The most complex thing we ever built, we built together.
Watching Jared Isaacman, NASA Administrator, on Face the Nation this morning brought a flood of memories rushing back. Including some writing I did about the International Space Station under Administrator Dan Goldin, with Glenn Mahone running public affairs.
The ISS is the most complicated machine humans have ever built. And we did not build it alone.
The first piece launched in 1998. People have lived aboard it without a single day's break since November 2000. That is more than 25 years of unbroken human presence in space.
Five space agencies run it. The United States. Russia. Japan. Canada. Europe. Fifteen nations signed the founding agreement.
Think about how that actually worked. Modules were built on different continents, by people who never shared a room, then bolted together for the first time in orbit. 250 miles up. Moving 17,500 miles per hour. And they fit.
Here is the part most people forget. It did not have to be international. It began as an American project called Freedom.
In 1993, with the program buckling under its own cost, Administrator Dan Goldin made a different call. He redesigned it and invited Russia in. A country that had been our rival for forty years.
That choice saved the program. It also changed what it meant. A national effort became a human one, and the first crew moved aboard during his watch.
The American and Russian sections were designed to depend on each other. One supplies much of the power. The other supplies the engines that keep the station from falling. Neither survives alone.
We built that. Former adversaries. Through decades of tension on the ground.
Astronauts from 26 countries have flown aboard, and researchers from more than 100 countries have run experiments there.
Dan Goldin left NASA more than twenty years ago. The station he fought to build is still up there tonight, proof that former rivals can choose to keep each other alive.
We built the impossible during the worst of times. Together. On purpose.
If we could do that up there, do not let anyone tell you what we cannot do down here.
#Leadership #Collaboration #Space #ISS #GetCentered