The International Space Station, or ISS – our biggest home away from home – has been occupied continuously since November 2, 2000. Popular science an interview published conducted by Science Editor, Dawn Stover, featuring two of the ISS’s three pioneering residents, NASA astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonaut Sergie Krikelev. The third was another Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gidzenko.
Krikalev told Stover that he considered himself lucky to be one of the first inhabitants of the ISS. “This is the first example of how we’re going to build things in space,” he noted. Shepherd was more pragmatic. He hoped the ISS’s treadmill “and other fitness equipment” would help the crew minimize muscle and bone loss – a negative side effect of weightlessness – during their four-month stay.
The ISS is a product of fifteen different countries and their associated space agencies – including America’s NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese Exploration Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – and functions as a home, a laboratory (until now leads to more than 3,700 experiments), and lately a Spacebnb for ultra-wealthy individuals looking for a short getaway. According to NASA280 people from 23 countries visited the ISS, including trained astronauts and cosmonauts. Of those, 13 were private citizens, whom NASA calls “spaceflight participants.”
It takes just four hours to travel from a launch pad on Earth to the ISS. The key is to reserve one of the eight docking ports in advance to avoid long wait times. Walk-ups (or fly-ups) are generally not welcome, although a June 2024 hiccup on Boeing’s Starliner forced the two-man crew, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to extend their stay by months.
When Stover asked if Krikalev expected any problems, he replied emphatically: “I don’t expect a few, but a few dozen!” One of the worst offenders were the Windows NT laptop computers that the astronauts used for some communications, email, and as a graphical user interface for the more important command and control modules (which, fortunately, could be operated independently). During their first stay Shepherd complained approximately the time they had to spend troubleshooting laptop errors.
In March 2001 Popular science function, ‘Living on Alpha’, writer Jim Schefter described the early days of ISS life for the four astronauts. “A little grumpiness is perhaps inevitable,” he wrote. “The new residents are 370 kilometers away and are stuck for a stay of four months. They can’t go into the backyard to cool off. Life aboard the newly christened space station Alpha is characterized by free-floating objects and people zooming through very tight spaces.” The original living area included only three rooms. Later modules, such as the Destiny laboratory module and the Harmony module, allowed for more spacious accommodations.
But no house lasts forever. After more than thirty years of circling our planet, the ISS has arrived scheduled to be deorbited— meaning a controlled crash into an ocean far away from populated areas — in 2031. By then, NASA hopes to lease space (the habitable variety) on privately owned and maintained space stations like Blue Origin’s. Orbital reef. Such space stations will be designed to accommodate space tourism and public and private research. Shepherd noted in his 2000 interview with Stover, “The crews after us will have a lot more space, so their living conditions will be better.”
November 2000: Moving into space
THIS MONTH, a crew of three will take up residence aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronaut William M. Shep-herd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, will launch from the Baikonaur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on October 30. They plan to arrive at the space station two days later and will stay there for four months, returning home aboard the US space shuttle after a new crew arrives. Science Editor Dawn Stover spoke with Commander Shepherd and Flight Engineer Krikalev before their departure.
PS: Why are you going to the space station? Wouldn’t it be more exciting to live on the moon or Mars?
Shepherd: We don’t have what we need to do that. We don’t know how to build in space. We need a big booster, and much more energy than we can currently get from solar energy.
PS: What do you think about being one of the first people to live in the new station?
Krikalev: I think I’m lucky to be on this flight because this is the first example of how we’re going to build things in space.
PS: Are there any downsides to going first?
Shepherd: The crews after us will have a lot more space, so their living conditions will be better. Furthermore, our up and down voice traffic will be significantly more limited than later. We will only be talking to mission control for about 40 to 50 percent of our orbit.
PS: Do you expect any problems during this first mission?
Krikalev: I don’t expect a few, but a few dozen! First we need to investigate how [the station’s] systems perform across the full range of potential situations. Eighty percent of our training is intended for ‘extra-normal’ situations. Later crews will have an easier time.
PS: What physical changes, if any, do you think you’ll see?
Shepherd: Most people lose some body weight and some bone and muscle mass. Some are more sensitive to it than others. We have a new treadmill and other fitness equipment that has never been flown before. I hope the data we get will be different than in the past.