Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 133, International Space Station and Beyond.

I'm Gary Jordan. I'll be your host today. If you're new to the show, we bring in the experts,

scientists, engineers, astronauts, historians.

We bring them on to go and dive deep

into everything human spaceflight.

We're coming up on 20 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station,

an orbiting platform that has provided countless insights into living and working in space.

It's brought us more on understanding the universe, about the effects on gravity, and about the

benefits that research can bring to all of humankind.

The International Space Station has taught us what humans are truly capable of and inspired so many more to pursue great things.

So last episode we sat down with Dr. Gary Kitmacher, communications and education mission

manager and the International Space Station program, and an author of several books

about the space station, among other things.

And he took us back in time to discuss some of the early space station concepts and the space

stations of history up to the International Space Station.

Today we're continuing our conversation with Gary, starting with early concepts for space station freedom.

We detail the life of the International Space Station thus far,

and we explore what we can expect for the future of space stations.

This episode was inspired in part by a comic reader on Twitter,

who wanted to know more about a specific part of International Space Station history.

We touch on that during this today's episode and thanks for submitting the idea, Comic Reader.

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