Sixteen sunrises a day, 17,000 miles per hour, 400 kilometers up, and continuously inhabited for over a quarter century. This episode examines the International Space Station as a political and engineering feat. It began when the U.S. Freedom station and Russia's Mir-2 both faced financial collapse, leading to the 1993 Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement that merged them, the 1998 launches of Zarya and Unity, and the Intergovernmental Agreement that lets each nation keep jurisdiction over its own modules and personnel across 15 countries and five agencies.

We walk through the modular assembly by orbital rendezvous, the 109 meter truss backbone, and why a station in a vacuum needs giant radiators pumping liquid ammonia to shed heat as infrared light. You will hear about orbital replacement units stored on external platforms and swapped by Canadarm2, ...