How did they build the ISS? (International Space Station)

Thank you for watching my videos!

Just to get it on the record: I don't mind how long it is, I'd definitely watch a video where you cover every single mission. They're just so good.

As a man who prides himself on knowing "a little bit about many things", I knew NOTHING about the ISS. I felt kinda embarrassed about that deficiency, which is why I am very, VERY grateful to you, Jared, for taking on this enormous task!! Outstanding presentation and easy-to-understand detail. So impressed, and so appreciated. My wife & I love ALL of your presentations!

As an ISS flight controller I just wanted to say this video is fantastic and more accurate than I expected. Keep it up!

Great video and it brings back a lot of memories. I supported 16 of these assembly missions including 6 from NASA JSC Mission Control Center, right up to 2007. An interesting component of berthing and assembly you didn't get into in the video is how you align the modules and why it took so long to bring them together. It wasn't like dock an aircraft to a gate with ground crew guiding alignment with light batons saying to move left or right. There were several methods used including centerline berthing cameras and alignment targets. The system I was supporting was the Space Vision System that used all of those black and white targets all over the modules. SVS used the Space Shuttle cameras in the payload bay to track the targets on both the incoming module and the module on the ISS it is attaching to, and calculated the relative position and orientation (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll) 30 times per second. It had to berth slowly because these modules are massive so their inertia was both hard to get moving and hard to stop, and could do a lot of damage if anything collided. Alignment was monitored closely the whole way in. Also, the ISS and shuttle were orbiting the Earth this whole time, so sometimes would traverse from night to day and vice-versa. That could put shadows on targets and make it hard to track all of them at the same time due to dynamic lighting. Pre-flight I had to analyze which targets were important and which could be lost and still perform the operation within spec, and keep an eye on this during berthing operations. The last one in 2007 I supported remotely from my home in Ottawa at 2 AM in my underwear, using telemetry over the internet to my laptop, a cellphone to our MCC team, and NASA TV video streamed over a modded Xbox. When I went back to bed, my girlfriend (now wife of 15 years) asked if I couldn't sleep and I told her that, no, I had gotten up to assemble the international space station. Fun times. :)

The design feature of having identical connectors at both ends of the Canadarm 2 allowing it to almost walk around the station is so cool.

I would watch a whole hour or two of the entire ISS build. This is important work from a historical perspective, and for younger generations to understand that things take a long time to build. Fabulous work Jared!

FUN FACT: There is gravity on the ISS. It's true that gravity is weaker because it's farther from the centre of the Earth, but not by much. Earth's gravity is still 90% as effective as it is on the surface. The reason why astronauts float is because they're in free fall. It's a common misconception that the difficult part about space travel is getting into space. But that's actually the easy part. You then need to obtain enough speed to enter orbit, which may require as much as seven times the amount of energy you needed for launch, otherwise you'd fall straight back down. The station is orbiting at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour, which allows it to keep falling towards the surface but moving sideways fast enough that it never actually reaches the ground.

You have outdone yourself again Jared. I watched this with my 7 year old son before he went off to school. He loves anything space. We both enjoyed and learned from this. Keep up the great work

The Canadarm is just amazing, a masterpiece of engineering and robotics. Great work Jared, I would love to see more of these videos!

Hi jarred!! My son absolutely loves your videos, he is 4yrs old and learns so much from them! My son blows my mind at the things he knows from your videos! He is autistic and your videos make him so happy. He asked me to comment on your videos to tell you that he loves your content and "he hopes you're very happy with your family" -his words. His name is jasper, and he is 100% your biggest fan.

If you chronicled in detail the entire construction of the ISS like this, that would be an incredible gift to all of us and our future descendants. The quality of these videos are amazing, and you make it look way easier than it probably is to produce videos like this.

I love these animation videos! The amount of effort put in these videos is just outstanding!

What's important is that most of the major sections of the Russian segment are their own spaceships, they have their own propulsion and attitude control engines so they can maintain their own orbit after launch and even dock with themselves. US-made segments however are not, they are basically giant tin can cabins with science capacity as their primary design objective so they need to be carried to the station by the shuttle and placed onto the station using robot arms.

I was there in the ISS Mission Evaluation Room (MER) from the beginning (pre-FEL) until retirement at the end of 2010. We worked with the Flight Control Team to develop and implement procedures to address and repair ISS failures. Our motto: "Yep, we can fix that".

I already knew how they built it but I decided to watch again just for fun and this video was really great! Great voice with a great voice over and great description and "chapters" of the events in the video and straight to the point with good and easy to understand explaining. The animations were really great too and a big part why the video is so good overall in my opinion. Great video! A part 2 would be really nice! :D

This was an awesome video! I’m on the dive team that trained the astronauts at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory to build the station in orbit during Shuttle. Now we are only training for ISS maintenance, crew rescue, and soon-to-be lunar missions! Love the channel and keep up the great work!

My 4 year old son watches many of your videos, and even uses some of your vocabulary when describing them to me.

Thank you so much for this video. I've been fascinated by the ISS since I was a kid when it first began construction. I loosely followed its construction, and by the time it was finished I was in my teenage years and even more interested in how it came to be. I've watched several videos on what got put where and when, but very rarely do they ever go this deeply in to HOW they were put into place.

First video I’ve seen on this channel. You have a gift Mr. Owen. Thank you for sharing it with us!