module we're going to talk about in
the second on the forward end, and it connects to
a third module called Ross Vett on the earth facing port.
(16:38):
Although originally that port was actually used for Selia's space
capsules to dock with the station. As I mentioned, this
module alone was not enough to support life aboard the station,
so there was no crew at this point. The second
component to join the I S S was the U
S built Unity Module. This is a connector piece kind
of Its main purpose is to connect the R O
(17:00):
S section of the space station with the U S
O S section, so this is the United States version
of that. It also serves as a crew dining area,
and it launched on December four as part of the
Space Shuttle Endeavor mission. So this module was in the
payload of that space shuttle. We'll talk more about Unity
(17:21):
as well as lots of other modules on the I
S S after we come back from this quick break.
All right, we're back to Unity. Let's learn some more
about this particular little module, which again was sort of
the connector piece, one of three nodes, as it would
(17:42):
turn out. So there are two other um units aboard
the I S S or part of the I S
S that are similar to Unity. So Unity measures five
point four seven ms or nearly eighteen feet long and
four point five seven ms or fifteen feet in diameter,
so it looks like a very short cylinder when you're
at a distance. Right has six ports on it, as
(18:05):
one on either end. So these are the axial births.
That's b E r t h S. Not not birth
is in like birthday, but birth is in you know,
ship birth. And it also has four along the circumference
of the spacecraft if you like. These would be the zenith,
nadir um and port and starboard h ports or births
(18:31):
so on the forward and aft births, which are called
the common birthing mechanisms. Again b E R t H
these are cb ms. These at these ends, they had
two pressurized mating adapters one on either side. These are
called p m as, and as the name suggests, p
m as serve as a way to connect two components
together and maintain a pressurized environment so that different pieces
(18:55):
could link together. The p m A on the aft
side of Unity dock with the Zarya module at the
p m A on the forward side would later serve
as a docking point for space shuttles, though in subsequent missions,
crews would disconnect this p m A and attach it
to other births while connecting new components to the I
S S, so it was not permanently affixed to the
(19:17):
forward side. It was, however, and is permanently affixed to
the aft side, where it connects to the Russian part
of the space station. Astronauts a board Endeavor used the
shuttle's robotic arm to connect Unity to Zaria, locking the
two pieces together and creating the first linked modules for
the I S S. It still wasn't ready to support
a crew yet, but it was the first step towards
(19:39):
the dream of an international space station. You know in
space Now I mentioned that Unity, the connector module, uh
you know, serves as a place where crews eat meals together,
and it also acts as a pass through for the
various electrical and fluid systems on board the I S S,
meaning it allows for those things to continue through this
(20:01):
module and connect to others. Very important, like all these
modules need to not just fit together, that they need
to allow the various systems, especially life support, to go
from one unit to another so that you have it
throughout the entire space station. A unity was responsible for
one of these things, even though it wasn't itself, uh,
you know, a life support system module. Now, the plan
(20:25):
was to add other components in pretty short order and
get the station to a point where it could be
habitable for cruise. Like the idea was, all right, we'll
get the third module up there with life support, and
then we'll have a crew aboard and we'll be ready
to go by the end of But the next module
to go up would be a Russian one, and the
(20:45):
Russian space program rose Cosmos was really struggling. The United States,
as I said, actually owned Zaria, having paid for its construction. Again,
assuming it wasn't already constructed, Zvezda would need extra help
in order to get off the ground, both figuratively and literally,
and it got some help from and I promise I'm
(21:09):
not making this up Pizza Hut. So Russia as a
whole was still really unstable economically around this time, and
the Space Agency, while never lacking in scientific expertise and ingenuity,
often found itself strapped for cash, which makes it really
hard if you want to launch something into space. So
(21:32):
part of the funding for this project actually came from advertising.
Pizza Hut spent a truckload of money to have its
company logo painted on the Proton launch vehicle that it
carries Vesta up to orbit. The New York Times reported
that the pizza company spent about half of what it
would take to run a thirty second ad during the
(21:52):
Super Bowl at that time, and that was around two
and a half million dollars, so more than a million dollars,
maybe a little less than a million and a half.
And hey, you know, this might sound a little crass about,
you know, slapping a logo on the space rocket, but
the money helped keep the dream of the I S
S alive. Zvezda would be the first module to actually
(22:14):
have a life support system incorporated into it, so would
finally allow people to go aboard the young I s s.
Once everything was connected and operational, Zvesda launched on July twelfth,
two thousand. The initial docking with the aft port of
Zaria happened on July two thousand. However, it would take
a Space Shuttle mission that was launched a few months
(22:36):
later in September for astronaut h and a cosmonaut and
astronaut cosmonaut each to go on a spacewalk and make
all the cable connections between Vesta and Zaria. That spacewalk
lasted more than six hours to get all those connections complete,
and at the end of it, Vesta, Zaria and by
extension unity, we're all connected together. On September twelve, two thousand,
(23:00):
all the systems operational members of the Space Shuttle crew
boarded the space station for the first time. Now as
part of that transfer, Zaria's computers handed over control of
the station to VESDA. So Zaria now was no longer
mission control for the Russian part of the space station,
(23:20):
and Zvezda would serve as the living quarters for astronauts
in the time. For the time being, it also had
propulsion systems for making attitude and orientation adjustments to the station.
Very important, and it also had a communication system for
making contact with Earth. Finally, after components had been in
orbit for about two years, the space station would have
(23:42):
occupants and it would maintain some crew, sometimes a very
small one, but it would always have a crew all
the way up to and including today, So since September
two thousand twelve, there has always been at least a
crew aboard the I S S. So Zezda would be
(24:04):
home to early cruise at the I S S. You
might wonder what it was like. LA module was thirteen
point one long, that's about forty three and our feet
in length rather and it's whitest point in Its diameter
is four point three fives that's a bit more than
fourteen feet, and it has four docking ports. Three of
those are part of a section called a transfer compartment,
(24:26):
which it's at one end of this So imagine like
a cylinder has almost like a ball at one end.
That's the the where the transfer compartment is, and that's
where you could find three of those ports. Uh. And
it's at the forward end, like I said, of the
the module, you have one port in the axial direction,
so it means coming out from the end and The
(24:47):
other two ports are on either side of the sphere
at ninety degrees from the axial port, so you can
think of him as Zenith and Nadier up and down.
You can also think of them as left and right,
depending on how you're looking at the station. So the
axial port docked with Zaria, so these modules connected end
to end. You can think of him as like two
cylinders connected end to end with one another. The other
(25:10):
two ports on the transfer compartment attached ultimately would attach
to the Poist module on one side, and originally a
module called Piers on the other, but Piers would later
get swapped out for a new module called Naka, which
will have a lot more to say about later on.
A fourth docking port was on the aft end of
(25:31):
the VESDA module, so on the opposite side of the cylinder.
This would serve as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft
and cargo ships coming up from Russia to resupply the station.
This VESDA supports up to six crew members, actually as
sleeping quarters for two, so folks have to kind of
sleep in shifts. It also has other necessities like a toilet,
(25:52):
obviously really important astronauts who flew aboard the Apollo missions
could tell you all about that, and it also had
exercise equipment in order to help crew members stay healthy
in space and counteract things like muscle and bone loss.
It also has a kitchen area for food preparation. There
are fourteen windows in Zvezda UM, including one in each
(26:13):
of the sleeping compartments, and one of the carryovers from
the Soviet era of Russia's space program would end up
being a real source spot for VESDA, also for Zaria. So.
NASA's approach to space modules was to include components that
could be swapped out, so that should something fail, you
(26:34):
could bring up a replacement on a subsequent mission, remove
the failed piece of equipment and install the new one,
and now you've got operational abilities back again. Russia built
everything directly into their spacecraft like it was not something
that was removable, so if anything failed, then the only
approach you had was to repair the thing that failed.
(26:55):
Otherwise it was just useless because there was no way
to replace it. You couldn't get out and put a
new whatever it was in like a new computer system,
for example. You either fixed what you had or you
had a broken one and that was it. So that
included Vezda's oxygen generation system. The device used is called
(27:15):
an electron that's E L E K T R O N,
and it uses surprise surprise electricity to generate oxygen from water.
This process is called electrolysis. I've talked about it a
few times on this show. Is pretty darn simple and
concept you you apply an electric charge to water molecules,
and that that electricity, that that energy breaks the molecular
(27:38):
bond between oxygen and hydrogen, and both of them get
released as gases. Now, you could theoretically use that hydrogen
as fuel, but it's pretty dangerous stuff. It's incredibly flammable,
and so the electron system would simply vent hydrogen into space,
but the oxygen would be used as part of the
life support system. But the trouble is the electron system
(28:01):
on Zvezda is pretty darn rickety. I mean, it was
originally developed for the Mere space station, and frequently it
requires repairs because as a tendency to break down, and
the cosmonauts can't get a new electron into the Vezda
module because and here's a classic problem, the electron system
(28:21):
is larger than the Vezda modules hatches, so in other words,
you couldn't get a replacement system in there because it
won't fit through the door. Whoops. Say. But anyway, back
in two thousand, all of this was brand new and
started breaking down yet, and on September twelve, two thousand,
there would be a crew aboard the space station and
(28:43):
there has been every day since. Next the US attached
a trust segment called the Z one to Unity and
also added a third pressurized mating adapter, the other two
being mounted to either axial end of Unity and the
trust of the space station. You could think of it
like a scaffold. Uh. It's it's a it's a skeleton
(29:03):
in a way upon which you can suspend numerous components,
and there are a ton of them. Uh. This trust
extends outward from the space station, and it can hold
stuff like the massive solar arrays. When you look at
a picture of the space station and you see those
big wings of solar arrays, those connect back to the
trusts of the space station. Uh, but a lot of
(29:25):
other stuff connects to it. To The Z one was
the first of these trust pieces, and NASA would add
to this many many times over the following years. However,
I'm just gonna let you know, I'm gonna skip all
of those different trust editions because there's a ton of them.
They're important, but if I focused on all those, I
would never get to the modules. So the next module
(29:47):
to join the party was from the United States, and
this was the Destiny module. It launched on February seven,
two thou one aboard this Space shuttle Atlantis, docking with
the other end of the Unity capsule on right tenth
and before that could even happen, the Atlantis crew used
the Space shuttle's robotic arm to detach the p M
A two from Unity's forward docking port. So this was
(30:12):
the one that was opposite the one that connects Unity
to the Russian module Zarya. The p M A two
got shuffled around a bit until Destiny had been docked
into place uh in the forward side of Unity, and
then the Atlantis crew reattached p M A two to
the other end of Destiny. It would take several days
(30:33):
for a strong astronauts to make all the connections necessary
in order to bring Destiny fully online. Now, this module
is eight point four meters or twenty eight feet long,
and it has a diameter of four point two meters
or fourteen feet, and it kind of looks like a
can of soda to me. But obviously with docking ports
on either axial end, uh, those are the only two
(30:55):
docking ports on Destiny. It does not have any of
the ones at the zenith, nader or starboard or ports sides,
so it just has one on either end of the cylinder.
Destiny serves as the first and primary research lab aboard
the I S S, at least on the U S
O S side. This is where the science gets done,
(31:16):
but you know, not to make a neat gun for
the people who are still alive. We're talking about biomedical experiments,
engineering experiments, physics experiments, earth science experiments, material science experiments,
all that kind of stuff. When you think of the
science that's happening aboard the International Space Station, Destiny is
(31:36):
the primary spot where that stuff happens, not the only one,
but the main one. So this is the kind of
stuff that astronauts aboard the sky Lab space station focused
on back in the nineteen seventies. Destiny was the first
module to make use of racks to hold various station
systems and experiments in place. So these are kind of
(31:58):
like mounting points for various experiments. Obviously, when you're in
a microgravity environment, you've gotta have ways to attach stuff
to your spacecraft or else it's just gonna you know,
float around and bump around in microgravity. So these are
standardized racks, and in fact they're called International Standard Payload
(32:19):
Racks or i sprs, and other countries with the exception
of Russia, use the same standard, so that experiments and
systems can fit on any of these. The Destiny has
eight rack bays and they can hold up to twenty
four racks. These things, by the way, are massive, unearthed,
way around t pounds. Of course in microgravity you don't
(32:44):
have to worry about that now. As I mentioned, some
of those racks hold station systems in place, you know,
stuff like life support systems and electrical power systems or
climate control systems. Uh and Destiny did not have the
full complement of twenty four racks when it launched. It
had some, but not all of them. Additional space shuttle
(33:04):
missions would bring up more racks, which would then get
installed into the rack bays in Destiny's lab. Destiny also
includes a twenty inch window of incredible clarity. NASA calls
it like the quality of a telescope lens, like that
kind of level of clarity, and astronauts mostly use this
(33:25):
to conduct Earth science experiments. So if you've ever felt
like someone was just kind of watching you, maybe it
was a peeper aboard the I S. S. Except it
doesn't like magnify everything. Obviously I'm being a little facetious.
The pictures of it are amazing, but obviously, like then,
you're looking at a lens through a lens, right, you're
looking at a camera image of the glass. I really
(33:48):
wish I could see what it looks like to look
at the Earth through that glass, you know, in person,
I imagine has to be absolutely spectacular. We've got a
lot more to say about the I S. S. And boy,
this is really a huge, huge undertaking. We are going
to take another break and come back right after this. Okay,
(34:16):
let's get back to it. In July two thousand one,
the United States launched a joint airlock module named Quest
and this module attached to the Unity module, and it
gave astronauts on the U S O S side of
the space station the ability to perform e V A
S or spacewalks, because up to that point the only
(34:38):
airlock aboard the space station was on the Russian side
of the I S S, so, uh, you know, astronauts
weren't really going over to the Russian side and vice versa,
so they didn't really get to use that airlock. All
the other e v A s that were performed on
the US side had been part of Space Shuttle missions
(34:59):
rather than and you know, conducted by the crew aboard
the I S S because they had no airlock to
go through in order to you know, exit the station
and do an e v A. But Quest changed all that.
Then the Russians launched another module in September two thou one.
This one was the Piers module, that's p I R S,
(35:20):
and the Russians docked it with a port on This
Vezda module frequently referred to as the bottom or Nadier
Point because it was facing the Earth usually and it
served as a docking module. In other words, this was
a way for other spacecraft like so Yu's capsules and
cargo ships unscrewed cargo ships two dock with the I
(35:42):
S S. It could also serve as an airlock so
that cosmonauts could go on e v A. So this
expanded the station's ability to have you know, spacecraft dock
with it. I should add that one thing that is
consistent aboard the I S S is that it always
has a couple of Soya's capsules attached to it to
(36:04):
serve as escape capsules, so that should there be a
catastrophic failure aboard the space station, cosmonauts and astronauts would
have the ability to get into a spacecraft capable of
making the return back to Earth. So some of these
docking ports end up being in use as these these
various capsules stay attached for up to like six months
(36:27):
at a time before being swapped around. Now, this module,
the Piers module, is one that we can actually refer
to in the past tense because while it was part
of the I S S for a really long time,
I mean almost twenty years, it is no longer part
of the I S S today. Earlier this year, Russia
(36:47):
removed Peers from the I S S and maneuvered it
for re entry and de orbited the module on July one.
This was so that they could make room for a
new module, which we will talk about possibly in the
next episode, because this one's running longer than I anticipated.
But for twenty years, piers was a big part of
(37:08):
the I S S. Then, from the end of two
thousand one to two thousand seven, the I S S
pretty much stayed as I described it, with no other
modules joining, although crews would continue to join and leave
through various so us and a few spatial emissions. Also,
the trust section did get larger with more components, but
(37:29):
as I said earlier, I'm not gonna cover all those.
It would just take way too much time. It's fascinating stuff,
by the way, I mean like it added tons of
different functionality to the I S S. But I gotta
draw the line somewhere anyway. Part of the reason for
that long delay, why nothing happened really as far as
modules are concerned between two thousand one and two thousand seven,
(37:51):
is that the Space Shuttle program was grounded due to
the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that happened on February first,
two thousand three. Just like NASA put the spatial program
on pause for more than two years after the Challenger disaster,
they did the same thing after Columbia. Shuttle missions would
not start again until July of two thousand five, so
(38:14):
it really set back plans of building out the I
S S and only Russian capsules visited the I S
S in the meantime, and a skeleton crew of two
people served to occupy the station at that point because
there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to do much else.
So this was an era of the I S S
(38:34):
where not that much science is getting done. You only
got two people aboard there. They have to handle everything
aboard the station, not just the experiments, but you know,
the regular maintenance and operations of the station itself. The
next module to join would not launch until October two
thousand seven. It was aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, and
this would be the module that would be called Harmony.
(38:57):
And this module is very similar to Unity. It's one
of the node modules, and like I said, a third
one will join the I S S before we're all
done with it, so, like you know, Unity, Harmony's purpose
is partly to provide connecting points between other units in
the space station, but it also serves as sleeping quarters
(39:20):
for up to four crew members. Initially, Harmony docked with
one of the births on Unity, so that these two
nodes were connected directly to each other, but a few
weeks later, crews would move Harmony to the other end
of Destiny, so that Destiny connected to unity on one
end and Harmony on the other end. Harmony also serves
(39:42):
as the mounting location for the space station's robotic arm
Cannad armed too. It also has four I sprs dedicated
to cruise storage and another four I s p r
s for avionics systems. In two thousand eight, the European
Space Agency module Columbus joined the I S s NOW.
(40:03):
This was originally intended to be part of Space Station
Freedom more than a decade earlier, you know, back when
that was still a thing. Columbus launched aboard the Space
Shuttle Atlantis on February seven eight. It is seven ms long,
that's twenty three ft and it's four and a half
meters in diameter or fifteen feet and they can hold
(40:24):
up to ten I s p rs for science experiments
and then more for various systems. The e s A
technically has operational control of Columbus, NASA has the rest
of it. That means that the two agencies actually split
these racks between them, so e s A has control
(40:44):
of five racks for experiments and NASA has control of
the other five and that they just share the space.
They cohabitate. Like Destiny, the activities on Columbus are geared
towards scientific experiments and expanding our knowledge, particularly when it
comes to ace exploration. Columbus docked with the starboard port
of Harmony on February eleven eight. So again, that means
(41:08):
if you were in the Harmony module and your right
side up, which is you know, again a weak distinction
when you're in space and you have the Destiny module
behind you that's to your aft you're facing forward, that
would mean that Columbus would be on your right hand side.
You would need to go through the hatch on the
right to get to the Columbus module. Again, all these
(41:30):
directions get pretty loosey goosey when you start to lose
reference points like up and down, so your mileage may vary.
I guess next up. Shortly after Columbus came the Japanese
Experiment Module or KEYBO. Now, Keybo is a really big module.
It's so big that it required three separate shuttle missions
to bring all the major pieces of the module up
(41:53):
to the I S S. Like Columbus, Kebo connected to Harmony,
on the port side, so that's the left side of
harmony if you've got destiny behind you and your right
side up. And it has twenty three I s p
rs aboard it those racks, those enormous experiment racks. UH.
Ten of those are reserved for science. The rest are
(42:14):
for Keybos systems and crew storage. Keybo has its own
robotic arm. It also has its own communication system. UH.
It hosts a ton of different science experiments, and that
includes stuff like Earth science experiments that monitor the CEO
two content of the atmosphere of our planet. Has X
ray astronomy experiments, electron telescopes, cosmic ray experiments, lots of
(42:38):
really super cool stuff. It also hosts various physics and
biology experiments. And then there's an exposed facility. This is
a a part of the Keybo module that attached to
the far end of it. UH. This is a science
platform that's exposed to space for those kinds of experiments,
you know, the kind where there ain't no air out there.
(43:01):
It's a little tricky to talk about the size of
Kebo because of all these different pieces that came together.
If we're just looking at the pressurized parts of the
module as the bits that astronauts can move through without
wearing a spacesuit. Then you have one part of it
that is about eleven ms long or thirty six and
a half feet long, and it has a diameter of
about four point four meters or a little more than
(43:24):
fourteen feet. But then there's a second part of it,
a module that extends out from KEBO at a ninety
degree angle of this tube. So think of this one
pressurized tube and then think of like almost like a submarine,
you know, has like that that console at the the
at one end, you've got this this part that juts
out of one side of the tube at ninety degrees.
(43:48):
This one's four point two meters long or thirteen point
eight feet and four point three nine ms or fourteen
point four feet in diameter. So KEBO isn't a simple
cylindrical shape like most of the other modules. It's a
little funky looking. Next up we get the Poisk module
p o I s K. This was the first of
(44:08):
the Russian Orbiting System the r OS portion of the
space station to be added after many many years. POIS
is similar to the Piers module, in fact almost identical
to it, and Piers as I will remind you it
docked back with the I S S way back in
two thousand one. So POIS serves as a docking you know,
(44:30):
docking compartment primarily just as Piers used to do before.
You know, they gave it the boot from the I
S S earlier this year. POIS thus houses an airlock
and docking system, and it attached to this Vesdam module
on the side opposite the Piers side, or rather, you
know the side where Piers used to be, so it's
(44:52):
on the Zen side. On February ten, NASA launched a
module called Tranquility aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Now this
one was commissioned by the EESA and the Italian Space
Agency or a s I. The module's main purpose is
to provide life support systems, environmental control systems, and an
(45:12):
observation coupola to the space station, sort of like a
quality of life module if you think about it. And
Tranquility has six ports or birthing locations, allowing it to
connect to up to six other components on the space station. Uh,
it docked with the port side of Unity, and we'll
chat about a couple of the other components that have
(45:35):
since docked with tranquility in our next episode. But um,
I want to do one more before we we wrap
up here, and that is the ras Vett module r
A S S V E T. And if you're thinking
that sounds like that's Russian, you're right. It joined the
I S S and Rasvet's main purpose is to serve
(45:56):
as a storage container as well as another docking for spacecraft.
This one didn't fly aboard a Russian launch vehicle. It
actually went up courtesy of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on
May and docked with the I S S on May eighteenth.
It connected with the bottom or native point of these
Azario module, the original I S S module that started
(46:18):
this whole thing, and the other port on Rassevet serves
as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft and cargo spacecraft.
This module is six meters or about nineteen point seven
ft long and two point three five or seven point
seven feet in diameter. All Right, we're gonna wrap up
here and we're gonna come back in our next episode
to pick up where we left off. Talk about the
(46:39):
last few modules that have joined the I S S,
including the Naka which is the most recent one. Uh.
And we've got another one on the way before the
end of the year if everything goes well, So we'll
talk about those, and we'll talk about what life is
like aboard the space station, some of the experiments that
have been done, some of the you know, interesting things
that have happened aboard the space station, ring it's you know,
(47:01):
time and service, as well as talk a little bit
about the plans of what comes next, like how much
longer does the I S S have before we really
need to consider retiring it because various components are pretty
old at this point, and what should come after that.
But we'll do that for the next episode. This one
(47:23):
has gone on long enough. If you have suggestions for
topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
show is text Stuff h s W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
(47:46):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I
love all things tech and I think we're in the
penultimate space station episode, folks. So for those of you
(00:27):
just you know, tuning into this episode and not hearing
the others, this is a continuation of a series I've
done about space stations. So we started off talking about
monolithic stations, that is, stations that would launch into orbit,
all in one piece, like fully formed, and you would
use some sort of heavy lift launch vehicle to get
them up up, you know, into orbit. That includes stuff
(00:49):
like the Soviet Saliott stations, which also included a couple
of military platforms, and also the US sky Lab station.
Then and the following episode we focused a lot on
Mir the Soviet slash Russian modular space station, because that
particular space station was up in orbit and survived the
(01:11):
transition from the Soviet Union dissolving and becoming its various
you know, independent states. And then we followed that up
with an episode about NASA's attempts to get its own
modular space station up into orbit. That last one was
a real gut punch because it involves a series of
different proposals and attempts that you know, fizzled out at
(01:32):
least as far as NASA's original plans go. But this
all sets the stage for the International Space Station or
the I S S, which is what I had intended
to podcast about in the first place, because, depending upon
whom you believe, that station is starting to near the
end of its functional life. All right, so let's do
a quick look at what was going on as we
(01:55):
arrived at a point where the I S S becomes possible. First,
you had a Russia. Back in the Soviet days, the
Soviet Space Agency built several space modules that could serve
as the core of a space station. Mirror's core module
is an example of this. Another example was the Functional
Cargo Block or f g B. Now, this type of
(02:18):
module was originally intended for the Mirror space station, but
it never launched to join Mirror. It was also part
of a Soviet era anti ballistic missile system kind of
like the star Wars program was supposed to be here
in the United States, uh and similarly that also never
achieved orbit. Now, some in the West suspected that the
(02:41):
f g B module that would eventually become the first
I S S component in space, which would be called
zaria that that means dawn or sunrise in Russian. Anyway,
they thought that it's possible that this f g B
unit actually dated to the Soviet era, at least was
largely constructed in the nineteen eighties. However, other documents show
(03:05):
that while the design came from the Soviet era, the
actual construction would take place in the nineties. More on
that in just a bit. But the Russians also had
another module with the designation of Saliot Dose eight do
OS eight, And you might remember from the previous episodes
that the Saliot program included space stations that had the
(03:26):
DOS designation, and that Mirror's core module had the designation
d OS seven. While the d O S eight was
intended to serve as a core for successor space station,
the Mirror two. There's supposed to be a second Mirror.
The Soviets built d OS eight in the nineteen eighties,
but for various reasons, that program never got off the ground,
(03:49):
so to speak, and the module sat in storage in
the factory for many years, and it would eventually emerge
as Vezda, which means star in Russian, or possibly Zuesda,
since the V and W sounds are a little tricky,
I'll say Zvezda, but because I mean, I tried to
(04:10):
look it up. But honestly, the the resources I looked at,
I don't fully trust them because a lot of them
just had that robot telling me it's Vezda. It sounds
to me like it's just doing it, you know, phonetically. Anyway,
over in the United States and Europe and Japan, you
had various space programs all at work on the design
(04:30):
and development of modules for what was going to be
Space Station Freedom and then Space Station Alpha or Space
Station Fred as some would call it, and these included
a module from the European Space Agency that would be
called Columbus and one from Japan called the Japanese Experiment
Module or j E M or Keybo. But by the
(04:51):
early es all of those plans were starting to fizzle
out as the United States Congress began to bulk at
the prospect of paying out for a space station that
had made little progress since the Reagan administration had announced it.
In That also put international strain on NASA because it
had made commitments to these other space agencies, so the
(05:13):
collapse of the Soviet Union did a serious number both
on its own space program as well as the United
States space program. So for decades, the rivalry between the
United States and the USSR pushed governments to pour more
resources into the space program for numerous reasons. One was
to display technological superiority over an opponent in the Cold War.
(05:37):
Another was to establish technologies that could potentially be weaponized
in the future in a further escalation of the arms race.
And of course there were the countless engineers and scientists
who genuinely wanted to expand our understanding of space and science.
But without that political rivalry, a lot of them was gone,
(05:57):
at least on a political side. And you know, don't
get me started on that. I find that so frustrating,
as if, you know, pushing back the boundaries of ignorance
is somehow not priceless all by itself. You never know
what you're gonna learn or how you might be able
to use it, and it could be an enormous benefit,
but no, you know, unless there's that other guy to
(06:18):
race against, it doesn't matter anyway. There was a real
possibility to any space station plans from anyone, We're just
gonna get tossed aside at least put on a back
burner for a really long time. Russia was struggling with
a financial and political crisis. The United States was struggling
with the fact that the space station designs had moving
(06:40):
goalposts and budgetary issues. So every time NASA was trying
to readjust new criticisms were coming in and various politicians
were starting to pull money away from NASA budgets. Also,
by that point, Bill Clinton had become the president of
the United States, so with a change in presidential administration
comes another opportunity to salvage the work on developing a
(07:02):
space station. This time, Russia would be invited to join
that project rather than serve as some sort of antagonist.
Clinton's team saw the possibility to combine the efforts of
Russia with those of the United States, Canada, Europe, and
Japan to create an international space station. The big benefit
(07:23):
here would be that the pieces that were already either
fully built or in the process of being constructed, or
at least ready to go into manufacturing, could still be
put to use rather than just go to waste. To
that end, US Vice President Al Gore and the Russian
Prime minister whose name I'm not even going to attempt
to pronounce. First name, Victor, I can get that one anyway.
(07:46):
They together announced the planned partnership of the I S
S what would become the I S S, and the
agreement would also create bonds of international cooperation, which in
turn could mean a shift in the arms race as
well as a way to help Russia stabilize politically as
well as economically in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.
(08:07):
That's a good thing. You don't want unstable countries, especially
unstable countries that might have access to enormous stores of weaponry.
So the various countries all begin to form an inter
governmental Agreement or i g A. This would create the
three phases of the space station project. And actually this
(08:29):
was the second i g A. The first one actually
took place in nine, but that one was without Russia's involvement.
That was back when it was still going to be
you know, space station Freedom. The second agreement would come
out like a decade later in nine. All countries except
the United States in this agreement designated the i g
A as a treaty in in the US. It was
(08:52):
not a treaty. It was an executive agreement. Now that's
an important distinction, because in the United States, a treaty
with any foreign government requires that the United States Senate
has to ratify that treaty by a two thirds majority vote.
Executive agreements do not require that kind of ratification, and
in fact, they can pretty much hold the same sort
(09:15):
of powers as a treaty can. Now this is interesting
because there's no express clause in the United States Constitution
that actually grants US presidents this particular power. However, there's
also nothing in there saying that they can't do that.
So Clinton signed the executive agreement bypassing a congressional battle
over the whole matter. And as NASA puts it, the
(09:37):
new i g A established the overall cooperative framework for
the design, development, operation, and utilization of the I s
S and addressed several legal topics, including civil and criminal jurisdiction,
intellectual property, and the operational responsibilities of the participating partners.
Lower level bilateral memoranda of understanding or m o use
(10:00):
were signed that same day by NASA Administrator Daniel Golden
with his Russian, European and Canadian counterparts, and on February
twenty with Japanese representatives, the m O used described the
roles and responsibilities of the partners in more detail. A
third layer consists of bartered contractual agreements establishing the trading
of the partner's rights and duties end quote. Really interesting
(10:22):
that bartering was part of this, because I'm going to
cover a lot of the various components of the International
Space Station in this episode, and many of those were
part of this bartering, where you know, one party was
saying all right, well, I'll let you do this, but
you need to let me do this, and that all
kind of came about as international cooperation. So all of
(10:44):
this was going on while, of course Mirror was still
operational and an orbit. And as I mentioned in the
Mirror episode, US astronauts would actually visit the Mirror Space
station as part of preparations for creating the International Space Station.
There were ga gathering valuable information about life and space,
the effects of space on the human body, and more.
(11:05):
These findings would inform design decisions for the future space
station modules. In fact, I should add the Mirror state
in orbit until the spring of two thousand one, so
there was operational overlap between Mirror and the International Space Station,
so the Mere program continued while NASA, the E s A, Japan, Canada,
and Russia worked on components for the new International Space Station.
(11:29):
In things really got off the ground figuratively and literally.
And not only is that when the participating countries signed
that I G A and the m o US, it's
also when the first component of the International Space Station
launched into orbit. So ten months after that historic signing,
Russia sent the Zarya module up into orbit aboard a
(11:50):
launch vehicle called the Proton K, essentially a big old rocket.
All right, So let's address some stuff here. Now I
mentioned earlier or that Zaria's design at the very least
traces its origin to the Soviet era. Now, the purpose
of the Zaria module was to act as a station
keeping component. That is, it is a part of the
(12:13):
station that can work to maintain a fixed distance from
other stuff in orbit to allow for things like docking
maneuvers and all that kind of stuff. It's important for
the stabilization of the station. It would also serve as
a source of battery power for the station, including you know,
having having solar arrays that could help charge the batteries.
(12:33):
Are really not help charge the batteries, charge the batteries.
And uh. It was based off the f GB cargo
spacecraft design. Now the thing is a module that was
meant to do the very same thing as Zaria was
originally part of this Soviet anti ballistic program called Skiff,
which was an abandoned project. They tried to launch a
(12:57):
laser based anti ballistic weapon up into space. The Russians did,
but that launch failed. So there were some folks who
suspected that Zaria was not made in the nineties but
was actually a leftover, perhaps even a spare f g
B that was originally meant for this weapons program back
in the eighties. Now, if that was the case, then
(13:19):
the United States was essentially helping fund something that was
already built. Right because the United States paid the bill
for Russia to make this thing, it could be that
they already had it made and they were just like, yeah, no,
things are going great, keep sending the money, you know,
checks in the mail. It would largely explain how this
spacecraft managed to come in under budget and on time.
(13:42):
Those are two things that are pretty darn rare when
it happens in the space industry. Now, does that mean
for sure that it was actually built in the eighties
but passed off as being built in the nineties. No, No,
not at all, just that it's possible, but whether it
was constructed in the nineteen eighties or the nineties, Zaria
did launch into space on November twentie n It launched
(14:05):
from Kazakhstan and it got into orbit without any major problems. Now,
the intent was to have Zaria operate on its own
with no crew aboard for up to eight months, and
it would turn out that the module would be lonely
a bit longer than that. Now, broadly speaking, you can
think of the I S S as being made of
two major sections. There's the Russian orbital segment or r
(14:28):
O S, and there is the US Orbital segment or
U S O S. Zaria is the module that connects
the R O S to the U S O S,
or at least on the Russian side. So Zaria is
twelve point five six meters that's a bit more than
forty one feet long, and it's four point one one
(14:49):
ms or about thirteen and a half feet wide at
its widest point. It is sort of a uh you know,
it's a cylinder, but a stepped cylinder, so it's not
all the same diameter across the entire length of spacecraft.
Like I said, it also has a pair of solar
arrays that stretched out to either side, kind of like
wings to help you know to to generate electricity. Zaria
(15:10):
has three docking ports, one on each end of the module,
So like if you look at a cylinder, one on
one end of the cylinder, one on the other, and
there's a third one that faces Earth, typically on the
outer circumference near the forward end of the module. They
call this the Nader So you have the Nader ports.
Those are ones that typically face towards Earth in the
(15:32):
I S S normal orientation, and then you have the
zenith ports, which face away from Earth in I S
S is normal orientation. Then you also have port and
starboard uh ports, and some of these starboard being the
right hand side, assuming you're facing forward and your upright.
You normally don't have to say that because you're normally
(15:53):
talking about starboard import on a boat, and you're almost
always upright on a boat unless you're really sick, and
then port of course is the left side. So anyway,
those are the various directions. We try to keep them straight.
It's hard to do when you're talking about being in
a microgravity environment. We're up and down are more concepts
than anything else anyway. So three ports, one on either
(16:14):
end of this module, one on the nader or Earth
facing side of Zaria and uh Zaria links to the
Vezda module on the aft end, and it connects to
a U S module we're going to talk about in
the second on the forward end, and it connects to
a third module called Ross Vett on the earth facing port.
(16:38):
Although originally that port was actually used for Selia's space
capsules to dock with the station. As I mentioned, this
module alone was not enough to support life aboard the station,
so there was no crew at this point. The second
component to join the I S S was the U
S built Unity Module. This is a connector piece kind
of Its main purpose is to connect the R O
(17:00):
S section of the space station with the U S
O S section, so this is the United States version
of that. It also serves as a crew dining area,
and it launched on December four as part of the
Space Shuttle Endeavor mission. So this module was in the
payload of that space shuttle. We'll talk more about Unity
(17:21):
as well as lots of other modules on the I
S S after we come back from this quick break.
All right, we're back to Unity. Let's learn some more
about this particular little module, which again was sort of
the connector piece, one of three nodes, as it would
(17:42):
turn out. So there are two other um units aboard
the I S S or part of the I S
S that are similar to Unity. So Unity measures five
point four seven ms or nearly eighteen feet long and
four point five seven ms or fifteen feet in diameter,
so it looks like a very short cylinder when you're
at a distance. Right has six ports on it, as
(18:05):
one on either end. So these are the axial births.
That's b E r t h S. Not not birth
is in like birthday, but birth is in you know,
ship birth. And it also has four along the circumference
of the spacecraft if you like. These would be the zenith,
nadir um and port and starboard h ports or births
(18:31):
so on the forward and aft births, which are called
the common birthing mechanisms. Again b E R t H
these are cb ms. These at these ends, they had
two pressurized mating adapters one on either side. These are
called p m as, and as the name suggests, p
m as serve as a way to connect two components
together and maintain a pressurized environment so that different pieces
(18:55):
could link together. The p m A on the aft
side of Unity dock with the Zarya module at the
p m A on the forward side would later serve
as a docking point for space shuttles, though in subsequent missions,
crews would disconnect this p m A and attach it
to other births while connecting new components to the I
S S, so it was not permanently affixed to the
(19:17):
forward side. It was, however, and is permanently affixed to
the aft side, where it connects to the Russian part
of the space station. Astronauts a board Endeavor used the
shuttle's robotic arm to connect Unity to Zaria, locking the
two pieces together and creating the first linked modules for
the I S S. It still wasn't ready to support
a crew yet, but it was the first step towards
(19:39):
the dream of an international space station. You know in
space Now I mentioned that Unity, the connector module, uh
you know, serves as a place where crews eat meals together,
and it also acts as a pass through for the
various electrical and fluid systems on board the I S S,
meaning it allows for those things to continue through this
(20:01):
module and connect to others. Very important, like all these
modules need to not just fit together, that they need
to allow the various systems, especially life support, to go
from one unit to another so that you have it
throughout the entire space station. A unity was responsible for
one of these things, even though it wasn't itself, uh,
you know, a life support system module. Now, the plan
(20:25):
was to add other components in pretty short order and
get the station to a point where it could be
habitable for cruise. Like the idea was, all right, we'll
get the third module up there with life support, and
then we'll have a crew aboard and we'll be ready
to go by the end of But the next module
to go up would be a Russian one, and the
(20:45):
Russian space program rose Cosmos was really struggling. The United States,
as I said, actually owned Zaria, having paid for its construction. Again,
assuming it wasn't already constructed, Zvezda would need extra help
in order to get off the ground, both figuratively and literally,
and it got some help from and I promise I'm
(21:09):
not making this up Pizza Hut. So Russia as a
whole was still really unstable economically around this time, and
the Space Agency, while never lacking in scientific expertise and ingenuity,
often found itself strapped for cash, which makes it really
hard if you want to launch something into space. So
(21:32):
part of the funding for this project actually came from advertising.
Pizza Hut spent a truckload of money to have its
company logo painted on the Proton launch vehicle that it
carries Vesta up to orbit. The New York Times reported
that the pizza company spent about half of what it
would take to run a thirty second ad during the
(21:52):
Super Bowl at that time, and that was around two
and a half million dollars, so more than a million dollars,
maybe a little less than a million and a half.
And hey, you know, this might sound a little crass about,
you know, slapping a logo on the space rocket, but
the money helped keep the dream of the I S
S alive. Zvezda would be the first module to actually
(22:14):
have a life support system incorporated into it, so would
finally allow people to go aboard the young I s s.
Once everything was connected and operational, Zvesda launched on July twelfth,
two thousand. The initial docking with the aft port of
Zaria happened on July two thousand. However, it would take
a Space Shuttle mission that was launched a few months
(22:36):
later in September for astronaut h and a cosmonaut and
astronaut cosmonaut each to go on a spacewalk and make
all the cable connections between Vesta and Zaria. That spacewalk
lasted more than six hours to get all those connections complete,
and at the end of it, Vesta, Zaria and by
extension unity, we're all connected together. On September twelve, two thousand,
(23:00):
all the systems operational members of the Space Shuttle crew
boarded the space station for the first time. Now as
part of that transfer, Zaria's computers handed over control of
the station to VESDA. So Zaria now was no longer
mission control for the Russian part of the space station,
(23:20):
and Zvezda would serve as the living quarters for astronauts
in the time. For the time being, it also had
propulsion systems for making attitude and orientation adjustments to the station.
Very important, and it also had a communication system for
making contact with Earth. Finally, after components had been in
orbit for about two years, the space station would have
(23:42):
occupants and it would maintain some crew, sometimes a very
small one, but it would always have a crew all
the way up to and including today, So since September
two thousand twelve, there has always been at least a
crew aboard the I S S. So Zezda would be
(24:04):
home to early cruise at the I S S. You
might wonder what it was like. LA module was thirteen
point one long, that's about forty three and our feet
in length rather and it's whitest point in Its diameter
is four point three fives that's a bit more than
fourteen feet, and it has four docking ports. Three of
those are part of a section called a transfer compartment,
(24:26):
which it's at one end of this So imagine like
a cylinder has almost like a ball at one end.
That's the the where the transfer compartment is, and that's
where you could find three of those ports. Uh. And
it's at the forward end, like I said, of the
the module, you have one port in the axial direction,
so it means coming out from the end and The
(24:47):
other two ports are on either side of the sphere
at ninety degrees from the axial port, so you can
think of him as Zenith and Nadier up and down.
You can also think of them as left and right,
depending on how you're looking at the station. So the
axial port docked with Zaria, so these modules connected end
to end. You can think of him as like two
cylinders connected end to end with one another. The other
(25:10):
two ports on the transfer compartment attached ultimately would attach
to the Poist module on one side, and originally a
module called Piers on the other, but Piers would later
get swapped out for a new module called Naka, which
will have a lot more to say about later on.
A fourth docking port was on the aft end of
(25:31):
the VESDA module, so on the opposite side of the cylinder.
This would serve as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft
and cargo ships coming up from Russia to resupply the station.
This VESDA supports up to six crew members, actually as
sleeping quarters for two, so folks have to kind of
sleep in shifts. It also has other necessities like a toilet,
(25:52):
obviously really important astronauts who flew aboard the Apollo missions
could tell you all about that, and it also had
exercise equipment in order to help crew members stay healthy
in space and counteract things like muscle and bone loss.
It also has a kitchen area for food preparation. There
are fourteen windows in Zvezda UM, including one in each
(26:13):
of the sleeping compartments, and one of the carryovers from
the Soviet era of Russia's space program would end up
being a real source spot for VESDA, also for Zaria. So.
NASA's approach to space modules was to include components that
could be swapped out, so that should something fail, you
(26:34):
could bring up a replacement on a subsequent mission, remove
the failed piece of equipment and install the new one,
and now you've got operational abilities back again. Russia built
everything directly into their spacecraft like it was not something
that was removable, so if anything failed, then the only
approach you had was to repair the thing that failed.
(26:55):
Otherwise it was just useless because there was no way
to replace it. You couldn't get out and put a
new whatever it was in like a new computer system,
for example. You either fixed what you had or you
had a broken one and that was it. So that
included Vezda's oxygen generation system. The device used is called
(27:15):
an electron that's E L E K T R O N,
and it uses surprise surprise electricity to generate oxygen from water.
This process is called electrolysis. I've talked about it a
few times on this show. Is pretty darn simple and
concept you you apply an electric charge to water molecules,
and that that electricity, that that energy breaks the molecular
(27:38):
bond between oxygen and hydrogen, and both of them get
released as gases. Now, you could theoretically use that hydrogen
as fuel, but it's pretty dangerous stuff. It's incredibly flammable,
and so the electron system would simply vent hydrogen into space,
but the oxygen would be used as part of the
life support system. But the trouble is the electron system
(28:01):
on Zvezda is pretty darn rickety. I mean, it was
originally developed for the Mere space station, and frequently it
requires repairs because as a tendency to break down, and
the cosmonauts can't get a new electron into the Vezda
module because and here's a classic problem, the electron system
(28:21):
is larger than the Vezda modules hatches, so in other words,
you couldn't get a replacement system in there because it
won't fit through the door. Whoops. Say. But anyway, back
in two thousand, all of this was brand new and
started breaking down yet, and on September twelve, two thousand,
there would be a crew aboard the space station and
(28:43):
there has been every day since. Next the US attached
a trust segment called the Z one to Unity and
also added a third pressurized mating adapter, the other two
being mounted to either axial end of Unity and the
trust of the space station. You could think of it
like a scaffold. Uh. It's it's a it's a skeleton
(29:03):
in a way upon which you can suspend numerous components,
and there are a ton of them. Uh. This trust
extends outward from the space station, and it can hold
stuff like the massive solar arrays. When you look at
a picture of the space station and you see those
big wings of solar arrays, those connect back to the
trusts of the space station. Uh, but a lot of
(29:25):
other stuff connects to it. To The Z one was
the first of these trust pieces, and NASA would add
to this many many times over the following years. However,
I'm just gonna let you know, I'm gonna skip all
of those different trust editions because there's a ton of them.
They're important, but if I focused on all those, I
would never get to the modules. So the next module
(29:47):
to join the party was from the United States, and
this was the Destiny module. It launched on February seven,
two thou one aboard this Space shuttle Atlantis, docking with
the other end of the Unity capsule on right tenth
and before that could even happen, the Atlantis crew used
the Space shuttle's robotic arm to detach the p M
A two from Unity's forward docking port. So this was
(30:12):
the one that was opposite the one that connects Unity
to the Russian module Zarya. The p M A two
got shuffled around a bit until Destiny had been docked
into place uh in the forward side of Unity, and
then the Atlantis crew reattached p M A two to
the other end of Destiny. It would take several days
(30:33):
for a strong astronauts to make all the connections necessary
in order to bring Destiny fully online. Now, this module
is eight point four meters or twenty eight feet long,
and it has a diameter of four point two meters
or fourteen feet, and it kind of looks like a
can of soda to me. But obviously with docking ports
on either axial end, uh, those are the only two
(30:55):
docking ports on Destiny. It does not have any of
the ones at the zenith, nader or starboard or ports sides,
so it just has one on either end of the cylinder.
Destiny serves as the first and primary research lab aboard
the I S S, at least on the U S
O S side. This is where the science gets done,
(31:16):
but you know, not to make a neat gun for
the people who are still alive. We're talking about biomedical experiments,
engineering experiments, physics experiments, earth science experiments, material science experiments,
all that kind of stuff. When you think of the
science that's happening aboard the International Space Station, Destiny is
(31:36):
the primary spot where that stuff happens, not the only one,
but the main one. So this is the kind of
stuff that astronauts aboard the sky Lab space station focused
on back in the nineteen seventies. Destiny was the first
module to make use of racks to hold various station
systems and experiments in place. So these are kind of
(31:58):
like mounting points for various experiments. Obviously, when you're in
a microgravity environment, you've gotta have ways to attach stuff
to your spacecraft or else it's just gonna you know,
float around and bump around in microgravity. So these are
standardized racks, and in fact they're called International Standard Payload
(32:19):
Racks or i sprs, and other countries with the exception
of Russia, use the same standard, so that experiments and
systems can fit on any of these. The Destiny has
eight rack bays and they can hold up to twenty
four racks. These things, by the way, are massive, unearthed,
way around t pounds. Of course in microgravity you don't
(32:44):
have to worry about that now. As I mentioned, some
of those racks hold station systems in place, you know,
stuff like life support systems and electrical power systems or
climate control systems. Uh and Destiny did not have the
full complement of twenty four racks when it launched. It
had some, but not all of them. Additional space shuttle
(33:04):
missions would bring up more racks, which would then get
installed into the rack bays in Destiny's lab. Destiny also
includes a twenty inch window of incredible clarity. NASA calls
it like the quality of a telescope lens, like that
kind of level of clarity, and astronauts mostly use this
(33:25):
to conduct Earth science experiments. So if you've ever felt
like someone was just kind of watching you, maybe it
was a peeper aboard the I S. S. Except it
doesn't like magnify everything. Obviously I'm being a little facetious.
The pictures of it are amazing, but obviously, like then,
you're looking at a lens through a lens, right, you're
looking at a camera image of the glass. I really
(33:48):
wish I could see what it looks like to look
at the Earth through that glass, you know, in person,
I imagine has to be absolutely spectacular. We've got a
lot more to say about the I S. S. And boy,
this is really a huge, huge undertaking. We are going
to take another break and come back right after this. Okay,
(34:16):
let's get back to it. In July two thousand one,
the United States launched a joint airlock module named Quest
and this module attached to the Unity module, and it
gave astronauts on the U S O S side of
the space station the ability to perform e V A
S or spacewalks, because up to that point the only
(34:38):
airlock aboard the space station was on the Russian side
of the I S S, so, uh, you know, astronauts
weren't really going over to the Russian side and vice versa,
so they didn't really get to use that airlock. All
the other e v A s that were performed on
the US side had been part of Space Shuttle missions
(34:59):
rather than and you know, conducted by the crew aboard
the I S S because they had no airlock to
go through in order to you know, exit the station
and do an e v A. But Quest changed all that.
Then the Russians launched another module in September two thou one.
This one was the Piers module, that's p I R S,
(35:20):
and the Russians docked it with a port on This
Vezda module frequently referred to as the bottom or Nadier
Point because it was facing the Earth usually and it
served as a docking module. In other words, this was
a way for other spacecraft like so Yu's capsules and
cargo ships unscrewed cargo ships two dock with the I
(35:42):
S S. It could also serve as an airlock so
that cosmonauts could go on e v A. So this
expanded the station's ability to have you know, spacecraft dock
with it. I should add that one thing that is
consistent aboard the I S S is that it always
has a couple of Soya's capsules attached to it to
(36:04):
serve as escape capsules, so that should there be a
catastrophic failure aboard the space station, cosmonauts and astronauts would
have the ability to get into a spacecraft capable of
making the return back to Earth. So some of these
docking ports end up being in use as these these
various capsules stay attached for up to like six months
(36:27):
at a time before being swapped around. Now, this module,
the Piers module, is one that we can actually refer
to in the past tense because while it was part
of the I S S for a really long time,
I mean almost twenty years, it is no longer part
of the I S S today. Earlier this year, Russia
(36:47):
removed Peers from the I S S and maneuvered it
for re entry and de orbited the module on July one.
This was so that they could make room for a
new module, which we will talk about possibly in the
next episode, because this one's running longer than I anticipated.
But for twenty years, piers was a big part of
(37:08):
the I S S. Then, from the end of two
thousand one to two thousand seven, the I S S
pretty much stayed as I described it, with no other
modules joining, although crews would continue to join and leave
through various so us and a few spatial emissions. Also,
the trust section did get larger with more components, but
(37:29):
as I said earlier, I'm not gonna cover all those.
It would just take way too much time. It's fascinating stuff,
by the way, I mean like it added tons of
different functionality to the I S S. But I gotta
draw the line somewhere anyway. Part of the reason for
that long delay, why nothing happened really as far as
modules are concerned between two thousand one and two thousand seven,
(37:51):
is that the Space Shuttle program was grounded due to
the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that happened on February first,
two thousand three. Just like NASA put the spatial program
on pause for more than two years after the Challenger disaster,
they did the same thing after Columbia. Shuttle missions would
not start again until July of two thousand five, so
(38:14):
it really set back plans of building out the I
S S and only Russian capsules visited the I S
S in the meantime, and a skeleton crew of two
people served to occupy the station at that point because
there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to do much else.
So this was an era of the I S S
(38:34):
where not that much science is getting done. You only
got two people aboard there. They have to handle everything
aboard the station, not just the experiments, but you know,
the regular maintenance and operations of the station itself. The
next module to join would not launch until October two
thousand seven. It was aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, and
this would be the module that would be called Harmony.
(38:57):
And this module is very similar to Unity. It's one
of the node modules, and like I said, a third
one will join the I S S before we're all
done with it, so, like you know, Unity, Harmony's purpose
is partly to provide connecting points between other units in
the space station, but it also serves as sleeping quarters
(39:20):
for up to four crew members. Initially, Harmony docked with
one of the births on Unity, so that these two
nodes were connected directly to each other, but a few
weeks later, crews would move Harmony to the other end
of Destiny, so that Destiny connected to unity on one
end and Harmony on the other end. Harmony also serves
(39:42):
as the mounting location for the space station's robotic arm
Cannad armed too. It also has four I sprs dedicated
to cruise storage and another four I s p r
s for avionics systems. In two thousand eight, the European
Space Agency module Columbus joined the I S s NOW.
(40:03):
This was originally intended to be part of Space Station
Freedom more than a decade earlier, you know, back when
that was still a thing. Columbus launched aboard the Space
Shuttle Atlantis on February seven eight. It is seven ms long,
that's twenty three ft and it's four and a half
meters in diameter or fifteen feet and they can hold
(40:24):
up to ten I s p rs for science experiments
and then more for various systems. The e s A
technically has operational control of Columbus, NASA has the rest
of it. That means that the two agencies actually split
these racks between them, so e s A has control
(40:44):
of five racks for experiments and NASA has control of
the other five and that they just share the space.
They cohabitate. Like Destiny, the activities on Columbus are geared
towards scientific experiments and expanding our knowledge, particularly when it
comes to ace exploration. Columbus docked with the starboard port
of Harmony on February eleven eight. So again, that means
(41:08):
if you were in the Harmony module and your right
side up, which is you know, again a weak distinction
when you're in space and you have the Destiny module
behind you that's to your aft you're facing forward, that
would mean that Columbus would be on your right hand side.
You would need to go through the hatch on the
right to get to the Columbus module. Again, all these
(41:30):
directions get pretty loosey goosey when you start to lose
reference points like up and down, so your mileage may vary.
I guess next up. Shortly after Columbus came the Japanese
Experiment Module or KEYBO. Now, Keybo is a really big module.
It's so big that it required three separate shuttle missions
to bring all the major pieces of the module up
(41:53):
to the I S S. Like Columbus, Kebo connected to Harmony,
on the port side, so that's the left side of
harmony if you've got destiny behind you and your right
side up. And it has twenty three I s p
rs aboard it those racks, those enormous experiment racks. UH.
Ten of those are reserved for science. The rest are
(42:14):
for Keybos systems and crew storage. Keybo has its own
robotic arm. It also has its own communication system. UH.
It hosts a ton of different science experiments, and that
includes stuff like Earth science experiments that monitor the CEO
two content of the atmosphere of our planet. Has X
ray astronomy experiments, electron telescopes, cosmic ray experiments, lots of
(42:38):
really super cool stuff. It also hosts various physics and
biology experiments. And then there's an exposed facility. This is
a a part of the Keybo module that attached to
the far end of it. UH. This is a science
platform that's exposed to space for those kinds of experiments,
you know, the kind where there ain't no air out there.
(43:01):
It's a little tricky to talk about the size of
Kebo because of all these different pieces that came together.
If we're just looking at the pressurized parts of the
module as the bits that astronauts can move through without
wearing a spacesuit. Then you have one part of it
that is about eleven ms long or thirty six and
a half feet long, and it has a diameter of
about four point four meters or a little more than
(43:24):
fourteen feet. But then there's a second part of it,
a module that extends out from KEBO at a ninety
degree angle of this tube. So think of this one
pressurized tube and then think of like almost like a submarine,
you know, has like that that console at the the
at one end, you've got this this part that juts
out of one side of the tube at ninety degrees.
(43:48):
This one's four point two meters long or thirteen point
eight feet and four point three nine ms or fourteen
point four feet in diameter. So KEBO isn't a simple
cylindrical shape like most of the other modules. It's a
little funky looking. Next up we get the Poisk module
p o I s K. This was the first of
(44:08):
the Russian Orbiting System the r OS portion of the
space station to be added after many many years. POIS
is similar to the Piers module, in fact almost identical
to it, and Piers as I will remind you it
docked back with the I S S way back in
two thousand one. So POIS serves as a docking you know,
(44:30):
docking compartment primarily just as Piers used to do before.
You know, they gave it the boot from the I
S S earlier this year. POIS thus houses an airlock
and docking system, and it attached to this Vesdam module
on the side opposite the Piers side, or rather, you
know the side where Piers used to be, so it's
(44:52):
on the Zen side. On February ten, NASA launched a
module called Tranquility aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. Now this
one was commissioned by the EESA and the Italian Space
Agency or a s I. The module's main purpose is
to provide life support systems, environmental control systems, and an
(45:12):
observation coupola to the space station, sort of like a
quality of life module if you think about it. And
Tranquility has six ports or birthing locations, allowing it to
connect to up to six other components on the space station. Uh,
it docked with the port side of Unity, and we'll
chat about a couple of the other components that have
(45:35):
since docked with tranquility in our next episode. But um,
I want to do one more before we we wrap
up here, and that is the ras Vett module r
A S S V E T. And if you're thinking
that sounds like that's Russian, you're right. It joined the
I S S and Rasvet's main purpose is to serve
(45:56):
as a storage container as well as another docking for spacecraft.
This one didn't fly aboard a Russian launch vehicle. It
actually went up courtesy of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on
May and docked with the I S S on May eighteenth.
It connected with the bottom or native point of these
Azario module, the original I S S module that started
(46:18):
this whole thing, and the other port on Rassevet serves
as a docking port for Soya's spacecraft and cargo spacecraft.
This module is six meters or about nineteen point seven
ft long and two point three five or seven point
seven feet in diameter. All Right, we're gonna wrap up
here and we're gonna come back in our next episode
to pick up where we left off. Talk about the
(46:39):
last few modules that have joined the I S S,
including the Naka which is the most recent one. Uh.
And we've got another one on the way before the
end of the year if everything goes well, So we'll
talk about those, and we'll talk about what life is
like aboard the space station, some of the experiments that
have been done, some of the you know, interesting things
that have happened aboard the space station, ring it's you know,
(47:01):
time and service, as well as talk a little bit
about the plans of what comes next, like how much
longer does the I S S have before we really
need to consider retiring it because various components are pretty
old at this point, and what should come after that.
But we'll do that for the next episode. This one
(47:23):
has gone on long enough. If you have suggestions for
topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
show is text Stuff h s W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
(47:46):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
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