The Nearly Forgotten, Football-Field-Sized, International Space Station

For the past 5,200 days, high above the earth, 216 astronauts from the U.S. and Russia have manned 82,000 orbits on the International Space Station. Charles Fishman examines what’s happening on the oft-forgotten football-field-sized facility, at a cost of $8 million a day and with 40 percent of its research capacity unused, and the lives of the astronauts aboard. A lack of direction for the NASA program in Washington raises questions about what the experience of the ISS reveals about the space age -- and what lessons will be learned in the future when space travel may become a necessity. Fishman’s article “5,200 Days in Space” appears in the January/February issue of The Atlantic.