Around the Solar System in 80 Days

Day 2: Finding the ISS

An uncomfortable few hour’s sleep as we synchronise orbits with the ISS. Atmospheric shuttle craft like the Vanguard may give you a spectacular view of the planet but they are certainly not geared up to giving their passengers a comfortable ride. Every now and then, the engines burn to change our trajectory, shaking us back into consciousness, while the sun rises every hour or so, giving a very strange sensation of being stuck in some sort of time warp. Just when the longing to be able to stretch out starts to become unbearable, the captain announces that we may soon be able to see our destination out of the windows. Sure enough, the huge bulk of the International Space Station can be seen about 20 miles off, glinting in the sun. It’s the world's largest space station ever built to date, and from our external view you can get a sense of why the station was called the 23rd century’s greatest construction. We dock at the European section of the station. The ISS is divided up into 4 different time zones for the comfort and convenience of its residents, the European section being dwarfed by the American section in both size and luxury. For the next few days (a term irrelevant in space but nonetheless useful for giving a sense of time), we shall be staying at this hub of space travel, giving me the chance to taste the strangely original culture that has developed up here. Jay is more interested in ship spotting. The ISS may try to portray itself as a great centre of humankind in space, but in reality it is just a glorified dockyard. There is certainly a great variety in craft docked or waiting near the station: everything from tiny shuttles beetling around giving the tourists views of the outside, to giant interplanetary ships like the Deepstar freighter.

Our welcome to the greatest outpost of humankind is not encouraging. For some reason, our passports don’t seem to mean anything up here, and for one dangerous moment it looks like we may be forcibly removed from the station. Luckily, the mere name of the BBC allows us passage and we crawl through the claustrophobically narrow docking tube and into the station.

We have only a few minutes to unpack our belongings in our minuscule cabins before being whisked off for a tour of a very unusual space object. Tucked behind the main air conditioning unit of the space station is a very small and grimy airlock that leads to our first main point of interest. Stuffed away in this quiet section of the station is the world’s first international space station, the original ISS, buried down here like a spare tire. Construction was started an astonishingly long time ago in 1998, as man truly started to explore space. It lasted until 2156, when it was deemed unfit for human habitation by new human rights legislation, and boosted into a graveyard orbit before being abandoned to its fate. Only after several decades did the world realise that this was on a par with demolishing Hampton Court; and so a hugely expensive Heritage Lottery project was set up to save the ISS from fiery destruction in the atmosphere. Eventually it was put back into its original orbit and placed into hard dock with the new ISS, with only promises of big profits from the resulting tourism surge persuading NASA and ESA to agree to this venture.

For now, the tourist surge seems to be somewhat reduced. Apart from me, Jay and Helen, there are only a few others accompanying us on our thirty minute tour of the station, a varied mix of history students from Australia and German holiday makers en route to Venus. Quite how people lived in this for months at a time beats me. To bed to get some well earned sleep. Have recurrent dreams of being squashed into a suitcase. This doesn’t bode well for the next 78 days.