"Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko told a television interviewer that 'the price they had to pay was not fair.'"
Time magazine on Soyuz 11
Space stations are permanently manned orbiting crafts that are designed to stay in space continuously. The first one, Salyut 1, was launched by the U.S.S.R. on April 19, 1971. It was about 65 feet (20m) in length and 13 feet (4 m) in diameter. The docking mechanism on the first crew's Soyuz 10 spacecraft failed, so it was first occupied by the Soyuz 11 three-man team who stayed in orbit for just under twenty-four days. Sadly all three men died when their capsule depressured on reentry to Earth's atmosphere. 'Later generations of Soviet space stations, such as Mir, had two docking ports and water regeneration facilities. They were designed to be manned permanently.
The first U.S. space station, Skylab, was three times the size of Mir and was launched in 1973. In 1984 President Ronald Reagan announced that the United States planned to build a huge space station called Freedom. After many budget cuts the plans changed, and in 1993 the U.S. decided to go into partnership with Russia, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency (ESA) to build the International Space Station (ISS). The first element was launched in 1998.
The ISS—a joint project between space agencies from the United States, Russia, Canada, and eleven European countries—has been continuously occupied since November 2000. It makes 15.77 orbits of Earth each day, at a height of between 189 and 248 miles (350 and 460 km). It is serviced by the Space Shuttle and Russia's Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. When complete there will be six astronauts onboard, each staying there for a few months at a time. They will concentrate on microgravity, biology, biomedical, and fluid physics experiments. One of the main goals is to assess the long-term effects of space exposure on the human body.
