SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The International Space Station is turning 25 this month. Twenty-five years of people from all over the world living together and working together in space. At the same time, it is starting to wrap up its mission in space. The space station is set to be decommissioned in 2030. A new PBS documentary tells the story of what it took to build the station and some of the dangerous experiences astronauts had to endure on board. We're going to talk about that now with executive producer Tom Adams, as well as astronaut Wendy Lawrence. Welcome, both of you.
WENDY LAWRENCE: Thank you.
TOM ADAMS: Hello.
DETROW: Tom, I want to start with you 'cause it's interesting, I feel like a lot of people interact with the space station by watching the various livestreams of it, you know, the view from the space station. And it can be a very peaceful experience to watch that. But the reality that you really lean into in this documentary is that it's not a particularly peaceful place to live and work. It is incredibly dangerous to be orbiting the Earth, and there's constantly one problem or another with no safety net.
ADAMS: I think that's the point. I mean, it looks serene up there. It looks like a place you would love to spend time - and I'm sure the astronauts do - but as one of our contributors says, everything up there is trying to kill you. And if that's your starting point, then to have created this extraordinary laboratory that is circling the Earth to conduct the most extraordinary science in, it's a story and a half. I mean, it's incredible that that structure was built in those kind of conditions.
DETROW: Wendy, how often did you actively think about it that way, that everything up there is trying to kill us? I mean, is that something you just kind of work to problem-solve, or is that in the back of your head as you hear a creak or a groan or whatever on the space station, day to day?
LAWRENCE: I didn't have an opportunity to do a long-duration mission. My mission on the shuttle was for a short period - about eight days. And honestly, you're so busy, day in and day out, trying to accomplish everything that you've been scheduled to do that day that there's not a lot of time to reflect. But I do have to say that as we were conducting our space walks - I was inside flying the International Space Station robotic arm - it was a little disconcerting to hear my fellow astronauts out in their suits clunking their boots along on the outside of the NASA laboratory module.
DETROW: (Laughter).
LAWRENCE: That was not a noise I expected to hear, and it does make you pause and think about the fact that, yes, you're in a very unforgiving environment, and you always have to respect the laws of physics and recognize that the laws of physics will always win. So from an engineering perspective, you have to acknowledge that and then come up with a design that can be robust enough to handle that very extreme environment.
DETROW: I want to talk about one moment in Part 1 of the documentary that, Wendy, you played a role in a pretty tense situation where the space shuttle Discovery had to be inspected because there were concerns that the heat shield had been damaged, and that was top of mind to everybody because this was the first mission after the Columbia disaster and safety was paramount. First, Tom, I want to talk to you. Why did you focus in on that? There's 25 years of different missions to focus on. Why was this one of the moments that you really wanted to zoom in on and fully understand?
ADAMS: I think there are these moments that required calm thinking and scientific approaches that, in a way, exemplified what the people involved in the space missions were doing. They didn't have everything to hand. They were isolated. They were up in space. Yes, they had communications to Earth and they had people on the ground helping them think through, but they had to make the best with what they had. And it seemed like this event was a perfect example of that, that as Wendy says, a part of the space shuttle that wasn't meant to be looked at had to be looked at. And by doing a 360, but also by getting someone on a robotic arm and putting them where someone had never been before, just showed what was possible with, as I say, calm thinking but having a job to do and needing to do it well.
DETROW: Wendy, what do you remember about that experience? You're guiding this arm, trying to get a fellow astronaut basically under - like changing the oil almost of a space shuttle, except it's a space shuttle and you're in space.
LAWRENCE: (Laughter) You know, you have kind of a split personality at that moment. One, you're very focused on the task that you have to do, which in my case was fly Steve Robinson very close to the thermal protection system tiles on the underside of the orbiter so he could pull out two things that we call gap fillers. But then kind of the little kid side of you goes, oh, my gosh, these are incredible views. We've never seen imagery like this before. Nobody's ever been here before, and we're getting to do this. This is so cool. But then you're very focused. It's, OK, Steve, I'll take you 6 inches to the right, OK? Motion starting, motion stopped. So that dual personality to me was always very interesting.
But to Tom's point, this really is a great tribute to the team on the ground that supports a crew during their mission. They're the people that put together the plan that made it very easy for the crew to carry out this activity. So to me, they're the true heroes of the story - you know, unsung, unfortunately - but really the true heroes behind this.
DETROW: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to the International Space Station. There's the technological marvels. And I think there's also, like, the global political marvel of it. I interviewed a former NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, a couple years ago, and he made the point that, you know, U.S.-Russia relations are at their lowest point they've been since the Cold War. And he said the U.S. and Russia never stopped working together on the space station. I mean, how - Wendy, what was your point of view on that collaboration and how it worked moment to moment in a space station and just how remarkable that is and was?
LAWRENCE: Well, I have to back up. Back in the mid-'90s, we had our doubts about whether or not we could make this partnership be successful. But it was really the astronauts and cosmonauts - many of whom served in the militaries for their countries, who had actually trained to go to war against one another - we realize that we had the same job. We didn't speak the same language, but we had a common background, and we use that as kind of the glue to hold the program together and the foundation upon which to build the program.
And I say this often, and I'm very sincere in these comments, I think historians will look at the International Space Station program and say, yeah, some really fascinating science was being conducted on board. But the most significant contribution was that when we humans choose to do this, we truly can take those proverbial swords and beat them into plowshares. We can do some remarkable things together for all of mankind, for the benefit of humankind.
DETROW: That was astronaut Wendy Lawrence, as well as Tom Adams, the executive producer of the new PBS documentary, "Operation Space Station." Thanks to you both.
LAWRENCE: Thank you, Scott.
ADAMS: Thank you.
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