"Such a large project was never undertaken before. "The space station is the largest endeavor ever undertaken by the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada," said Günther Brandt, head of space station elements at EADS Space Transportation in Bremen. "Another 10 years of urine assays on a space station is not going to tell us much we don't already know."īut proponants note that the station marks an important chapter in post-Cold War history and scientists still have a lot they can learn from it. "The international space station is yesterday's technology," Robert Park, a physicist at the Unviersity of Maryland told Congress recently. Critics have lambasted the outmoded technology on the ISS. The space station has had its share of problems. Old technology paves way for new diplomacy The space station also serves as the basis of Europe's manned spaceflight program - since it's christening in 2000, ESA has sent seven astronauts to the ISS. Columbus and the ATV (illustration), which will shuttle supplies to the ISS and ferry rubbish away from it, form the core of Europe's ISS contributions. Image: ESAĮurope is a major partner in the ISS program, with Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland together contributing about €8 billion of the project's estimated €100 billion cost. The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will enable ESA to transport payloads to ISS. "We are presently at a very decisive stage in Europe because we are about to finalize our major contributions to the space station," Jörg Feustel-Büechl, director of human spaceflight for the European Space Agency (ESA) told DW-WORLD. With the launch next year of its Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and the Columbus Research Module a year later, Europe will dramatically increase its participation in the space project. Never before have astronauts, engineers, scientists and politicians from so many countries worked together on such an enormous and peaceful undertaking. Despite differences over the war in Iraq and, before that, the bombing of Yugoslavia, work contined on the space station unabated. But the space station has been a major diplomatic coup for Europe, Russia, the United States and the rest of their international partners. The Soviet Union still achieved many more firsts: the first lunar rover, the first soft landing on Venus, the first soft landing on Mars, the first recovery of samples from the Moon by automatic spacecraft.Critics have dismissed the ISS as a "trailer park in the sky," and politicians have bickered over its soaring price tag. Undaunted, the Soviet Union rebuilt its space program around orbiting stations, building the first one, Salyut, and then the first permanent home in space, Mir. The Soviet Union engaged in that race far too late, with divided organization, and made a gallant but doomed challenge to Apollo. In 1964, the Soviet Union decided to contest the decision of the United States to put the first person on the Moon. Except one, the first human landing on the Moon. The Soviet Union achieved all the great firsts in cosmonautics-the first satellite in orbit, the first animal in orbit, the first laboratory in orbit, the first probe to the Moon, the first probe to photograph its far side, the first soft landing on the moon, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first spacewalk. At that time, few could have imagined the dramatic events that lay head. The rebirth of the Russian space program marks an important event: 50 years since the first Sputnik was launched on 4th October 1957.
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