ISS Finally Complete

With the work of STS-119, ISS has finally assumed its final configuration and is now at full power.

Getting there has taken nine years of work by NASA, Russia, various other nations, and Boeing, the prime contractor, but the push for a long-duration American space station goes back to the dawn of the Space Age. President Reagan put the nation on the course to ISS by backing the construction of a space station. That effort went through an incredible array of twists and turns, design changes and budget woes for years before NASA efforts were finally stabilized within the ISS structure. The concept of a space station goes back well before Reagan, however-- and well before America's Skylab and the Soviets' Salyut. Early theorists of manned spaceflight argued space stations in Earth orbit should be established before anyone was sent to the Moon. President Kennedy's insistence that Americans should be first on the Moon nixed the station approach.

Now, we have a substantial space station in Earth orbit as we prepare to send humans back to the lunar surface.