Laboratory of the Void

In planning and building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has made a lot of mistakes. First there was Space Station Freedom, named to complement the Russian Mir (Peace). Then Freedom grew bloated with "feature creep", and NASA, attempting to get things under control, cut the heart out of it. This redesign was jocularly known as Space Station "Fred", in token of the cuts; but it was still too costly and too much in need of on-orbit assembly and maintenance. Ultimately, three even more severely pared-down designs were proferred, one was selected, and it shortly ended up 4.5 billion dollars over budget.

Thus NASA often seems self-serving when it defends the worth of ISS and its progress on the project.

Nevertheless, ISS does have value, and NASA is not to blame for everything that has gone wrong during the struggle to get it on orbit. Thus it is useful to have an assessment done by an independent reporter — someone who is not beholden to NASA or one of its contractors. That is what Marsha Freeman provides in this book.