National Geographic: Destination Space (2000) Movie Script
Ten... nine...
I think it is human destiny
to expand into outer space.
In the new race to space it's just
a physical urge built, sept...
Some will go for adventure.
If you go and you ask people
why do want to go into space,
the answer is the same.
I want to experience zero g.
And then you want to just float around
for several minutes and just enjoy this.
And I want to see the view.
...six... five...
Some will find that every dream
is shadowed by a nightmare.
Space is a hostile, dangerous place.
Because I was expecting
a major breach of the station,
I mean, where the air would
just rush out.
Others will seek their fortunes.
What we really need are filling
stations in space.
...quatre... trois...
And yet others will search for answers
to where we fit in the universe.
We get signals all the time here,
I mean we've got this huge antenna
out the window here,
we've got this very
sophisticated receiver,
of course we pick up signals
all the time.
Every couple of seconds,
another signal.
...two... one...
At the dawn of a new century,
the thrill of space is back.
I think today we are entering
the golden era of space travel.
I want to see the moon of course...
Space...
And I'd like to look down
on the earth...
What's coming next may be
the greatest journey of all time.
Destination Space
In July of 1969,
half a million people of all races
and ages gather from around the globe.
Some trek for days and camp out
to witness an event
that was almost unimaginable
only ten years before.
It isn't a march to protest
the war in Vietnam...
or a rock concert in upstate New York.
It is Apollo 11.
On a small strip of the Florida Coast...
three astronauts prepare
to reach for the moon.
They are only minutes
from attempting the greatest venture
in human history.
But as Apollo 11 tears itself from
the launch pad and thunders into space,
no one is certain if the mission
will end in triumph or tragedy.
Every step of the voyage
is fraught with danger.
But most harrowing is the stage
never before attempted-landing
on the moon.
So risky is this venture,
President Nixon has a eulogy prepared
in case the lunar lander
crashes or is stranded.
Altitude 4,200.
Go for landing, over.
As Armstrong and Aldrin
approach the moon's surface,
they realize the flight computer is
steering them toward a boulder field.
Armstrong seizes control,
guiding the lander to a new spot,
more than 1,000 feet away.
Picking up some dust...
two-and-a-half down
turn to the right a little
another half
...30 seconds...
contact light
okay, engine stopped.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Only seconds of fuel remain
in the lander's tank.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
In the history of humanity, a few,
rare moments are so transcendent
as to unite us all.
Okay Neil, we can see you coming down
the ladder now.
On July 20, 1969,
the planet's population-
watch transfixed as the first human
being steps onto an alien world.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
These were the glory days
of space exploration.
Nothing was easier to imagine than
a succession of further triumphs.
But then something changed.
We lost interest.
Just nine months after
the first lunar landing,
television networks broadcast
soap operas instead of Apollo 13.
It took an explosion onboard
and a life-and-death drama
to grab our attention.
Houston, we have a problem.
Standby 13, we're looking at it.
The space program again
seemed to fade from public view
after Apollo 13 returned safely.
In 1986, NASA tried to rekindle
America's passion for space
by demonstrating that it was
open to anyone.
They flew Christa McAuliffe,
high school teacher and mother of two,
aboard the shuttle Challenger.
And lift-off of the
and it has cleared the tower.
Much of the nation, including
McAuliffe's family and students,
watched in horror as the disaster
played out on television.
Go ahead.
RSO reports vehicle exploded
Okay, are there any forces
headed out that way?
Yes, sir, DOD also reports that
all forces have been scrambled
and they are on their way.
The world began to wonder if space
was worth the risk of human life.
Now, at the turn of the 21st century,
we find ourselves clinging to a small
outpost on the fringe of space.
And it's a tired, tattered one.
The Russian space station Mir
was built to last five years,
but has been made to serve
more than twice as long.
Mir has aged into a balky old vehicle.
Systems switch on and off
without warning.
As American astronauts would discover,
Mir was not only quirky,
it had become downright dangerous.
Some are drawn to space because
they want to learn what lies beyond-
others crave the raw experience.
Children from all walks
share this dream of reaching space,
but few have the persistence
and talent to make it a reality.
This is a moment that takes me back
to when I was about six years old
and I first decided that
I wanted to be an astronaut.
This is looking up at your rocket.
This sends shivers down my spine
every time I think about it.
NASA astronaut Michael Foale
grew up in England,
the son of a royal air force pilot
and an American mother.
While on a childhood
visit to the states,
Foale saw John Glenn's capsule
on a national tour.
From that moment,
he wanted to soar into the sky.
Foale was accepted into
the astronaut class of 1987.
He stood out even among
this elite corps.
On his third shuttle mission,
Foale and his crewmates circled
the Russian space station Mir.
Foale instantly felt its allure.
At that time I can remember seeing
Yelena Kondakova in the window there,
and she would wave and say, "Hey,
we want you to come and have tea."
And, I said, "With pleasure,"
and that was about the limit of
my Russian and, uh,
unfortunately we couldn't stop
and have tea.
We had to back away.
And I said, "Some other time."
Mir has its grip on Foale.
In two years he will return, the fifth
American to live aboard the station.
In his more than four months onboard,
Michael Foale will learn that Mir is a
place where dreams collide with reality.
He will experience the terror of space
as well as the wonder.
The great attraction of space
is that
that is sort of the incubator
of everything.
And the mysteries of existence,
the origins of the universe,
the presence of, call it a god,
resides out there.
And I think one of the motives
for going into space
or studying space is trying to
understand our place in the cosmos.
One astronomer's obsession
with our place in the heavens
drives him to the remote hills
of Puerto Rico.
Twice a year, Seth Shostak travels
to an enormous radio telescope
to listen for signs of
extraterrestrial life.
Sharp cuts in funding and years
of hearing only false alarms
have done nothing to deter Shostak.
For him, the search itself
is irresistible.
You know, it's like that carrot
in front of you,
because that carrot seems to be
getting bigger.
Every year we do this,
the equipment is a little better,
we can check out a few more
star systems, and, you know,
I wouldn't do it if I didn't think
there was some reasonable hope
that within my lifetime
we're gonna pick up that signal
that tells us what we want to know.
Are we alone?
Who, or what, is out there?
Are they like us?
Every previous generation
wondered about this.
They looked up and they wondered
if there was anybody looking down.
I can be a member of
that first generation
that can actually look back up
and maybe find out if
there's something up there.
Built by Cornell University and the
United States Air Force in the 1960s,
the 1,000-foot diameter
Arecibo radio telescope
is one of the most sensitive on earth.
For Shostak,
it's like a huge hearing aid
tuned to the murmurings of the cosmos.
This little speck of metal
is picking up signals
that might be coming from
hundreds of trillions of miles.
It's like a tin can with a string
that runs up a hundred trillion miles.
We could hear a cellphone on Jupiter,
if there were any.
That's how sensitive this system is.
What we're listening for is not
so much the aliens per se,
but their equipment, if you will.
We're listening for a transmitter.
We're not asking of the aliens that
they build huge interstellar transports
ala the star ship Enterprise
and go from world to world.
We're only asking that
they build a simple transmitter
that any teenager could put together
on a table top
and use a decent size antenna.
Two years after seeing Mir
for the first time,
Foale joins its Russian crew for
a four-and-a-half month mission.
He is replacing
American Jerry Linenger,
who appears eager to leave.
Hi, Mike, welcome to your new home.
Foale knows that a fire broke out
during Linenger's stay,
and that the ship's cooling system
leaks toxic anti-freeze.
The hatch closed, and I thought,
"Well, here I am on Mir."
And at that very moment,
Vasily turned towards me and said,
in Russian, because they didn't
speak English at all,
"Well, Mike,
now we are going to beat you."
And so began my time on Mir.
A joke by commander Vasily Tsibliyev,
meant to both welcome
and caution Foale.
The Russians understand
Mir's problems,
and they want to know if this rookie
can handle the challenge.
It proves a fair warning.
Foale has embarked on one of
the most harrowing missions
in the history of exploration.
In space, it is a narrow margin
that separates life from death.
Orbiting 250 miles above earth,
Mir is a pioneering craft,
a frontier port where men and women
have shattered space endurance records.
But records aren't broken
without risk and pain.
Mike Foale's first weeks on Mir
pass without incident.
But one month into the mission,
Foale's Russian crewmates,
engineer Sasha Lazutkin
and commander Vasily Tsibliyev,
prepare to test
a manual docking system.
Vasily will use a
remote steering system and a camera
to guide this supply ship of
the Progress class to Mir.
But as the eight-ton
vessel draws closer,
it becomes more difficult to track.
Vasily is flying blind.
He calls to his crewmates,
telling them to look for
the Progress through Mir's windows.
Foale and Sasha can't see
the incoming vessel anywhere.
Vasily fears the Progress
is approaching too fast.
He applies reverse thrusters.
But to no avail.
Seconds pass.
Then suddenly,
the Progress looms into view.
It's out of control
and headed right at them.
Sasha orders Foale
to the Soyuz-Mir's lifeboat.
So I flew through the air from the
back of the baseblock to the Soyuz.
I felt this big kathump.
Air starts to rush out of Mir.
I then felt the pressure
falling in my ears.
I thought,
"Ah, this is a pretty serious leak."
The adrenaline was
very, very strong,
because I was expecting
a major breach of the station,
I mean, where the air
would just rush out like,
you know, if you get sucked out
of it, basically.
My immediate thought was,
"We are leaving the station.
We have all got to get into
the Soyuz and that's it."
Mir's pressure alarm blares.
If they can't seal the breach
in 30 minutes,
Foale and his crewmates
will have to evacuate.
Throughout history,
explorers and pioneers
have had to face terrible dangers.
Vasco da Gama, Columbus and Magellan
put their lives at risk
to blaze trails into the unknown.
On the heels of heroes
come entrepreneurs.
Companies are now chasing profits
as satellite communication
is woven into the fabric of
everyday life.
Getting these satellites into orbit
is a competitive and risky enterprise.
In the race for money,
the space business is spreading
to unlikely places around the globe.
When it comes to launches,
French Guiana is hot, hot, hot.
Built in 1968, a space center has
electrified this once quiet country.
The space center is not only
playing the role of
sending satellites into the orbit,
but it's playing also the role
in human relations.
Because here is a melting pot
of all races.
The space center has given an economic
boost to the economy of Guiana.
From the coastal jungle, a French-led
company called Arianespace
has carved out one of the most
advanced launch sites in the world.
We are situated here in French Guiana
simply because this is
the best site in the world
for launching commercial satellites.
Competitors who launch farther from
the equator need more fuel
to lift their payloads into
coveted orbits over the equator.
From Kourou, French Guiana,
a satellite has a shorter and
cheaper path into equatorial orbit.
We have the most reliable launcher
five years without a failure.
We launch every month,
about 12 launches a year.
And demand just keeps growing.
It will take several years
for Arianespace
to work through its backlog
of launches.
While we are signing a contract
in New York,
a satellite is being shipped
at the same time to Kourou.
The launcher for that satellite
is ready to go.
And while we are readying
that launcher,
another launcher is being assembled,
and a third launcher is being shipped
in pieces from Europe to Kourou.
So it's a permanent year-long
We bring your own customers here
in Kourou to actually see the launch,
we bring your engineers to process
the satellites,
and we do the full service
from earth to space.
That's our business.
The customer comes first
in the new race for space.
So, Arianespace has mastered the art
of wining and dining.
Jungle boat cruise, anyone?
After a day of sightseeing, it's time
for the real business at hand-placing
a communications satellite worth
hundreds of millions of dollars
at just the right spot 22,000 miles
above the equator.
The night of the launch,
clients assemble at a safe distance
where they can relax
and enjoy the show.
Bienvenue a Kourou...
Greetings everybody wherever you
may be and welcome to Kourou,
the home of Ariane for tonight's live
broadcast of Ariane Spaceflight #126...
launching... for Panam Sat... this evening...
first launch of the new year.
The show's gonna be a good one.
We hope you'll stay with us.
The ground crew is under pressure to
maintain its long string of successes.
And I have to say it's
a very, very exciting business
when you have once a month
this huge thing flying into space
and all these people working on it.
Another successful launch.
And so the party begins in earnest.
Being on the equator
for launching satellites
is such a tremendous advantage
that our competitors are desperately
trying to find an equatorial site.
To compete with Arianespace,
a secretive rival will journey to one
of the most remote places on earth.
Using extraordinary gear
that belongs in a James Bond movie,
they will create their own
equatorial launch site
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In Long Beach, California a company
called Sea Launch
has assembled a dream team
of scientists and mariners.
Their mission: to launch satellites
from a platform at sea.
Mission Director Steve Thelin marvels
at the talent Sea Launch has assembled.
I mean, who ever thought
I'd be out here
launching Western-style spacecraft
on a Russian rocket
on a Norwegian platform
out in the middle of the Pacific.
I mean, this is really cool.
Sea Launch uses a rocket
originally designed to fire nuclear
warheads at the United States.
Today, it carries a payload
more in tune with the times-
a telecommunications satellite.
Sea Launch will journey
across the Pacific Ocean,
to a spot on the equator
Two vessels will make the expedition.
One is an oil platform, converted
into a self-propelled launch pad.
The other-a specially built command
ship that will carry 200 Russian,
Ukrainian and American engineers and
scientists on the three-week trip.
Relations are good on
this international team.
The Russians are just
such professionals.
It's just an honor to be working with them.
Some of the best rocket scientists
in the world, basically.
It's neat to see the past come
forward to the future of space.
The state-of-the-art
mission command center
is actually two control rooms in one.
Russian-speaking specialists
will work on one side
English-speaking Americans
on the other.
Coordination must be seamless
for the launch to succeed.
A similar collaboration was put to
a sharper test onboard Mir.
With air pressure dropping
because of a collision,
the two Russians and
one American have only minutes
to close off a punctured module
or abandon ship.
But cables block a hatchway
that must be sealed.
These cables now that were
being disconnected,
there's about 18 of them,
were like big snakes,
and they just kind of got in the way.
So Sasha'd pass the cable to me
and I'd tie it off.
With the passageway finally cleared,
the two struggle to seal the hatch.
As soon as it went into place,
without doing any latches,
it kind of went "pfffp" and sucked in.
And at that point I really felt
the pressure stop falling.
They've closed off the leaking module,
but Mir is now crippled as they
approach the dark side of earth.
Now the station, which was tumbling,
hadn't been able to orient
its solar arrays to the sun
and we had basically used up
all the battery power that was left.
And so all of the lights
started to go off,
the fans went off
that moved the air around,
and we lost communications
with the ground.
Foale and his crewmates face
a desperate situation.
Without power they have no heaters,
no computers, no oxygen generators.
For the first time,
Mir becomes deathly quiet.
Really, ironically,
it was some of the most beautiful,
memorable experience I ever had
on the Mir,
because we were passing over
the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego,
towards Antarctica and there were
extraordinary curtains of green and red
shimmering across the curve
of the earth
and we kind of would just float there
in front of the window,
mostly saying nothing.
Russians and Americans at Sea Launch
are preoccupied with safety.
Already fueled, the satellite payload
is added to the rocket.
Then, the Sea Launch crew
Cautiously transfers the rocket
to the launch platform.
The Russians insisted on
the twin ship plan
because of its extra margin of safety.
All personnel will evacuate the
launch platform for lift-off.
The rocket is safely cradled
in the launch platform hangar.
Sea Launch is now ready for the
In the age-old sea-faring tradition,
Sea Launch's voyage to the equator
begins with a farewell party
on the dock.
Future rocket scientist!
Friends and loved ones come to see
the Sea Launch crew off.
Steve Thelin will be away from
his family for almost a month.
The two Sea Launch vessels set out
for the equator.
At sea, Russians, Norwegians, and
Americans tend to live and play apart.
The dining room offers
a multi-ethnic cuisine.
And each nationality gravitates
to its own tables.
The Norwegian captain, Tormod Hansen,
was initially skeptical of
this international undertaking.
When I first heard about it,
I thought it was a joke.
I didn't really believe it.
Russian rockets being launched
with American satellites?
The combination of
American and Russian scientists,
and a Norwegian marine?
I thought it was a little bit unreal.
But after 10 days at sea,
everything is going without a hitch.
Sea Launch is nearing its destination.
Everyone is of one mind-all
are totally focused on blasting
their rocket into orbit.
The launch platform now sits
exactly at the equator.
There is no more efficient launch
location for reaching equatorial orbit.
We have such accurate station
keeping ability.
The platform is right on the equator.
You can literally come out here
and straddle the equator-walk
from one end of the ship to
the other end of the ship
and cross the equator.
Huge pumps flood
the platform's pontoons and pylons
with 19,000 tons of seawater.
It settles 70 feet into the sea,
stabilized in the swell.
The crew rolls the rocket out
of its hangar
onto the deck of the launch platform.
They slowly erect the 200-foot rocket.
A bridge connects the two ships.
The crew from the launch platform
can now evacuate
in preparation for
the nighttime blast off.
The command ship sails three miles away
in case the rocket explodes on the pad.
As liftoff time nears,
a rare spectacle at sea unfolds.
The captain of the launch platform
leaves his ship.
Steve Thelin and his international
team check,
then double check, every system.
Op support. Marine operations.
Sea Launch has a one-second
window for launch
if they're to place the satellite
in exactly the right orbit.
Months of preparation and thousands of
hours of work now come down to this:
Can the team do everything perfectly-
without even a second of leeway?
It's a very high level of intensity.
Basically I focus on what's going on,
what potential problems could come up.
The concentration it takes,
the butterflies you get
in your stomach prior to launch.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five...
four... three... two... one...
We have a lift-off.
All looks good at blast-off.
But then something goes
terribly wrong.
One hundred and forty miles
above earth,
the rocket shuts down prematurely-
the satellite fails to reach orbit.
A software glitch may have caused
a single valve to stay open,
dooming the mission.
It's a costly set back,
but Sea Launch
is already planning its next launch.
Nothing about rockets is easy.
Defying gravity remains
an exasperating challenge.
Many are pursuing radically new ideas
about how to reach space.
Just a few months ago,
I got all these proposals
by physicists proposing wacky,
crazy mechanisms for one of NASAs
advanced propulsion systems
that may one day take us
to nearby stars.
I laughed to myself a bit.
There are serious physicists making
serious proposals,
making a shot in the dark because
that's what it may take for us
to go to the distant planets.
Like others who hope to
revolutionize space travel,
propulsion physicist Leik Myrabo
was inspired early in life.
Sputnik and also Echo
flew about the same year.
My grandmother got me up out of bed
in the middle of the night
and brought me outside
and actually showed me
one of these first satellites
flying overhead.
And it was just astounding.
It was an amazing experience.
With NASA backing, Myrabo has traveled
to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Here, he will test
whether a laser beam
can be used to push specially
made fabrics through space.
Science fiction writers have been
writing about laser sails-huge,
ultra thin sails,
like spiderwebs
covered with reflective surfaces
kilometers in diameter.
We're actually testing five new laser
sail materials.
Now the sails aren't very big.
They're only about a couple of
inches across, two inches across.
But what we're doing is we're flooding
that with 10 to 100,000 watts
of laser energy.
This is a ferocious environment
frankly,
we don't know how well
these will survive.
And until you actually do tests
like this,
you don't know where you stand.
And that's what these tests are about.
So it's incredibly exciting.
Yeah, this is brand new.
The weight of these sail materials
has to be nothing.
I mean, we're talking about
butterfly wings.
Will it burn up?
You know, will it just
turn into ashes and fall
to the bottom of the vacuum tank?
We don't know.
But we are simulating
a space environment.
It's evacuated to an incredibly
low pressure that simulates space.
If these delicate prototypes
can withstand the burst of light,
Myrabo's dream of a starship
carried by a large laser sail
will be one step closer to reality.
Run number one.
Pendulum number one.
Ready to arm...
four... three... two... one...
Incredibly, it works.
The force of light alone has pushed
the miniature sail
without incinerating it.
This is good. Very good.
I'm happy.
A real laser sailcraft would require
a colossal building project.
Much of the work might take place
on a future lunar colony.
Thousands of solar-powered lasers
would have to be built.
Each laser would be rolled out
to a runway
where it would be packaged
for the quick trip to earth orbit.
A railway lined with
powerful magnets
would accelerate the laser
to escape the moon's gravity.
The laser slows as it approaches
a gargantuan array of lasers
under construction.
A worker fits the new laser
into place.
Nearby, in earth orbit,
a laser sail unfurls.
Half a mile across,
it might carry a robot craft
for exploring distant worlds.
When the laser array is complete,
will strike the sail.
Bouncing off the sail,
the light beam inches it forward.
The craft gradually picks up speed.
It passes Jupiter,
and, after years of travel
it could approach another star
at close to the speed of light.
Near the end of its mission,
a smaller sail carrying
the probe would separate.
The small sail slows,
perhaps to enter orbit around
a planet to search for alien life.
But we are decades away
from mastering the technology
that Leik Myrabo is pioneering.
Today, it's still an overwhelming task
to maintain and power a craft like Mir.
After sealing the punctured module
on Mir,
the top priority for Michael Foale and
his crewmates is restoring power.
Vasily fires thrusters
to stabilize Mir.
He points the station's solar panels
toward the sun
in order to recharge its batteries.
But time and again,
computer crashes cause Mir to tumble.
Nothing is easy in space.
Space is a hostile, dangerous place-
more dangerous than anyplace
we've ever ventured on earth.
And there are a lot of places on earth
that have killed people,
ascending Mount Everest.
There's a lot one has to overcome.
When Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
he just had storms to worry about.
Astronauts have radiation storms
to worry about,
micrometeorites that can pierce
the hull of their system.
They're going to be facing
all sorts of unknown dangers.
On Mir, the crew grows exhausted.
They seem cursed.
Each time they resolve one crisis,
another arises.
Sasha accidentally unplugs the
computer, sending Mir tumbling again.
Russian ground controllers decide
it's time to cut back on the workload.
And we kind of did really relax.
We actually watched one or two movies.
We watched Apollo 13
in the airlock together,
which I translated for them.
But as his tour on Mir draws to an
end, Foale still isn't free from worry.
On September 27, 1997, he watches
the shuttle Atlantis approach.
Even though I should be relaxing
and just looking forward
to the arrival,
I was starting to become quite tense
that the shuttle wouldn't be able
to dock and take me off
because of one of these
computer problems.
I saw this beautiful sight rising up
from the blue of the earth towards us-
so slowly compared to the Progress,
so controlled compared to the Progress,
with hardly any immediate motion
noted for about ten seconds
between each change that
they made in their flight profile-
join up perfectly to our docking port.
And this enormous relief
gushed out of me.
And at that point, I knew I was home.
Home.
As he pulls away from Mir,
Foale takes what may be
a last glimpse of his second home.
After more than
four harrowing months in space
that challenged
his stamina and courage,
Foale now hopes for
a trouble-free ride to earth.
He returns to a vibrant world,
one filled with color
and life-a sharp contrast to Mir.
In the middle of the Mojave Desert
lives a man
who may well profit from space travel.
His name is Burt Rutan.
That's a dog. How about a duck?
Cat? Can you do a cat?
Rutan thinks-and lives-
outside the box.
Rutan's edge designs
have made aviation history.
And he's enjoying the ride.
Work? I haven't worked since 1974.
This is all play.
A simple concept, actually.
People have fun,
they're very productive.
Rutan runs Scaled Composites,
a company that designs and builds
cutting-edge aircraft.
One of Rutan's latest projects
embodies his philosophy:
First, throw out the rulebook.
The result is his plane Proteus.
This spindly craft can carry a one-
ton payload to the stratosphere-
Proteus might one day
lift a manned rocket capsule.
When the aircraft reaches altitude,
the capsule would detach,
blast into orbit under its own power,
then glide back to earth.
It's looking good.
Powers are great.
I'm going to
leave the power set there.
Controls are alive, feeling good.
Okay, rotating.
Gears coming... 110 would be
a good speed to hold.
If your ambition is to do
a sub-orbital flight,
you want to go to altitude,
to show whoever wants to go up there,
and I want to go too,
what it looks like from orbit.
And then you want to just
float around for several minutes
and just enjoy this-weightless.
You know, bring your house cat
or your lover or whatever
you want to do for this time
while you're weightless.
You know, you just can't do that
on earth, baby.
But if you're single or cat-free,
what would you do in orbit?
Who wants to be the first
to see the earth from orbit
while they're sipping a martini-
r maybe there are people out there
who will do this?
I don't have enough money to do it.
Perhaps if I did,
then I would certainly do it.
But the question is not whether
some people have enough money,
but there's enough interest
to keep it sustained
and to drive the industry to invent
the technology in the first place.
Remember the people used to ask
the same questions about air travel.
Why in God's name
would you want to do that?
How practical could that possibly be?
This whole notion of space tourism
is really a chance to get
the economics going a business
where there are thousands of launches,
money coming back in,
people designing new vehicles,
bringing the price down.
And we go from sub-orbital flights
to orbital flights onto hotels
and onto the moon,
and it's a tremendous opportunity.
Hi, guys. Good morning,
my name is Peter Diamandis,
I'm the chairman of the X-Prize.
Peter Diamandis is offering
an incentive
to the potential Lindberghs
of the 21st century.
So, we're looking for a new generation
of rocket scientists out there
who can go and build launch vehicles
that will carry us into space.
We're trying to make this
on top of here,
with the parachute in here
and put this up...
He is holding out a prize to any kid
who can design a water rocket
that will safely return its fragile
passenger-a raw egg-to Mother Earth.
What we're trying to do here is to
give kids a chance to get hands on
and feel the competitive spirit
and learn how to build these rockets
and get into it so that
they can relate.
It's really neat to look at
the designs and, in particular,
to know that the teachers here
aren't giving them the answers.
Everything they've designed here
is coming out of experiment
or their own imagination
and to see the way
that they're getting their egg
to survive is pretty awesome.
You're going to put your cup in there,
the whole nine yards?
They gotta design this vehicle that
can have the egg safely survive-
and they get the idea that
when it cracks, that egg is dead.
Across town, students from another
school build their own rockets
for the upcoming competition.
One, Jaqui Rogers,
has done her homework.
The thing that surprised me about space
that I have learned is about the moon.
And it was fascinating to me,
because I learned that
there was no wind on the moon,
that Neil Armstrong's footprints
are still up there.
And I learned about the craters
and how they got there.
Destiny Voyager is now complete.
Launch day arrives.
What we're going to do is
we're going to give you guys
a chance to put your eggstranauts
in your rockets.
And you should be done doing that
by the time we get ready
to launch with these guys.
The pad and fuel prepared...
Yeah.
Everybody's got an eggstranaut?
Yeah.
Everybody's got fuel?
Yeah.
And the future rocket cadre
tries to look nonchalant.
There you go.
Unusual designs create their own
unique set of snafus.
This happens at NASA all the time,
you guys.
In fact, the shuttle was delayed
the other day
because they had a bunch of
strings tangled up.
Rocket is secure on the pad.
All systems are go.
The launch director receives
the green light.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five...
four... three... two...
one.
Launching 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,
you've got to crack a few eggs.
Excellent.
Parachutes opened.
Any one of these students could grow up
to design rockets or spacecraft.
Some may get the chance to leave earth-
or even to walk on another world.
Whatever it is in our nature
that drove us to the moon
can be found in these kids...
and will continue to spur humanity
upward and outward.
Jaqui Rogers.
If I could go up into space,
I would want to gaze up on the sun.
I would like to look down
on the earth.
And Mars.
I would like to find new things
that have never been found.
I want to see the moon, of course.
And the first thing
that I would search for was
where Neil Armstrong left the flag,
and his footprints,
and that's the main thing that
I'd be searching for.
In terms of exploration,
I think in 50 to 100 years we will have
most definitely facilities on the moon.
We'll have factories there.
We'll have people who are living there.
We'll have hotels there, of course.
We'll have the first real self-
sufficient and vibrant colonies on Mars.
But what makes me excited are going
to be actual independent societies,
off planet, in free space colonies.
I think it will be very much like
it was in the 14 and 1500s,
where there were different groups
who were going off exploring
and fantasizing about
where the best trails are,
where the best next new worlds are.
And that's the future
I'm building towards.
I'm one of those explorers
who can't wait to go off,
you know,
towards that star over there.
To travel to distant stars and
establish colonies seems fantastic today-
but we're not even close to
reaching the limit of what'
Oh, in my day... to think of going up
and breaking the sound barrier,
well that was out,
out of the question period.
No we'd never break the sound barrier.
So you see how things are, can change.
And then, would anybody ever
go to the moon?
Well, that was ridiculous.
Well, we've gone to the moon.
Is it our destiny to
cross the galaxy?
If it was once inconceivable
to reach the moon.
What vaulting ambitions could become
reality tomorrow?
We have already begun
an amazing journey
that will carry us beyond the reach
of our imaginations.
We are entering an era
that will unfetter even dreamers.
The cosmic perspective is inextricably
bound to our growing awareness
of how tiny we are in this universe,
how frail we are in this universe,
combined with simply how big
and grand the universe is.
Now, that might sound depressing.
For me, it's only
momentarily depressing.
With that knowledge,
we can all participate in this journey,
in this quest, to reach
the edge of the universe
and then perhaps see
what's on the other side.
I think it is human destiny
to expand into outer space.
In the new race to space it's just
a physical urge built, sept...
Some will go for adventure.
If you go and you ask people
why do want to go into space,
the answer is the same.
I want to experience zero g.
And then you want to just float around
for several minutes and just enjoy this.
And I want to see the view.
...six... five...
Some will find that every dream
is shadowed by a nightmare.
Space is a hostile, dangerous place.
Because I was expecting
a major breach of the station,
I mean, where the air would
just rush out.
Others will seek their fortunes.
What we really need are filling
stations in space.
...quatre... trois...
And yet others will search for answers
to where we fit in the universe.
We get signals all the time here,
I mean we've got this huge antenna
out the window here,
we've got this very
sophisticated receiver,
of course we pick up signals
all the time.
Every couple of seconds,
another signal.
...two... one...
At the dawn of a new century,
the thrill of space is back.
I think today we are entering
the golden era of space travel.
I want to see the moon of course...
Space...
And I'd like to look down
on the earth...
What's coming next may be
the greatest journey of all time.
Destination Space
In July of 1969,
half a million people of all races
and ages gather from around the globe.
Some trek for days and camp out
to witness an event
that was almost unimaginable
only ten years before.
It isn't a march to protest
the war in Vietnam...
or a rock concert in upstate New York.
It is Apollo 11.
On a small strip of the Florida Coast...
three astronauts prepare
to reach for the moon.
They are only minutes
from attempting the greatest venture
in human history.
But as Apollo 11 tears itself from
the launch pad and thunders into space,
no one is certain if the mission
will end in triumph or tragedy.
Every step of the voyage
is fraught with danger.
But most harrowing is the stage
never before attempted-landing
on the moon.
So risky is this venture,
President Nixon has a eulogy prepared
in case the lunar lander
crashes or is stranded.
Altitude 4,200.
Go for landing, over.
As Armstrong and Aldrin
approach the moon's surface,
they realize the flight computer is
steering them toward a boulder field.
Armstrong seizes control,
guiding the lander to a new spot,
more than 1,000 feet away.
Picking up some dust...
two-and-a-half down
turn to the right a little
another half
...30 seconds...
contact light
okay, engine stopped.
We copy you down, Eagle.
Only seconds of fuel remain
in the lander's tank.
Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
In the history of humanity, a few,
rare moments are so transcendent
as to unite us all.
Okay Neil, we can see you coming down
the ladder now.
On July 20, 1969,
the planet's population-
watch transfixed as the first human
being steps onto an alien world.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
These were the glory days
of space exploration.
Nothing was easier to imagine than
a succession of further triumphs.
But then something changed.
We lost interest.
Just nine months after
the first lunar landing,
television networks broadcast
soap operas instead of Apollo 13.
It took an explosion onboard
and a life-and-death drama
to grab our attention.
Houston, we have a problem.
Standby 13, we're looking at it.
The space program again
seemed to fade from public view
after Apollo 13 returned safely.
In 1986, NASA tried to rekindle
America's passion for space
by demonstrating that it was
open to anyone.
They flew Christa McAuliffe,
high school teacher and mother of two,
aboard the shuttle Challenger.
And lift-off of the
and it has cleared the tower.
Much of the nation, including
McAuliffe's family and students,
watched in horror as the disaster
played out on television.
Go ahead.
RSO reports vehicle exploded
Okay, are there any forces
headed out that way?
Yes, sir, DOD also reports that
all forces have been scrambled
and they are on their way.
The world began to wonder if space
was worth the risk of human life.
Now, at the turn of the 21st century,
we find ourselves clinging to a small
outpost on the fringe of space.
And it's a tired, tattered one.
The Russian space station Mir
was built to last five years,
but has been made to serve
more than twice as long.
Mir has aged into a balky old vehicle.
Systems switch on and off
without warning.
As American astronauts would discover,
Mir was not only quirky,
it had become downright dangerous.
Some are drawn to space because
they want to learn what lies beyond-
others crave the raw experience.
Children from all walks
share this dream of reaching space,
but few have the persistence
and talent to make it a reality.
This is a moment that takes me back
to when I was about six years old
and I first decided that
I wanted to be an astronaut.
This is looking up at your rocket.
This sends shivers down my spine
every time I think about it.
NASA astronaut Michael Foale
grew up in England,
the son of a royal air force pilot
and an American mother.
While on a childhood
visit to the states,
Foale saw John Glenn's capsule
on a national tour.
From that moment,
he wanted to soar into the sky.
Foale was accepted into
the astronaut class of 1987.
He stood out even among
this elite corps.
On his third shuttle mission,
Foale and his crewmates circled
the Russian space station Mir.
Foale instantly felt its allure.
At that time I can remember seeing
Yelena Kondakova in the window there,
and she would wave and say, "Hey,
we want you to come and have tea."
And, I said, "With pleasure,"
and that was about the limit of
my Russian and, uh,
unfortunately we couldn't stop
and have tea.
We had to back away.
And I said, "Some other time."
Mir has its grip on Foale.
In two years he will return, the fifth
American to live aboard the station.
In his more than four months onboard,
Michael Foale will learn that Mir is a
place where dreams collide with reality.
He will experience the terror of space
as well as the wonder.
The great attraction of space
is that
that is sort of the incubator
of everything.
And the mysteries of existence,
the origins of the universe,
the presence of, call it a god,
resides out there.
And I think one of the motives
for going into space
or studying space is trying to
understand our place in the cosmos.
One astronomer's obsession
with our place in the heavens
drives him to the remote hills
of Puerto Rico.
Twice a year, Seth Shostak travels
to an enormous radio telescope
to listen for signs of
extraterrestrial life.
Sharp cuts in funding and years
of hearing only false alarms
have done nothing to deter Shostak.
For him, the search itself
is irresistible.
You know, it's like that carrot
in front of you,
because that carrot seems to be
getting bigger.
Every year we do this,
the equipment is a little better,
we can check out a few more
star systems, and, you know,
I wouldn't do it if I didn't think
there was some reasonable hope
that within my lifetime
we're gonna pick up that signal
that tells us what we want to know.
Are we alone?
Who, or what, is out there?
Are they like us?
Every previous generation
wondered about this.
They looked up and they wondered
if there was anybody looking down.
I can be a member of
that first generation
that can actually look back up
and maybe find out if
there's something up there.
Built by Cornell University and the
United States Air Force in the 1960s,
the 1,000-foot diameter
Arecibo radio telescope
is one of the most sensitive on earth.
For Shostak,
it's like a huge hearing aid
tuned to the murmurings of the cosmos.
This little speck of metal
is picking up signals
that might be coming from
hundreds of trillions of miles.
It's like a tin can with a string
that runs up a hundred trillion miles.
We could hear a cellphone on Jupiter,
if there were any.
That's how sensitive this system is.
What we're listening for is not
so much the aliens per se,
but their equipment, if you will.
We're listening for a transmitter.
We're not asking of the aliens that
they build huge interstellar transports
ala the star ship Enterprise
and go from world to world.
We're only asking that
they build a simple transmitter
that any teenager could put together
on a table top
and use a decent size antenna.
Two years after seeing Mir
for the first time,
Foale joins its Russian crew for
a four-and-a-half month mission.
He is replacing
American Jerry Linenger,
who appears eager to leave.
Hi, Mike, welcome to your new home.
Foale knows that a fire broke out
during Linenger's stay,
and that the ship's cooling system
leaks toxic anti-freeze.
The hatch closed, and I thought,
"Well, here I am on Mir."
And at that very moment,
Vasily turned towards me and said,
in Russian, because they didn't
speak English at all,
"Well, Mike,
now we are going to beat you."
And so began my time on Mir.
A joke by commander Vasily Tsibliyev,
meant to both welcome
and caution Foale.
The Russians understand
Mir's problems,
and they want to know if this rookie
can handle the challenge.
It proves a fair warning.
Foale has embarked on one of
the most harrowing missions
in the history of exploration.
In space, it is a narrow margin
that separates life from death.
Orbiting 250 miles above earth,
Mir is a pioneering craft,
a frontier port where men and women
have shattered space endurance records.
But records aren't broken
without risk and pain.
Mike Foale's first weeks on Mir
pass without incident.
But one month into the mission,
Foale's Russian crewmates,
engineer Sasha Lazutkin
and commander Vasily Tsibliyev,
prepare to test
a manual docking system.
Vasily will use a
remote steering system and a camera
to guide this supply ship of
the Progress class to Mir.
But as the eight-ton
vessel draws closer,
it becomes more difficult to track.
Vasily is flying blind.
He calls to his crewmates,
telling them to look for
the Progress through Mir's windows.
Foale and Sasha can't see
the incoming vessel anywhere.
Vasily fears the Progress
is approaching too fast.
He applies reverse thrusters.
But to no avail.
Seconds pass.
Then suddenly,
the Progress looms into view.
It's out of control
and headed right at them.
Sasha orders Foale
to the Soyuz-Mir's lifeboat.
So I flew through the air from the
back of the baseblock to the Soyuz.
I felt this big kathump.
Air starts to rush out of Mir.
I then felt the pressure
falling in my ears.
I thought,
"Ah, this is a pretty serious leak."
The adrenaline was
very, very strong,
because I was expecting
a major breach of the station,
I mean, where the air
would just rush out like,
you know, if you get sucked out
of it, basically.
My immediate thought was,
"We are leaving the station.
We have all got to get into
the Soyuz and that's it."
Mir's pressure alarm blares.
If they can't seal the breach
in 30 minutes,
Foale and his crewmates
will have to evacuate.
Throughout history,
explorers and pioneers
have had to face terrible dangers.
Vasco da Gama, Columbus and Magellan
put their lives at risk
to blaze trails into the unknown.
On the heels of heroes
come entrepreneurs.
Companies are now chasing profits
as satellite communication
is woven into the fabric of
everyday life.
Getting these satellites into orbit
is a competitive and risky enterprise.
In the race for money,
the space business is spreading
to unlikely places around the globe.
When it comes to launches,
French Guiana is hot, hot, hot.
Built in 1968, a space center has
electrified this once quiet country.
The space center is not only
playing the role of
sending satellites into the orbit,
but it's playing also the role
in human relations.
Because here is a melting pot
of all races.
The space center has given an economic
boost to the economy of Guiana.
From the coastal jungle, a French-led
company called Arianespace
has carved out one of the most
advanced launch sites in the world.
We are situated here in French Guiana
simply because this is
the best site in the world
for launching commercial satellites.
Competitors who launch farther from
the equator need more fuel
to lift their payloads into
coveted orbits over the equator.
From Kourou, French Guiana,
a satellite has a shorter and
cheaper path into equatorial orbit.
We have the most reliable launcher
five years without a failure.
We launch every month,
about 12 launches a year.
And demand just keeps growing.
It will take several years
for Arianespace
to work through its backlog
of launches.
While we are signing a contract
in New York,
a satellite is being shipped
at the same time to Kourou.
The launcher for that satellite
is ready to go.
And while we are readying
that launcher,
another launcher is being assembled,
and a third launcher is being shipped
in pieces from Europe to Kourou.
So it's a permanent year-long
We bring your own customers here
in Kourou to actually see the launch,
we bring your engineers to process
the satellites,
and we do the full service
from earth to space.
That's our business.
The customer comes first
in the new race for space.
So, Arianespace has mastered the art
of wining and dining.
Jungle boat cruise, anyone?
After a day of sightseeing, it's time
for the real business at hand-placing
a communications satellite worth
hundreds of millions of dollars
at just the right spot 22,000 miles
above the equator.
The night of the launch,
clients assemble at a safe distance
where they can relax
and enjoy the show.
Bienvenue a Kourou...
Greetings everybody wherever you
may be and welcome to Kourou,
the home of Ariane for tonight's live
broadcast of Ariane Spaceflight #126...
launching... for Panam Sat... this evening...
first launch of the new year.
The show's gonna be a good one.
We hope you'll stay with us.
The ground crew is under pressure to
maintain its long string of successes.
And I have to say it's
a very, very exciting business
when you have once a month
this huge thing flying into space
and all these people working on it.
Another successful launch.
And so the party begins in earnest.
Being on the equator
for launching satellites
is such a tremendous advantage
that our competitors are desperately
trying to find an equatorial site.
To compete with Arianespace,
a secretive rival will journey to one
of the most remote places on earth.
Using extraordinary gear
that belongs in a James Bond movie,
they will create their own
equatorial launch site
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In Long Beach, California a company
called Sea Launch
has assembled a dream team
of scientists and mariners.
Their mission: to launch satellites
from a platform at sea.
Mission Director Steve Thelin marvels
at the talent Sea Launch has assembled.
I mean, who ever thought
I'd be out here
launching Western-style spacecraft
on a Russian rocket
on a Norwegian platform
out in the middle of the Pacific.
I mean, this is really cool.
Sea Launch uses a rocket
originally designed to fire nuclear
warheads at the United States.
Today, it carries a payload
more in tune with the times-
a telecommunications satellite.
Sea Launch will journey
across the Pacific Ocean,
to a spot on the equator
Two vessels will make the expedition.
One is an oil platform, converted
into a self-propelled launch pad.
The other-a specially built command
ship that will carry 200 Russian,
Ukrainian and American engineers and
scientists on the three-week trip.
Relations are good on
this international team.
The Russians are just
such professionals.
It's just an honor to be working with them.
Some of the best rocket scientists
in the world, basically.
It's neat to see the past come
forward to the future of space.
The state-of-the-art
mission command center
is actually two control rooms in one.
Russian-speaking specialists
will work on one side
English-speaking Americans
on the other.
Coordination must be seamless
for the launch to succeed.
A similar collaboration was put to
a sharper test onboard Mir.
With air pressure dropping
because of a collision,
the two Russians and
one American have only minutes
to close off a punctured module
or abandon ship.
But cables block a hatchway
that must be sealed.
These cables now that were
being disconnected,
there's about 18 of them,
were like big snakes,
and they just kind of got in the way.
So Sasha'd pass the cable to me
and I'd tie it off.
With the passageway finally cleared,
the two struggle to seal the hatch.
As soon as it went into place,
without doing any latches,
it kind of went "pfffp" and sucked in.
And at that point I really felt
the pressure stop falling.
They've closed off the leaking module,
but Mir is now crippled as they
approach the dark side of earth.
Now the station, which was tumbling,
hadn't been able to orient
its solar arrays to the sun
and we had basically used up
all the battery power that was left.
And so all of the lights
started to go off,
the fans went off
that moved the air around,
and we lost communications
with the ground.
Foale and his crewmates face
a desperate situation.
Without power they have no heaters,
no computers, no oxygen generators.
For the first time,
Mir becomes deathly quiet.
Really, ironically,
it was some of the most beautiful,
memorable experience I ever had
on the Mir,
because we were passing over
the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego,
towards Antarctica and there were
extraordinary curtains of green and red
shimmering across the curve
of the earth
and we kind of would just float there
in front of the window,
mostly saying nothing.
Russians and Americans at Sea Launch
are preoccupied with safety.
Already fueled, the satellite payload
is added to the rocket.
Then, the Sea Launch crew
Cautiously transfers the rocket
to the launch platform.
The Russians insisted on
the twin ship plan
because of its extra margin of safety.
All personnel will evacuate the
launch platform for lift-off.
The rocket is safely cradled
in the launch platform hangar.
Sea Launch is now ready for the
In the age-old sea-faring tradition,
Sea Launch's voyage to the equator
begins with a farewell party
on the dock.
Future rocket scientist!
Friends and loved ones come to see
the Sea Launch crew off.
Steve Thelin will be away from
his family for almost a month.
The two Sea Launch vessels set out
for the equator.
At sea, Russians, Norwegians, and
Americans tend to live and play apart.
The dining room offers
a multi-ethnic cuisine.
And each nationality gravitates
to its own tables.
The Norwegian captain, Tormod Hansen,
was initially skeptical of
this international undertaking.
When I first heard about it,
I thought it was a joke.
I didn't really believe it.
Russian rockets being launched
with American satellites?
The combination of
American and Russian scientists,
and a Norwegian marine?
I thought it was a little bit unreal.
But after 10 days at sea,
everything is going without a hitch.
Sea Launch is nearing its destination.
Everyone is of one mind-all
are totally focused on blasting
their rocket into orbit.
The launch platform now sits
exactly at the equator.
There is no more efficient launch
location for reaching equatorial orbit.
We have such accurate station
keeping ability.
The platform is right on the equator.
You can literally come out here
and straddle the equator-walk
from one end of the ship to
the other end of the ship
and cross the equator.
Huge pumps flood
the platform's pontoons and pylons
with 19,000 tons of seawater.
It settles 70 feet into the sea,
stabilized in the swell.
The crew rolls the rocket out
of its hangar
onto the deck of the launch platform.
They slowly erect the 200-foot rocket.
A bridge connects the two ships.
The crew from the launch platform
can now evacuate
in preparation for
the nighttime blast off.
The command ship sails three miles away
in case the rocket explodes on the pad.
As liftoff time nears,
a rare spectacle at sea unfolds.
The captain of the launch platform
leaves his ship.
Steve Thelin and his international
team check,
then double check, every system.
Op support. Marine operations.
Sea Launch has a one-second
window for launch
if they're to place the satellite
in exactly the right orbit.
Months of preparation and thousands of
hours of work now come down to this:
Can the team do everything perfectly-
without even a second of leeway?
It's a very high level of intensity.
Basically I focus on what's going on,
what potential problems could come up.
The concentration it takes,
the butterflies you get
in your stomach prior to launch.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five...
four... three... two... one...
We have a lift-off.
All looks good at blast-off.
But then something goes
terribly wrong.
One hundred and forty miles
above earth,
the rocket shuts down prematurely-
the satellite fails to reach orbit.
A software glitch may have caused
a single valve to stay open,
dooming the mission.
It's a costly set back,
but Sea Launch
is already planning its next launch.
Nothing about rockets is easy.
Defying gravity remains
an exasperating challenge.
Many are pursuing radically new ideas
about how to reach space.
Just a few months ago,
I got all these proposals
by physicists proposing wacky,
crazy mechanisms for one of NASAs
advanced propulsion systems
that may one day take us
to nearby stars.
I laughed to myself a bit.
There are serious physicists making
serious proposals,
making a shot in the dark because
that's what it may take for us
to go to the distant planets.
Like others who hope to
revolutionize space travel,
propulsion physicist Leik Myrabo
was inspired early in life.
Sputnik and also Echo
flew about the same year.
My grandmother got me up out of bed
in the middle of the night
and brought me outside
and actually showed me
one of these first satellites
flying overhead.
And it was just astounding.
It was an amazing experience.
With NASA backing, Myrabo has traveled
to Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Here, he will test
whether a laser beam
can be used to push specially
made fabrics through space.
Science fiction writers have been
writing about laser sails-huge,
ultra thin sails,
like spiderwebs
covered with reflective surfaces
kilometers in diameter.
We're actually testing five new laser
sail materials.
Now the sails aren't very big.
They're only about a couple of
inches across, two inches across.
But what we're doing is we're flooding
that with 10 to 100,000 watts
of laser energy.
This is a ferocious environment
frankly,
we don't know how well
these will survive.
And until you actually do tests
like this,
you don't know where you stand.
And that's what these tests are about.
So it's incredibly exciting.
Yeah, this is brand new.
The weight of these sail materials
has to be nothing.
I mean, we're talking about
butterfly wings.
Will it burn up?
You know, will it just
turn into ashes and fall
to the bottom of the vacuum tank?
We don't know.
But we are simulating
a space environment.
It's evacuated to an incredibly
low pressure that simulates space.
If these delicate prototypes
can withstand the burst of light,
Myrabo's dream of a starship
carried by a large laser sail
will be one step closer to reality.
Run number one.
Pendulum number one.
Ready to arm...
four... three... two... one...
Incredibly, it works.
The force of light alone has pushed
the miniature sail
without incinerating it.
This is good. Very good.
I'm happy.
A real laser sailcraft would require
a colossal building project.
Much of the work might take place
on a future lunar colony.
Thousands of solar-powered lasers
would have to be built.
Each laser would be rolled out
to a runway
where it would be packaged
for the quick trip to earth orbit.
A railway lined with
powerful magnets
would accelerate the laser
to escape the moon's gravity.
The laser slows as it approaches
a gargantuan array of lasers
under construction.
A worker fits the new laser
into place.
Nearby, in earth orbit,
a laser sail unfurls.
Half a mile across,
it might carry a robot craft
for exploring distant worlds.
When the laser array is complete,
will strike the sail.
Bouncing off the sail,
the light beam inches it forward.
The craft gradually picks up speed.
It passes Jupiter,
and, after years of travel
it could approach another star
at close to the speed of light.
Near the end of its mission,
a smaller sail carrying
the probe would separate.
The small sail slows,
perhaps to enter orbit around
a planet to search for alien life.
But we are decades away
from mastering the technology
that Leik Myrabo is pioneering.
Today, it's still an overwhelming task
to maintain and power a craft like Mir.
After sealing the punctured module
on Mir,
the top priority for Michael Foale and
his crewmates is restoring power.
Vasily fires thrusters
to stabilize Mir.
He points the station's solar panels
toward the sun
in order to recharge its batteries.
But time and again,
computer crashes cause Mir to tumble.
Nothing is easy in space.
Space is a hostile, dangerous place-
more dangerous than anyplace
we've ever ventured on earth.
And there are a lot of places on earth
that have killed people,
ascending Mount Everest.
There's a lot one has to overcome.
When Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
he just had storms to worry about.
Astronauts have radiation storms
to worry about,
micrometeorites that can pierce
the hull of their system.
They're going to be facing
all sorts of unknown dangers.
On Mir, the crew grows exhausted.
They seem cursed.
Each time they resolve one crisis,
another arises.
Sasha accidentally unplugs the
computer, sending Mir tumbling again.
Russian ground controllers decide
it's time to cut back on the workload.
And we kind of did really relax.
We actually watched one or two movies.
We watched Apollo 13
in the airlock together,
which I translated for them.
But as his tour on Mir draws to an
end, Foale still isn't free from worry.
On September 27, 1997, he watches
the shuttle Atlantis approach.
Even though I should be relaxing
and just looking forward
to the arrival,
I was starting to become quite tense
that the shuttle wouldn't be able
to dock and take me off
because of one of these
computer problems.
I saw this beautiful sight rising up
from the blue of the earth towards us-
so slowly compared to the Progress,
so controlled compared to the Progress,
with hardly any immediate motion
noted for about ten seconds
between each change that
they made in their flight profile-
join up perfectly to our docking port.
And this enormous relief
gushed out of me.
And at that point, I knew I was home.
Home.
As he pulls away from Mir,
Foale takes what may be
a last glimpse of his second home.
After more than
four harrowing months in space
that challenged
his stamina and courage,
Foale now hopes for
a trouble-free ride to earth.
He returns to a vibrant world,
one filled with color
and life-a sharp contrast to Mir.
In the middle of the Mojave Desert
lives a man
who may well profit from space travel.
His name is Burt Rutan.
That's a dog. How about a duck?
Cat? Can you do a cat?
Rutan thinks-and lives-
outside the box.
Rutan's edge designs
have made aviation history.
And he's enjoying the ride.
Work? I haven't worked since 1974.
This is all play.
A simple concept, actually.
People have fun,
they're very productive.
Rutan runs Scaled Composites,
a company that designs and builds
cutting-edge aircraft.
One of Rutan's latest projects
embodies his philosophy:
First, throw out the rulebook.
The result is his plane Proteus.
This spindly craft can carry a one-
ton payload to the stratosphere-
Proteus might one day
lift a manned rocket capsule.
When the aircraft reaches altitude,
the capsule would detach,
blast into orbit under its own power,
then glide back to earth.
It's looking good.
Powers are great.
I'm going to
leave the power set there.
Controls are alive, feeling good.
Okay, rotating.
Gears coming... 110 would be
a good speed to hold.
If your ambition is to do
a sub-orbital flight,
you want to go to altitude,
to show whoever wants to go up there,
and I want to go too,
what it looks like from orbit.
And then you want to just
float around for several minutes
and just enjoy this-weightless.
You know, bring your house cat
or your lover or whatever
you want to do for this time
while you're weightless.
You know, you just can't do that
on earth, baby.
But if you're single or cat-free,
what would you do in orbit?
Who wants to be the first
to see the earth from orbit
while they're sipping a martini-
r maybe there are people out there
who will do this?
I don't have enough money to do it.
Perhaps if I did,
then I would certainly do it.
But the question is not whether
some people have enough money,
but there's enough interest
to keep it sustained
and to drive the industry to invent
the technology in the first place.
Remember the people used to ask
the same questions about air travel.
Why in God's name
would you want to do that?
How practical could that possibly be?
This whole notion of space tourism
is really a chance to get
the economics going a business
where there are thousands of launches,
money coming back in,
people designing new vehicles,
bringing the price down.
And we go from sub-orbital flights
to orbital flights onto hotels
and onto the moon,
and it's a tremendous opportunity.
Hi, guys. Good morning,
my name is Peter Diamandis,
I'm the chairman of the X-Prize.
Peter Diamandis is offering
an incentive
to the potential Lindberghs
of the 21st century.
So, we're looking for a new generation
of rocket scientists out there
who can go and build launch vehicles
that will carry us into space.
We're trying to make this
on top of here,
with the parachute in here
and put this up...
He is holding out a prize to any kid
who can design a water rocket
that will safely return its fragile
passenger-a raw egg-to Mother Earth.
What we're trying to do here is to
give kids a chance to get hands on
and feel the competitive spirit
and learn how to build these rockets
and get into it so that
they can relate.
It's really neat to look at
the designs and, in particular,
to know that the teachers here
aren't giving them the answers.
Everything they've designed here
is coming out of experiment
or their own imagination
and to see the way
that they're getting their egg
to survive is pretty awesome.
You're going to put your cup in there,
the whole nine yards?
They gotta design this vehicle that
can have the egg safely survive-
and they get the idea that
when it cracks, that egg is dead.
Across town, students from another
school build their own rockets
for the upcoming competition.
One, Jaqui Rogers,
has done her homework.
The thing that surprised me about space
that I have learned is about the moon.
And it was fascinating to me,
because I learned that
there was no wind on the moon,
that Neil Armstrong's footprints
are still up there.
And I learned about the craters
and how they got there.
Destiny Voyager is now complete.
Launch day arrives.
What we're going to do is
we're going to give you guys
a chance to put your eggstranauts
in your rockets.
And you should be done doing that
by the time we get ready
to launch with these guys.
The pad and fuel prepared...
Yeah.
Everybody's got an eggstranaut?
Yeah.
Everybody's got fuel?
Yeah.
And the future rocket cadre
tries to look nonchalant.
There you go.
Unusual designs create their own
unique set of snafus.
This happens at NASA all the time,
you guys.
In fact, the shuttle was delayed
the other day
because they had a bunch of
strings tangled up.
Rocket is secure on the pad.
All systems are go.
The launch director receives
the green light.
Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five...
four... three... two...
one.
Launching 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,
you've got to crack a few eggs.
Excellent.
Parachutes opened.
Any one of these students could grow up
to design rockets or spacecraft.
Some may get the chance to leave earth-
or even to walk on another world.
Whatever it is in our nature
that drove us to the moon
can be found in these kids...
and will continue to spur humanity
upward and outward.
Jaqui Rogers.
If I could go up into space,
I would want to gaze up on the sun.
I would like to look down
on the earth.
And Mars.
I would like to find new things
that have never been found.
I want to see the moon, of course.
And the first thing
that I would search for was
where Neil Armstrong left the flag,
and his footprints,
and that's the main thing that
I'd be searching for.
In terms of exploration,
I think in 50 to 100 years we will have
most definitely facilities on the moon.
We'll have factories there.
We'll have people who are living there.
We'll have hotels there, of course.
We'll have the first real self-
sufficient and vibrant colonies on Mars.
But what makes me excited are going
to be actual independent societies,
off planet, in free space colonies.
I think it will be very much like
it was in the 14 and 1500s,
where there were different groups
who were going off exploring
and fantasizing about
where the best trails are,
where the best next new worlds are.
And that's the future
I'm building towards.
I'm one of those explorers
who can't wait to go off,
you know,
towards that star over there.
To travel to distant stars and
establish colonies seems fantastic today-
but we're not even close to
reaching the limit of what'
Oh, in my day... to think of going up
and breaking the sound barrier,
well that was out,
out of the question period.
No we'd never break the sound barrier.
So you see how things are, can change.
And then, would anybody ever
go to the moon?
Well, that was ridiculous.
Well, we've gone to the moon.
Is it our destiny to
cross the galaxy?
If it was once inconceivable
to reach the moon.
What vaulting ambitions could become
reality tomorrow?
We have already begun
an amazing journey
that will carry us beyond the reach
of our imaginations.
We are entering an era
that will unfetter even dreamers.
The cosmic perspective is inextricably
bound to our growing awareness
of how tiny we are in this universe,
how frail we are in this universe,
combined with simply how big
and grand the universe is.
Now, that might sound depressing.
For me, it's only
momentarily depressing.
With that knowledge,
we can all participate in this journey,
in this quest, to reach
the edge of the universe
and then perhaps see
what's on the other side.