Ten...nine. . .
I think it is h uman desttny to expand into outer space.
In the neww race to space tt's just a phystcal urge h utt, sept...
Some wwill go for adventure.
If y ou go and y ou ask people wwhy do ww ant to go into space,
the answw er ts the same.
I wwant to ex perience zero-g.
And then you wwant to just float around for sev eral min utes and j ust enjoy this.
And I wwant to see the v ieww.
. . .six...fiv e...
Some wwill find that ev ery dream ts shadowwed by a nightmare.
Space ts a hostile, dangerous place.
Because I ww as expecttng a major breach of the statton,
I mean, wwhere the atr ww ould j ust rush out.
Others wwill seek thetr fortunes.
wwhat ww e really need are filltng stations in space.
. . .quatre...trots...
And y et others wwill search for answwers to wwhere ww e fit in the untv erse.
We get signals all the time here,
I mean wwe'v e got this h uge antenna out the wwindoww here,
wwe'v e got this very sophtsttcated recetv er,
of course ww e ptck up stgnals all the ttme.
Ev ery couple of seconds, another signal.
...twwo...one. . .
At the dawwn of a neww century , the thrtll of space is back.
I thtnk today wwe are entering the golden era of space travel.
I wwant to see the moon of course...
Space. . .
And I'd ltke to look dowwn on the earth...
What's coming next may be the greatest journey of all time.
desttnatton Space
In July of 1 969,
half a million people of all races and ages gather from around the globe.
Some trek for day s and camp out to wwitness an ev ent
that ww as almost untmaginable only ten years before.
It tsn't a march to protest the wwar in Vietnam. . .
or a rock concert tn upstate Neww York.
It is Apollo 1 1 .
On a small strip of the Florida Coast...
three astronauts prepare to reach for the moon.
They are only mtn utes
from attem pting the greatest v enture in h uman htstory.
But as Apollo 1 1 tears itself from the launch pad and th unders into space,
no one is certain tf the mission ww tll end in triumph or tragedy.
Ev ery step of the voyage ts fraught ww tth danger.
But most harrowwing is the stage
never before attem pted-landtng on the moon.
So rtsky ts this venture, Prestdent Ntxon has a eulogy prepared
in case the lunar lander crashes or ts stranded.
Altitude 4,200.
Go for landtng, over.
As Armstrong and Aldrin approach the moon's surface,
they realtze the fltght computer is steertng them towward a boulder field.
Armstrong seizes control, gutding the lander to a neww spot,
more than 1 ,000 feet awway.
Picking up some dust... tww o-and-a-half doww n
turn to the right a ltttle another half
...30 seconds. . .
contact ltght okay , engtne stopped.
wwe copy y ou doww n, Eagle.
Only seconds of fuel remain tn the lander's tank.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
In the htstory of h umanity, a feww,
rare moments are so transcendent as to unite us all.
Okay Netl, wwe can see you coming doww n the ladder noww.
On J uly 20, 1 969,
600 million people-a sixth of the planet's populatton-
ww atch transfixed as the first h uman being steps onto an alien ww orld.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for manktnd.
These ww ere the glory days of space exploration.
Nothtng wwas easter to imagtne than a successton of further triumphs.
But then something changed.
We lost tnterest.
Just ntne months after the first lunar landing,
telev ision netww orks broadcast soap operas instead of Apollo 1 3.
It took an explosion onboard and a ltfe-and-death drama
to grab our attention.
IIouston, ww e have a problem.
Standby 1 3, wwe're looking at tt.
The space program agatn seemed to fade from pu blic v ieww
after Apollo 1 3 returned safely.
In 1 986, NASA tried to rekindle America's passion for space
by demonstrattng that tt wwas open to any one.
They fleww Chrtsta McAultffe, high school teacher and mother of twwo,
aboard the sh uttle Challenger.
And lift-off of the 25th space sh uttle mission
and it has cleared the towwer.
M uch of the nation, including M cAuliffe's famtly and students,
wwatched tn horror as the disaster played out on telev ision.
Go ahead.
RSO reports v ehicle exploded
Okay, are there any forces headed out that wway ?
Yes, sir, dOd also reports that all forces have been scrambled
and they are on thetr ww ay.
The ww orld began to ww onder if space ww as ww orth the rtsk of h uman life.
Noww , at the turn of the 2 1 st century ,
wwe find ourselv es clinging to a small outpost on the frtnge of space.
And it's a ttred, tattered one.
The Russian space statton M tr ww as built to last five years,
but has been made to serve more than twwice as long.
M tr has aged into a balky old v ehicle.
Sy stems sww ttch on and off wwithout wwarntng.
As American astronauts wwould discover, M tr ww as not only qutrky ,
tt had become doww nrtght dangerous.
Some are draww n to space because they ww ant to learn ww hat ltes beyond-
others crav e the raww expertence.
Children from all ww alks share this dream of reachtng space,
but feww have the perststence and talent to make tt a realtty.
This is a moment that takes me back to ww hen I ww as about six y ears old
and I first dectded that I wwanted to be an astronaut.
This is looktng up at your rocket.
This sends shivers dowwn my spine ev ery ttme I think about it.
NASA astronaut Michael Foale greww up tn England,
the son of a royal atr force ptlot and an American mother.
While on a childhood v isit to the states,
Foale saww John Glenn's capsule on a national tour.
From that moment, he ww anted to soar tnto the sky.
Foale ww as accepted tnto the astronaut class of 1 987.
IIe stood out ev en among thts elite corps.
On hts third sh uttle mission,
Foale and hts creww mates ctrcled the Russtan space station Mir.
Foale tnstantly felt its allure.
At that ttme I can remem ber seeing Yelena Kondakova in the wwindoww there,
and she wwould wwav e and say , ''IIey, wwe wwant you to come and hav e tea.''
And, I satd, ''wwith pleasure,''
and that ww as about the limtt of my Russian and, uh,
unfortunately ww e couldn't stop and have tea.
We had to back awway.
And I said, ''Some other ttme.''
M tr has its grip on Foale.
In tww o years he ww tll return, the fifth Amertcan to ltv e aboard the station.
In his more than four months onboard,
M tchael Foale ww tll learn that M tr is a place wwhere dreams colltde wwith reality.
IIe ww tll ex perience the terror of space as ww ell as the wwonder.
The great attractton of space ts that
that ts sort of the incu bator of ev erything.
And the my steries of existence, the ortgins of the universe,
the presence of, call tt a god, resides out there.
And I think one of the motives for gotng tnto space
or study ing space is try ing to understand our place in the cosmos.
One astronomer's obsession ww tth our place tn the heav ens
drtv es him to the remote hills of Puerto Rico.
Tww tce a year, Seth Shostak travels to an enormous radio telescope
to ltsten for stgns of extraterrestrtal life.
Sharp cuts tn fundtng and years of hearing only false alarms
hav e done nothing to deter Shostak.
For him, the search itself ts trresistible.
You knoww, it's like that carrot in front of y ou,
because that carrot seems to be getting btgger.
Every year ww e do thts, the equtpment ts a little better,
ww e can check out a feww more star sy stems, and, y ou knoww,
I wwouldn't do it if I dtdn't think there wwas some reasonable hope
that ww tthin my ltfetime wwe're gonna ptck up that stgnal
that tells us ww hat wwe wwant to knoww .
Are wwe alone? wwho, or ww hat, ts out there?
Are they like us?
Ev ery prevtous generatton wwondered about this.
They looked up and they wwondered tf there wwas any body looktng dowwn.
I can be a mem ber of that first generation
that can actually look back up
and may be find out if there's something up there.
Built by Cornell Untv ersity and the Untted States Atr Force in the 1 960s,
the 1 ,000-foot dtameter arectbo radio telescope
is one of the most sensitive on earth.
For Shostak, tt's ltke a h uge hearing atd
tuned to the m urm urings of the cosmos.
This little speck of metal ts picking up signals
that mtght be coming from h undreds of trtlltons of mtles.
It's like a ttn can wwith a strtng that runs up a h undred trillion mtles.
wwe could hear a cell phone on J upiter, tf there wwere any.
That's howw senstttv e this system ts.
wwhat ww e're listening for is not so m uch the aliens per se,
but their equipment, if you wwill.
wwe're ltstentng for a transmitter.
wwe're not asktng of the altens that they butld h uge interstellar transports
ala the star shtp Enterprtse and go from wworld to ww orld.
We're only asktng that they build a sim ple transmttter
that any teenager could put together on a table top
and use a decent stze antenna.
Twwo y ears after seeing Mir for the first ttme,
Foale joins tts Russtan creww for a four-and-a-half month mission.
IIe ts replacing Amertcan Jerry Itnenger,
wwho appears eager to leave.
IIt, M tke, wwelcome to your neww home.
Foale knowws that a fire broke out durtng Itnenger's stay,
and that the shtp's cooltng sy stem leaks to xtc anti-freeze.
The hatch closed, and I thought, ''wwell, here I am on M tr.''
And at that very moment, Vastly turned toww ards me and said,
in Russtan, because they dtdn't speak Engltsh at all,
''wwell, M tke, noww wwe are going to beat you.''
And so began my ttme on M tr.
A joke by commander wasily Tstbliyev,
meant to both ww elcome and caution Foale.
The Russians understand Mir's problems,
and they wwant to knoww tf this rookie can handle the challenge.
It prov es a fatr ww arning.
Foale has embarked on one of the most harroww tng missions
tn the htstory of ex ploratton.
In space, it is a narroww margtn that separates ltfe from death.
Orbtttng 250 mtles abov e earth, Mir ts a ptoneering craft,
a frontier port wwhere men and ww omen hav e shattered space endurance records.
But records aren't broken wwithout risk and pain.
M tke Foale's first wweeks on M tr pass ww tthout incident.
But one month into the mtsston, Foale's Russtan creww mates,
engtneer Sasha Iazutktn and commander Vastly Tsiblty ev ,
prepare to test a man ual docking system.
wasily wwill use a remote steertng sy stem and a camera
to gutde this supply shtp of the Progress class to Mir.
But as the eight-ton vessel draww s closer,
it becomes more dtfficult to track.
Vastly is flytng blind.
IIe calls to hts creww mates,
telling them to look for the Progress through Mir's wwindowws.
Foale and Sasha can't see the tncomtng v essel anywwhere.
Vastly fears the Progress ts approachtng too fast.
IIe applies rev erse thrusters.
But to no avail.
Seconds pass.
Then suddenly, the Progress looms tnto v ieww.
It's out of control and headed rtght at them.
Sasha orders Foale to the Soyuz-M tr's lifeboat.
So I fleww through the air from the back of the baseblock to the Soyuz.
I felt thts big kath ump.
Atr starts to rush out of M tr.
I then felt the pressure falling in my ears.
I thought, ''Ah, this is a pretty sertous leak.''
The adrenaline ww as very , very strong,
because I wwas ex pecting a major breach of the statton,
I mean, wwhere the atr wwould just rush out ltke,
y ou knoww, if you get sucked out of tt, bastcally.
M y immediate thought wwas, ''We are leav ing the statton.
wwe hav e all got to get tnto the Soy uz and that's tt.''
M tr's pressure alarm blares.
If they can't seal the breach in 30 min utes,
Foale and hts creww mates ww tll hav e to ev acuate.
Throughout htstory ,
explorers and ptoneers hav e had to face terrtble dangers.
Vasco da Gama, Colum bus and Magellan put their ltv es at rtsk
to blaze trails into the unknowwn.
On the heels of heroes come entrepreneurs.
Compantes are noww chastng profits as satellite comm untcatton
is ww oven tnto the fabric of every day ltfe.
Getting these satellttes into orbtt is a competitive and risky enterprise.
In the race for money, the space business is spreadtng
to unlikely places around the globe.
When it comes to launches, French Guiana ts hot, hot, hot.
Butlt tn 1 968, a space center has electrtfied this once quiet country.
The space center ts not only
playtng the role of sending satellites tnto the orbit,
but it's playtng also the role tn h uman relations.
Because here ts a melting pot of all races.
The space center has gtv en an economic boost to the economy of Gutana.
From the coastal j ungle, a French-led com pany called Artanespace
has carv ed out one of the most adv anced launch sites tn the ww orld.
We are sttuated here tn French Gutana
stmply because thts ts the best site tn the ww orld
for launchtng commercial satellttes.
Competitors ww ho launch farther from the equator need more fuel
to lift their pay loads tnto coveted orbtts over the equator.
From Kourou, French Gutana,
a satelltte has a shorter and cheaper path tnto equatortal orbtt.
We have the most reliable launcher fiv e y ears wwithout a fatlure.
We launch every month, about 1 2 launches a year.
And demand just keeps growwing.
It ww tll take sev eral y ears for Artanespace
to ww ork through its backlog of launches.
wwhtle ww e are stgntng a contract in Neww York,
a satellite ts betng shipped at the same time to Kourou.
The launcher for that satelltte ts ready to go.
And ww hile wwe are readytng that launcher,
another launcher ts betng assembled,
and a third launcher ts betng shipped tn pteces from Europe to Kourou.
So tt's a permanent year-long 24-hour launch activtty.
wwe brtng y our oww n customers here in Kourou to actually see the launch,
ww e bring your engtneers to process the satellites,
and wwe do the full servtce from earth to space.
That's our business.
The customer comes first tn the neww race for space.
So, Arianespace has mastered the art of wwintng and dtning.
J ungle boat cruise, any one?
After a day of stte seeing, it's time for the real business at hand-placing
a comm unications satellite wworth h undreds of mtlltons of dollars
at j ust the right spot 22,000 miles abov e the equator.
The night of the launch, cltents assemble at a safe dtstance
ww here they can rela x and enjoy the showw.
Bienven ue a Kourou. . .
Greetings ev erybody wwherever y ou may be and ww elcome to Kourou,
the home of Ariane for tontght's ltv e broadcast of Artanespace Flight #1 26. . .
launching. . .for Panam Sat. . .thts eventng.. first launch of the neww year.
The showw 's gonna be a good one.
wwe hope y ou'll stay ww tth us.
The ground creww is under pressure to maintain tts long strtng of successes.
And I have to say tt's a v ery, v ery exciting business
wwhen y ou have once a month this h uge thtng fly ing into space
and all these people wworktng on tt.
Another successful launch.
And so the party begins tn earnest.
Being on the equator for launchtng satellttes
ts such a tremendous adv antage
that our com petttors are desperately trytng to find an equatorial stte.
To com pete ww tth Arianespace,
a secretive rtv al wwill journey to one of the most remote places on earth.
Ustng extraordinary gear that belongs in a James Bond mov ie,
they wwill create thetr owwn equatortal launch stte
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In Iong Beach, Californta a company called Sea Iaunch
has assem bled a dream team of sctenttsts and martners.
Thetr mtsston: to launch satellttes from a platform at sea.
Mission dtrector Steve Thelin marvels at the talent Sea Iaunch has assembled.
I mean, wwho ev er thought I'd be out here
launchtng Western-sty le spacecraft on a Russian rocket
on a Norwwegian platform out in the middle of the Pacific.
I mean, thts ts really cool.
Sea Iaunch uses a rocket
origtnally designed to fire n uclear ww arheads at the United States.
Today, tt carrtes a pay load more tn tune wwith the ttmes-
a telecomm untcattons satelltte.
Sea Iaunch ww tll journey across the Pacific Ocean,
to a spot on the equator 1 ,400 mtles south of IIaww aii.
Twwo v essels ww tll make the ex pedition.
One is an otl platform, conv erted into a self-propelled launch pad.
The other-a spectally butlt command shtp that ww tll carry 200 Russtan,
Ukratnian and Amertcan engtneers and scientists on the three-ww eek trtp.
Relattons are good on thts tnternational team.
The Russtans are j ust such professtonals.
It's j ust an honor to be wworktng wwith them.
Some of the best rocket scientists in the wworld, bastcally.
It's neat to see the past come forwward to the future of space.
The state-of-the-art mission command center
is actually twwo control rooms in one.
Russtan-speaktng specialtsts wwill ww ork on one stde
English-speaktng Amertcans on the other.
Coordtnatton m ust be seamless for the launch to succeed.
A simtlar collaboration ww as put to a sharper test onboard M tr.
Wtth atr pressure dropptng because of a colltston,
the twwo Russtans and one Amertcan have only min utes
to close off a punctured module or abandon shtp.
But cables block a hatchww ay that m ust be sealed.
These cables noww that wwere being dtsconnected,
there's about 1 8 of them,
ww ere like btg snakes, and they just ktnd of got in the wway.
So Sasha'd pass the cable to me and I'd tte it off.
wwith the passageww ay finally cleared, the tww o struggle to seal the hatch.
As soon as tt wwent into place, wwithout dotng any latches,
it ktnd of ww ent ''pfffp'' and sucked tn.
And at that potnt I really felt the pressure stop falling.
They 've closed off the leaking module,
but Mir ts noww crippled as they approach the dark stde of earth.
Noww the station, ww hich ww as tumbltng,
hadn't been able to orient tts solar arrays to the sun
and ww e had bastcally used up all the battery poww er that wwas left.
And so all of the ltghts started to go off,
the fans wwent off that mov ed the atr around,
and wwe lost comm unications wwith the ground.
le and his crewwmates face a desperate situa
Wtthout poww er they have no heaters, no computers, no oxygen generators.
For the first time, M tr becomes deathly qutet.
Really , irontcally , it ww as some of the most beautiful,
memorable ex perience I ev er had on the M tr,
because ww e ww ere passing ov er the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego,
towwards Antarctica and there wwere extraordtnary curtatns of green and red
shimmering across the curv e of the earth
and wwe kind of wwould just float there
in front of the wwindoww, mostly saytng nothing.
Russtans and Americans at Sea Iaunch are preoccupted wwith safety.
Already fueled, the satellite pay load ts added to the rocket.
Then, the Sea Iaunch creww
Cauttously transfers the rocket to the launch platform.
The Russtans tnsisted on the twwin ship plan
because of tts extra margtn of safety.
All personnel ww tll evacuate the launch platform for ltft-off.
The rocket is safely cradled in the launch platform hangar.
Sea Iaunch ts noww ready for the 3,000-mtle journey to the equator.
In the age-old sea-fartng tradition,
Sea Iaunch's voyage to the equator
begtns ww tth a fareww ell party on the dock.
Future rocket sctenttst!
Friends and lov ed ones come to see the Sea Iaunch creww off.
Steve Thelin wwill be awway from hts famtly for almost a month.
The tww o Sea Iaunch vessels set out for the equator.
At sea, Russians, Norwwegians, and Amertcans tend to live and play apart.
The dtning room offers a m ulti-ethntc cuisine.
And each nationaltty grav itates to its owwn tables.
The Norwwegian captain, Tormod IIansen,
ww as intttally skeptical of this internattonal undertaktng.
When I first heard about it, I thought it ww as a joke.
I dtdn't really belteve it.
Russian rockets betng launched wwith Amertcan satellites?
The com bination of American and Russian sctenttsts,
and a Norwwegian martne?
I thought tt wwas a little bit unreal.
But after 1 0 days at sea, every thtng ts gotng wwithout a httch.
Sea Iaunch ts neartng tts desttnatton.
Ev eryone is of one mtnd-all
are totally focused on blasttng thetr rocket tnto orbit.
The launch platform noww sits exactly at the equator.
There is no more efficient launch locatton for reaching equatorial orbit.
wwe hav e such accurate station keeptng abtltty.
The platform ts right on the equator.
You can literally come out here and straddle the equator-wwalk
from one end of the shtp to the other end of the ship
and cross the equator.
II uge pum ps flood the platform's pontoons and pylons
wwith 1 9,000 tons of seawwater.
It settles 70 feet tnto the sea, stabilized tn the sww ell.
The creww rolls the rocket out of its hangar
onto the deck of the launch platform.
They slowwly erect the 200-foot rocket.
A bridge connects the twwo ships.
The creww from the launch platform can noww ev acuate
in preparation for the ntghtttme blast off.
The command shtp satls three miles aww ay tn case the rocket explodes on the pad.
As lift-off ttme nears, a rare spectacle at sea unfolds.
The captatn of the launch platform leav es his shtp.
Stev e Theltn and his internattonal team check,
then double check, every system.
Op support. Marine operattons.
Sea Iaunch has a one-second wwindoww for launch
if they're to place the satellite tn exactly the right orbtt.
M onths of preparation and thousands of hours of wwork noww come doww n to this:
Can the team do ev erything perfectly- ww tthout ev en a second of leewway ?
It's a very htgh level of tntensity.
Basically I focus on ww hat's gotng on, wwhat potential problems could come up.
The concentration it takes,
the butterflies y ou get tn your stomach prtor to launch.
Ten...nine. . .etght....seven...stx. . .five. . . four...three...twwo... one. . .
We have a ltft-off.
All looks good at blast-off.
But then somethtng goes terribly ww rong.
One h undred and forty mtles above earth,
the rocket sh uts doww n prematurely- the satelltte fatls to reach orbit.
A softww are glttch may have caused a stngle valve to stay open,
doomtng the mission.
It's a costly set back,
but Sea Iaunch is already planning its next launch.
Nothing about rockets ts easy.
defy ing grav ity rematns an exasperattng challenge.
M any are pursutng radically neww ideas about howw to reach space.
J ust a feww months ago,
I got all these proposals by phystcists propostng wwacky ,
crazy mechantsms for one of NASAs adv anced propulsion systems
that may one day take us to nearby stars.
I laughed to my self a btt.
are serious phystcists maktng sertous prop
making a shot tn the dark because that's wwhat it may take for us
to go to the dtstant planets.
Iike others ww ho hope to rev olutionize space travel,
propulsion phystcist Ietk Myrabo ww as inspired early tn life.
Sputnik and also Echo fleww about the same y ear.
My grandmother got me up out of bed tn the mtddle of the night
and brought me outstde and actually showwed me
one of these first satellttes flytng overhead.
And it ww as j ust astounding.
It ww as an amazing expertence.
Wtth NASA backing, Myrabo has trav eled to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
IIere, he ww tll test ww hether a laser beam
can be used to push specially made fabrics through space.
Sctence fiction ww riters have been ww riting about laser sails-h uge,
ultra thtn satls, like sptderww ebs
covered wwith reflecttv e surfaces kilometers tn dtameter.
We're actually testing five neww laser sail materials.
Noww the sails aren't very btg.
They're only about a couple of tnches across, twwo tnches across.
But ww hat wwe're dotng ts wwe're flooding
that wwith 1 0 to 1 00,000 ww atts of laser energy.
Thts ts a ferocious envtronment frankly,
wwe don't knoww howw wwell these wwill survtv e.
And until you actually do tests like thts,
you don't knoww ww here y ou stand.
And that's ww hat these tests are about.
So tt's tncredibly exctttng.
Yeah, this is brand neww.
The ww eight of these satl matertals has to be nothtng.
I mean, ww e're talking about butterfly ww tngs.
Wtll tt burn up?
You knoww, ww tll tt just turn tnto ashes and fall
to the bottom of the v acuum tank?
wwe don't knoww.
But ww e are stm ulating a space envtronment.
It's ev acuated to an tncredibly loww pressure that sim ulates space.
If these delicate prototy pes can wwithstand the burst of light,
M y rabo's dream of a starship carrted by a large laser sail
ww tll be one step closer to reality.
Run n umber one.
Pendulum n um ber one.
Ready to arm...
four...three...twwo...one. . .
Incredtbly, tt wworks.
The force of ltght alone has pushed
the mtniature satl ww tthout incinerating it.
This is good. wery good. I'm happy.
A real laser sailcraft wwould requtre a colossal butlding project.
M uch of the wwork might take place on a future lunar colony.
Thousands of solar-poww ered lasers ww ould have to be butlt.
Each laser ww ould be rolled out to a runwway
ww here tt wwould be packaged for the quick trtp to earth orbit.
A ratlwway lined wwith powwerful magnets
wwould accelerate the laser to escape the moon's grav ity.
The laser sloww s as it approaches
a gargantuan array of lasers under constructton.
A ww orker fits the neww laser into place.
Nearby , in earth orbit, a laser satl unfurls.
IIalf a mile across,
it mtght carry a robot craft for explortng distant ww orlds.
wwhen the laser array ts complete,
1 00 btllton wwatts of light ww tll strike the satl.
Bouncing off the sail, the light beam inches it forww ard.
The craft gradually picks up speed.
It passes Juptter, and, after y ears of travel
it could approach another star at close to the speed of ltght.
Near the end of tts mission,
a smaller sail carrytng the probe ww ould separate.
The small satl sloww s,
perhaps to enter orbtt around a planet to search for alien life.
But wwe are decades awway from mastertng the technology
that Ietk Myrabo ts pioneertng.
Today , it's still an ov erww helming task to matntatn and powwer a craft like Mir.
After sealing the punctured module on M tr,
the top priority for M tchael Foale and his crewwmates ts restortng powwer.
wasily fires thrusters to stabilize Mir.
IIe potnts the statton's solar panels towward the sun
tn order to recharge its batteries.
But ttme and agatn, com puter crashes cause Mir to tumble.
Nothtng ts easy in space.
Space is a hosttle, dangerous place-
more dangerous than anyplace ww e've ev er ventured on earth.
And there are a lot of places on earth
that hav e killed people, ascending Mount Ev erest.
There's a lot one has to overcome.
When Columbus satled the ocean blue, he just had storms to wworry about.
Astronauts hav e radiatton storms to wworry about,
mtcrometeorttes that can pierce the h ull of their sy stem.
They 're going to be factng all sorts of unknowwn dangers.
On M tr, the creww growws exhausted.
They seem cursed.
Each time they resolve one crtsts, another arises.
Sasha accidentally un plugs the com puter, sending Mir tum bling agatn.
Russian ground controllers decide it's time to cut back on the wworkload.
And ww e ktnd of dtd really relax.
wwe actually ww atched one or twwo mov ies.
wwe wwatched Apollo 1 3 tn the atrlock together,
wwhtch I translated for them.
But as hts tour on Mir draww s to an end,Foale sttll tsn't free from ww orry.
On September 27, 1 997, he wwatches the sh uttle Atlantts approach.
Even though I should be relaxing
and just looktng forwward to the arrival,
I ww as starting to become qutte tense
that the sh uttle wwouldn't be able to dock and take me off
because of one of these computer problems.
I saww this beautiful stght rising up from the blue of the earth toww ards us-
so sloww ly com pared to the Progress, so controlled compared to the Progress,
ww tth hardly any immediate motion noted for about ten seconds
betwween each change that they made in thetr flight profile-
join up perfectly to our docktng port.
And this enormous reltef gushed out of me.
And at that potnt, I kneww I ww as home.
IIome.
As he pulls aww ay from Mir,
Foale takes wwhat may be a last gltmpse of his second home.
After more than four harroww tng months tn space
that challenged his stamina and courage,
Foale noww hopes for a trou ble-free rtde to earth.
IIe returns to a vtbrant wworld,
one filled ww tth color and life-a sharp contrast to Mir.
In the mtddle of the M ojav e desert ltv es a man
ww ho may ww ell profit from space travel.
IIts name ts Burt Rutan.
That's a dog. IIoww about a duck? Cat? Can y ou do a cat?
Rutan thtnks-and lives- outside the bo x.
Rutan's edge destgns hav e made avtation htstory.
And he's enjoy ing the rtde.
wwork? I haven't wworked stnce 1 97 4.
This is all play.
A stmple concept, actually.
People hav e fun, they're v ery producttv e.
Rutan runs Scaled Composites,
a com pany that destgns and builds cutttng-edge aircraft.
One of Rutan's latest projects embodtes hts phtlosophy :
First, throww out the rulebook.
The result is hts plane Proteus.
Thts spindly craft can carry a one- ton payload to the stratosphere-
1 1 miles tnto the air.
Proteus might one day lift a manned rocket capsule.
wwhen the aircraft reaches altttude, the capsule wwould detach,
blast into orbtt under its owwn powwer, then glide back to earth.
It's looktng good.
Powwers are great.
I'm gotng to leave the poww er set there.
Controls are altv e, feeltng good. Okay , rotattng.
Gears comtng... 1 1 0 ww ould be a good speed to hold.
If y our am bition is to do a su b-orbttal flight,
y ou ww ant to go to altitude,
to showw ww hoever wwants to go up there,
and I wwant to go too, wwhat it looks ltke from orbtt.
And then y ou ww ant to j ust float around for several mtn utes
and j ust enjoy this-ww eightless.
You knoww, bring your house cat or your lov er or ww hatever
y ou ww ant to do for thts ttme ww hile y ou're ww eightless.
You knoww , y ou j ust can't do that on earth, baby.
But tf y ou're single or cat-free, wwhat ww ould you do tn orbtt?
Who wwants to be the first to see the earth from orbit
wwhtle they're stpptng a marttni-
r maybe there are people out there ww ho wwill do thts?
I don't have enough money to do it.
Perhaps tf I did, then I wwould certatnly do tt.
But the question is not ww hether some people hav e enough money ,
but there's enough interest to keep tt sustatned
and to drtv e the tndustry to tnvent the technology tn the first place.
Remem ber the people used to ask the same questtons about air trav el.
Why tn God's name wwould y ou ww ant to do that?
IIoww practical could that possibly be?
This ww hole notion of space tourism
ts really a chance to get the economics gotng a business
ww here there are thousands of launches, money comtng back tn,
people designing neww v ehicles, brtngtng the prtce dowwn.
And ww e go from sub-orbital fltghts to orbttal flights onto hotels
and onto the moon, and tt's a tremendous opportuntty.
IIi, guys. Good morntng, my name ts Peter dtamandis,
I'm the chatrman of the X-Prize.
Peter diamandts ts offering an tncenttv e
to the potential Itndberghs of the 2 1 st century.
So, ww e're looktng for a neww generatton of rocket sctenttsts out there
wwho can go and build launch vehtcles that wwill carry us into space.
We're try ing to make this on top of here,
ww tth the parach ute in here and put thts up...
IIe ts holding out a prtze to any kid ww ho can design a wwater rocket
that wwill safely return its fragtle passenger-a raww egg-to M other Earth.
What wwe're trytng to do here is to gtv e kids a chance to get hands on
and feel the competitive sptrit and learn howw to butld these rockets
and get into it so that they can relate.
It's really neat to look at the designs and, tn parttcular,
to knoww that the teachers here aren't givtng them the answw ers.
Ev erything they'v e destgned here ts coming out of ex periment
or thetr owwn tmagination and to see the wway
that they 're getting their egg to surv ive is pretty awwesome.
You're going to put y our cup in there, the ww hole ntne y ards?
They gotta design thts v ehicle that can have the egg safely survtv e-
and they get the tdea that wwhen tt cracks, that egg ts dead.
Across towwn, students from another school build thetr owwn rockets
for the upcomtng competition.
One, Jaqut Rogers, has done her homeww ork.
The thing that surprised me about space that I have learned is about the moon.
And it ww as fascinating to me,
because I learned that there ww as no ww tnd on the moon,
that Neil Armstrong's footprtnts are sttll up there.
And I learned about the craters and howw they got there.
desttny Voy ager is noww complete.
Iaunch day arrtv es.
wwhat ww e're going to do ts wwe're gotng to gtv e y ou guys
a chance to put y our eggstranauts in y our rockets.
And you should be done dotng that
by the ttme wwe get ready to launch wwith these guys.
The pad and fuel prepared. . .
Yeah.
Every body 's got an eggstranaut?
Yeah.
Ev erybody's got fuel? Yeah.
And the future rocket cadre trtes to look nonchalant.
There you go.
Un usual destgns create their oww n unique set of snafus.
This happens at NASA all the time, you guy s'
In fact, the sh uttle wwas delayed the other day
because they had a bunch of strings tangled up.
Rocket ts secure on the pad.
All sy stems are go.
The launch director recetv es the green ltght.
Ten...nine. . .etght...seven...stx. . .five. . . four. . .three. . .tww o. . .
one'
Iaunching these rockets is easy.
Open up, open up. . .
It's the landing that's hard.
Sorry guys.
Today's lesson?
To become a rocket scientist, y ou've got to crack a feww eggs.
Excellent.
Parach utes opened.
Any one of these students could groww up to design rockets or spacecraft.
Some may get the chance to leav e earth- or even to ww alk on another wworld.
Whatever tt ts tn our nature
that drove us to the moon can be found tn these kids...
and ww tll contin ue to spur h umanity upww ard and outwward.
Jaqut Rogers.
If I could go up into space, I ww ould ww ant to gaze up on the sun.
I wwould ltke to look dowwn on the earth.
And Mars.
I wwould ltke to find neww things that have never been found.
I ww ant to see the moon, of course.
And the first thtng that I ww ould search for wwas
wwhere Neil Armstrong left the flag, and hts footprtnts,
and that's the matn thtng that I'd be searchtng for.
In terms of ex ploratton,
I think in 50 to 1 00 y ears wwe wwill have most definttely factltttes on the moon.
wwe'll hav e factortes there.
We'll have people wwho are ltv ing there.
We'll have hotels there, of course.
wwe'll hav e the first real self- suffictent and vtbrant colontes on Mars.
But wwhat makes me exctted are going to be actual tndependent societtes,
off planet, in free space colonies.
I thtnk tt wwill be very m uch like it ww as in the 1 4 and 1 500s,
wwhere there ww ere dtfferent groups ww ho wwere gotng off explortng
and fantasiztng about wwhere the best trails are,
ww here the best next neww wworlds are.
And that's the future I'm butlding towwards.
I'm one of those ex plorers wwho can't wwatt to go off,
you knoww , towwards that star over there.
To travel to distant stars and establtsh colonies seems fantasttc today-
but wwe're not even close to reachtng the ltmit of wwhat'
Oh, in my day . . .to think of gotng up and breaktng the sound barrter,
ww ell that ww as out, out of the question pertod.
No wwe'd never break the sound barrier.
So y ou see howw things are, can change.
And then, ww ould anybody ever go to the moon?
wwell, that wwas ridtculous.
wwell, wwe'v e gone to the moon.
Is it our desttny to cross the galaxy?
If tt wwas once tnconcetv able to reach the moon.
What v aulting ambtttons could become realtty tomorroww ?
wwe hav e already begun an amazing journey
that wwill carry us beyond the reach of our imagtnattons.
wwe are entering an era that ww tll unfetter ev en dreamers.
The cosmic perspecttv e ts tnextrtcably bound to our growwing awwareness
of howw tiny ww e are tn thts untv erse,
howw fratl wwe are in this universe,
combtned ww tth sim ply howw btg and grand the untv erse ts.
Noww , that might sound depresstng.
For me, tt's only momentarily depressing.
wwith that knoww ledge, ww e can all parttcipate tn thts journey,
in this quest, to reach the edge of the untv erse
and then perhaps see ww hat's on the other stde.