Ignition Protocol / Programme
International Space Station
Keeping two rival crewed programmes alive by tying them to each other. The research is real, but the station was built and funded on the argument that neither side could afford to walk away once the other was bolted on.
The ISS is a multinational station rather than an American one. Five agencies run it, NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA and CSA, drawing on five space programmes and fifteen countries, and over 280 people from 26 countries have been aboard. Assembly began in November 1998 and it has been continuously crewed since 2 November 2000, the longest unbroken human presence off the planet there has ever been.
How it went
Assembly started in November 1998, with modules delivered on Proton and on the Shuttle, and the arrival of Zvezda in July 2000 made permanent habitation possible.
Expedition 1 reached the station aboard Soyuz TM-31 on 2 November 2000, and it has not been left empty on any day since.
The Shuttle assembled most of the structure and then retired in 2011, leaving Soyuz as the only route to the station until Dragon restored an American option in 2020.
NASA marked twenty five years of continuous occupation on 2 November 2025, with 259 spacewalks logged at the station since December 1998.
The partners have committed to operating through 2030, and on 26 June 2024 NASA awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to 843 million dollars to build the vehicle that will bring the station down.
What it flew
What it cost, what it got
Twenty five years and counting of continuous human presence, 259 spacewalks, and a working habit of cooperation between agencies whose governments had spent the previous forty years pointed at one another. It ends in a controlled destruction over the Pacific after 2030.